Gonçalo Sena
"Gonçalo Sena’s visual and tactile experimentation is inscribed within a wide enquiry into the poetics brought about by our perception’s paradoxical and limited grasp of non-human temporalities. Raw construction materials, structures from mainstream industrial manufacture, cast metals, and natural elements, build a dystopian narrative of urban experience, sparking an existential question regarding our situation within a rapidly shifting material world." (Natalia Valencia Arango)
Gonçalo Sena (1984) lives and works in Lisbon. He graduated by FBAUL (Lisbon, 2007) and received his MFA diploma at the Dutch Art Institute in 2011, supported by a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Gonçalo Sena participated in artist residencies such as Blank100 (São Teotónio, 2021), Skowhegan (Maine, 2015), CCA Andraxt (Mallorca, 2018), Fondazione Antonio Ratti (Como, 2014) and Le Pavillon – Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2012-13). Sena received the Premio Apertura Comunidad de Madrid (2021), and has been nominated for Panorama Madrid 02 (2022), Berlin Art Prize (2015) and EDP New Artists Prize (Lisbon, 2009).
Sena shows regularly since 2007 in institutions, galleries and artist-run spaces, such as CA2M, Madrid (2022), CentroCentro (Madrid, 2022), Sala de Arte Joven (Madrid, 2022), Oldenburger Kunstverein (2021), Galería Ehrhardt Flórez (Madrid, 2021, 2015), +DEDE (Berlin, 2020), Alta (Malmö, 2020), Fundació Santander (Madrid, 2019), Kewenig (Berlin, 2019), Casa da Cerca (Almada, 2019), Galeria Quadrado Azul (Lisbon, 2019, 2017 and Porto, 2018), Galeria Zé dos Bois (Lisbon, 2019), Porcino – ChertLüdde (Berlin, 2018), MAAT (Lisbon, 2016), District (Berlin), A Certain Lack of Coherence (Porto, 2014), Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2013), Spike Island (Bristol, 2009), among others.
In parallel to his artistic practice, Sena is also co-founder, co-editor and designer of the publishing collective ATLAS Projectos (ongoing since 2008), a platform for experimentation and collaboration with authors and writers.
Learn more about Gonçalo Sena's written MA thesis (DAI, 2011): The Pavilion and the Column / Two models of architectural and sculptural production
Gonçalo Sena's booklet Air inside the bones was published by DAI in 2011.
Follow Gonçalo's "Life after DAI" by means of his website and Instagram