João Maria Gusmão

Joao Maria Gusmao b. 1979, Pedro Paiva b. 1977. Live and work in Lisbon. The Portuguese artists Joao Maria Gusmao and Pedro Paiva have collaborated since 2001 on creating objects, installations and 16mm and 35mm short films. The duo describe their overall project as a kind of “recreational metaphysics,” a genre that to a certain extent they themselves have re-invented following the Portuguese poet Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa) on his layered aesthetical modern experiment on materialism. The short films depict staged episodes and sequences of pseudo-scientific experiments with both poetical and comical consequences. In recent years Gusmao and Paiva’s production has centered on the idea of movement and duration, both within the cinematographic vocabulary, with references to early film pioneers as Eadweard Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey, and through the artists’ own practical experiments and conceptual invention.