Pedro Proenca / Juliao Sarmento

Pedro Proenca, born in 1962, is the youngest of a generation of Portuguese painters now gaining international recognition. He has exhibited in solo exhibitions throughout Spain and Portugal, and he has been represented in group shows in France, Greece, America and Britain. In 1988, Proenca appeared in the Aperto section of the Venice Biennale. The exhibition of Proenca’s drawings at the Frith Street Gallery will be the first solo show of his work in the U.K.

Proenca’s art is imbued with a fundamental sense of parody. His images appear as a repository of cultural sabotage – drawn with equal relish from western art history and greek literature, from the East and the primitive. His imaginative world is peopled with allegorical men and animals – a fat, naked demi-god, a cupid curled happily around a snake and labelled `pathos’, a smiling man, wiping the petals of a flower clean.

Despite the humour and charm of the work, Proenca’s allegories are not merely comedy. They also exist as a serious attempt to transform a difficult reality by the process of metamorphosis. His work – eclectic and symbolic – seems to exist in a delirium world. The resulting dream of sensual imagery represents an alternative reality, composed of layers of allegory, historical conceit and personal mythology – forming a contradictory whole.

Proenca’s work combines an alluring mixture of irony and a disturbing note of dis-ease.

In conjunction with this exhibition, the Frith Street Gallery will be exhibiting some prints by perhaps the best known Portuguese artist, Juliao Sarmento.