Pedro David
360 Square Meters
December 2, 2015–January 3, 2016
In 2012, Pedro David began photographing the 360 square meters that make up his family's home. This project allowed the artist to visually contemplate his immediate surroundings while also exploring his unique place in the world from a philosophical perspective. Each image is shot on David’s 4x5 camera using discontinued Polaroid 55 black-and-white film, then scanned and enlarged, infusing even the most mundane of domestic items with a reverent sense of history and monumentality. Some of the scenes containing what the artist calls “nonsense assemblages” are deliberately constructed by the artist, while others are simply the result of chance.
“This is a figurative trip into the depths of my existence, passing through my artistic, political, and philosophical experiences from a cosmic perspective...This is an attempt to build my own particular world, fictional but credible, developed by my instincts and influenced by the history of art and photography, geography, and current events.”
Pedro David (b. 1977, Brazil) completed his BA in journalism at the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais State in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 2001 and holds a graduate degree in contemporary fine arts from the Escola Guignard, Universidade do Estado de Minas Gerais in Brazil. He has published numerous books, including Underwater Landscape (2008); The Garden (2012); Route Root (2013); and Catharsis Phase (2014). His work is housed in the collections of the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris; the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil; the Museu Nacional da República, Brasília, Brazil; and the Minas Gerais State Museum, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. 360 Square Meters was awarded the Marc Ferrez Prize in Photography by the Brazilian Art Foundation (Funarte) in 2012, in addition to a Photoquai Residency from the French Musée du Quai Branly in 2012 and the first Nexo Foto Prize in Spain in 2014.