Pedro
Alegria

I seek drawing as the central element and conceptual tool painting and digital images. Drawing is the autonomous instrument for mental construction of artworks in various physical mediums. The body as a mass of more or less connected elements is central to my work, be it physical or digital. Whether abstract or figurative, sculpture or painting, manual or digital, the body is always present as the centre of my mental universe.

My main attraction is of images void of obvious significance. The bodies represented in figurative images or the abstract digital try to mostly ignore the spectator by having an a priori enigmatic psychological emptiness. The meaning is conceded in its entirety to the spectator who is free to impose alien meaning on the artwork. This does not mean that there is a lack of meaning, just that the meaning is hidden.

As an artist both in traditional oil painting and in abstract algorithmic drawing I’m divided between these two divergent fields. Nevertheless the emptiness of obvious meaning is the common ground of all my works. Given my background in engineering and robotics, I seek the dialog of art and mathematics through the conceptualization of the gesture of drawing in my digital works. This is my area of current research in the art field in my pHD programme in Fine Arts Faculty of Porto University (Portugal).