MAAT is presenting Transe, the first anthological exhibition by Portuguese artist Rui Moreira. The exhibition brings together around 80 medium and very large format drawings and paintings on paper, as well as a large sculpture that will be presented in Praça do Carvão. With a career spanning more than 20 years, Rui Moreira is one of the most significant Portuguese artists to emerge in the first decade of this century and one of those with the most consolidated international curriculum.

The title chosen by the artist for this exhibition, Transe, reveals the intensity he puts into making his works and the energy he wants to transmit through them. These meticulously crafted works, which require a slow and in-depth execution time, result from the simultaneous summoning of primordial forces and erudite quotations, with references to Herberto Helder - a poet very present in Rui Moreira's work - Cormac McCarthy or Marcel Proust, from whom he seeks inspiration for the themes and titles of some of his works.

With highly seductive yet restrained colors, the paintings on paper vary between the abstract and the figurative, and reveal the absolute perfectionism that the artist employs in his work process. Rui Moreira often places himself in extreme territories and experiences in order to develop his work. These experiences can be meteorological - in high temperatures in the desert in Morocco - ritualistic - being part of and parading with a group of caretos, masked characters who are part of the pagan Carnival festivities in certain villages in Trás-os-Montes; or even exhausting - endless hours spent in the studio, working frantically - thus reaching spiritual states that generate new territories of creation.

Rui Moreira's work contains a multiplicity of narratives, references and symbologies. In the figurative works, details of clothing, props and gestures are revealed (quotes taken from Japan and North Africa, Trás-os-Montes, India and Amazonia) which accentuate the symbolic value of the characters (human, animal or plant figures) that sometimes play off each other and sometimes merge. In his non-figurative works, on the other hand, we find loose elements (crosses, linear segments or polygons) that create hypnotic zones that can be related to Islamic art, Hindu mandalas, medieval rosettes or the illusion of a modernist and rational composition. Finally, in his landscapes, land, sea and sky merge, multiplying and overlapping points of view. The exhibition is organized around these nuclei of figuration, non-figuration and landscape, without following any chronological rules.

As a result of a protocol signed between MAAT and the Graça Morais Cultural Center, part of the exhibition will be shown in Bragança from July 5, 2025. 

As part of the exhibition, a catalog will be published with texts by João Pinharanda, Filipa Correia de Sousa and Rui Chafes (who will talk to the artist on May 22). On May 6, Rui Moreira will give a 12-hour lecture at the museum, where he will talk about his practice and the importance of the trance state in his work and in expanding the territory of creation. 

Biography of Rui Moreira

Rui Moreira (Porto, 1971) studied at ar.co - a center for art and visual communication in Lisbon and at the Art Institute of Chicago. His work is often guided by his travels and explorations. Through his creations, he experiences and recovers the physical and psychological perceptions inherent in places such as the Moroccan desert, the source of the Ganges, the Amazon jungle or the Trás-os-Montes region.
In 2014, Mudam Luxembourg - Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean presented I Am a Lost Giant in a Burnt Forest, an extensive exhibition of his work. In 2015, one of Rui Moreira's works was acquired by the Collection Société Générale. In 2016, a group of ten works was exhibited at the Pavilhão Branco / Galerias Municipais de Lisboa. Entitled Os Pirómanos, this exhibition was then presented at the CIAJG - Centro Internacional das Artes José de Guimarães in 2017. In 2018, his work was included in the group exhibition Saudade - Unmemorable Place in Time, at the Fosun Foundation, in Shanghai, and at the Museu Coleção Berardo, in Lisbon, and in 2023 in another group exhibition entitled I II III IV V - cinco décadas de ar.co - centro de arte e comunicação visual, held at the Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea - Museu do Chiado, in 2023.
Rui Moreira has collaborated with the Jeanne Bucher Jaeger gallery since 2008 and has presented several solo exhibitions, most recently The Passengers, in 2022.

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