MARIANA ALMEIDA NOGUEIRA
Words

THE SCULPTURES THAT FRANCISCO TRÊPA'S RAMPANT IMAGINATION PRODUCES VEER BETWEEN THE IMPENETRABLE AND THE MAGNETIC, THE TERRIFYING AND BEAUTIFUL. THAT’S THE POINT, ACCORDING TO THE SCULPTOR, WHOSE WORK IS FOUNDED ON THE EXPLORATION OF AMBIGUITY AND SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIPS. IN HIS MOST FRUITFUL YEAR TO DATE, TRÊPA WON THE SOVEREIGN PORTUGUESE ART PRIZE, WAS NOMINATED FOR THE 15TH EDP FOUNDATION’S NEW ARTISTS AWARD, WAS INVITED TO DO A SOLO EXHIBITION AT THE CALOUSTE GULBENKIAN FOUNDATION'S MODERN ART CENTRE (CAM) AND WORKED WITH PORTAS VILSECA GALERIA IN BRAZIL. HERE'S A PROFILE.

CRAWL, CLIMB, FEED AND AGAIN, 2023 | ARCO FAIR LISBON

FRANCISCO TRÊPA OPENS THE DOOR TO HIS STUDIO IN LISBON'S GRAÇA NEIGHBOURHOOD, AS IT TEEMS DOWN. THE RAIN SOAKING THE STREETS OUTSIDE MAY BE TORRENTIAL BUT THEY FAILS TO WASH AWAY THE LOOK OF ENTHUSIASM ON THE ARTIST'S FACE. DESCENDING THE STAIRS, HE SWITCHES ON THE LIGHT AND SMILES. AS HE DOES SO, DOZENS OF CERAMIC CREATURES EMERGE FROM THE GLOOM, HANGING ON THE WALL, SITTING ON PLINTHS, CUPBOARDS AND TABLES. THEY OFFER A FAITHFUL PORTRAIT OF THE SCULPTOR'S WORK OVER THE LAST THREE YEARS, AS WELL AS A TASTER OF WHAT’S TO COME.

HIPERDERME, 2022 | MUSEU NACIONAL DE HISTÓRIA NATURAL E DA CIÊNCIA, LISBON
*PHOTO RICARDO ALVES*

Aged 29, the artist is already represented in the António Cachola (MACE), Treger Saint Silvestre (Centro de Arte Oliva) and various private collections, indicating a particularly high point in his career. Last June, two months after opening his solo show Flor Cadáver at Galeria Foco, he was one of the six finalists for the 15th edition of the EDP Foundation New Artists Award (which he won in March 2025). He then won the third Sovereign Portuguese Art Prize in December and started working in Brazil with the Portas Vilseca Galeria.

In 2025, in addition to being part of the finalist exhibition for the EDP Foundation New Artists Award, at MAAT from X March to X XXX, and other group exhibitions in Portugal and Brazil, Trêpa will have a solo exhibition at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Modern Art Centre (CAM) and another at the Galeria Foco stand at ARCOmadrid.

Perhaps this wave of success reflects the “drive to create” and a near-insatiable “inner hunger” Trêpa says he has had since he was a teenager. He specialised in ceramics at the António Arroio Art School, before graduating in sculpture and getting a master's degree in art and multimedia, both from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Lisbon. After exploring various artistic languages, he concluded that he needn’t look for something he already had: the art of shaping the unpredictability of life.

In 2021, he returned to ceramics, inaugurating Chalaza and Hiperderme the following year, two solo exhibitions that were key to defining the artistic language and themes that would form the foundation of his work to this day.

In Chalaza, with works such as Imperfect Egg Tower (a snake made of eggs, a villain who is only seen as such because, in its imperfection, we perceive it as such), for the first time the artist embodies his fascination for the beauty he encounters in imperfect things, and to issues of perception and interpretation of reality.

In Hyperderme, Trêpa offers the representation of vulnerable and transforming beings by modelling a palm beetle larva, the same one that, reinterpreted on a larger scale, appears in the Dripping Stage sculpture, which won him the Sovereign Portuguese Art Prize in December 2024.

“Nowadays, I like working on symbiotic relationships; be they good or bad, it doesn't really matter. The most important thing is that they relate humanity, technology, animals and plant life, and that they’re on the spectrum of ambiguity”, he says, wandering among some of the pieces presented in the solo exhibition Flor Cadáver at Galeria Foco, in April 2024.

Next to the sculpture that lends the exhibition its title, a huge red flower, “eccentric, theatrical and contradictory”, there are two figures, one similar to a slug and another reminiscent of an anemone, entwining in a gesture that simultaneously displays the tenderness of an embrace and the coldness of a deadly strangulation.

These are hybrid beings that don’t belong exclusively to the real or dreamlike world, without species, gender, evil or kindness. Eyeing them is an experience of encountering our most visceral side: a being that is both human and monster.

FRANCISCO TRÊPA

JEFF WALL

MÓNICA DE MIRANDA