Rooms is the first solo exhibition by British artist Anthony McCall in Portugal. Developing in a space between sculpture, cinema, drawing and performance, McCall’s work is recognised for the innovative way in which it explores these intersections: simple and complex, and highly sensory.

This exhibition presents four works that mark McCall's career and which he dubs Solid Light Works, produced between 2007 and 2020. These are film installations that flow through space like immaterial yet apparently three-dimensional sculptures of light and smoke. The performative dimension of these works arises from the articulation between the viewer's participation, bodily sensation, and perception of the physicality of the forms drawn by the light.

These works were conceived after McCall returned to artistic production in 2003 (after a 24-year hiatus during which he worked as a graphic designer for the New York art scene), at which point he conceived new film installations using digital processes and devices.

The exhibition also includes a photograph, Room with Altered Window (1973), which documents one of Anthony McCall's first artistic experiments: the artist covered his studio window with black paper into which he cut a narrow slit; when the sun shone through the window, a flat sheet of light was projected into the room, the visibility of which was intensified by dust in the air and cigarette smoke. Later that year, McCall made the most famous of his works, Line Describing a Cone.

This is the second time Anthony McCall's work has been presented at MAAT, with his piece ‘Meeting you Halfway II’ having formed part of the exhibition Traverser la Nuit: Works from the Antoine de Galbert Collection in 2022.

Biography of the artist

Anthony McCall (London, St Paul's Cray, 1946) lives and works in Manhattan. His work has been recognised in numerous exhibitions in the USA and Europe, including Into the Light: the Projected Image in American Art 1964-77, Whitney Museum of American Art (2001-2); The Expanded Screen: Actions and Installations of the Sixties and Seventies, Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna (2003-4); Beyond Cinema: the Art of Projection, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2006-7); The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Projected Image, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC (2008); and On Line Museum of Modern Art (2010-11). This year, the Guggenheim Bilbao presented Split Second and, until April 2025, the Tate Modern in London is dedicating to him the exhibition Solid Light.

In Portugal, his works have been featured in group exhibitions such as Live in Your Head - Conceito e experimentação na Grã-Bretanha 1965-75 (2001), at the Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea do Chiado, Into the Light: The Projected Image in American Art 1964–1977, which which travelled from the USA to Centro Cultural de Belém (2004–2005), and Off the Wall, which was on show at Serralves (2011).  At MAAT, his work ‘Meeting you Halfway II’ was part of the exhibition Traverser la Nuit: Works from the Antoine de Galbert Collection (2022).

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