Noé Sendas Belgian, b. 1972

 

Sendas concerns himself with the reflection and practice of visual arts. These include: the body, as an entity that is simultaneously theoretical and material; the observer's perception mechanisms; or the discursive potential of exhibition methods. As a result his work is strangely unsettling. Rooted in cinematic and literary references, his images depict ghostly, unnerving figures whose heads and limbs appear to be invisible, or which have seemingly blended into furniture or walls. Following the themes of abstracting and partly erasing the human body through photography, Sendas' work takes inspiration from those ever-present titans, John Baldessari and Guy Bourdin, and the less well-known but equally brilliant American sculptor Robert Gober. It is also something of a counterpoint to the contemporary subversion of John Stezaker's collaged appropriation of Hollywood head shots, whose results are very different but who delights in defacing once-great screen idols.

 

Sendas studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA; Royal College of Arts, London; Arco and Atelier Livre, Lisbon. He has attended residencies at the: Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; Casa Velazquez, Madrid; Cite des Arts, Paris; Peggy Guggenheim, Venice and Atelier Real Lisboa. He has exhibited works in Yerba Buena for the Arts, USA; Kunsthalle Bonn, Germany; Akademie der Kunst, Berlin; Le Plateau, Paris; MEAC/ MUSAC/ Botin Foundation/ Foundation IC and Casa America in Spain; In Portuguese Museums and Institutions such as: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Museum Berardo, Museu Bordalo Pinheiro e Museu da Cidade em Lisboa; Culturgest, Porto; CAVE, Coimbra; Museum de Tavira, Algarve.