FERNANDO MARANTE
Born in Matosinhos, Portugal, in 1973, Fernando Marante pursued his education in the most historical of the Portuguese art schools concerning photography, Ar.Co, known for favoring a practical and non academical approach to arts.
While there, Fernando Marante was the recipient of two merit scholarships, sponsored by collectors, opening the way for his participation in art and photography biennials (Vila Franca de Xira, Cerveira) and his selection for two main competitions for emerging talents: Arte Jovem Millennium and Paris Photo Carte Blanche Étudiants. He was one of the annual laureats of this last one, in 2019. Since then, his work has been exposed in galleries, museums and art fairs, in Europe and North America, both in solo and collective shows.
His work is strongly experimental and flirts with abstraction. All his series are a play around the effects of time in the construction of the photographic image. For that he builds ephemeral structures that he subjects to movement devices, using electrical engines, the wind or his own body.
Fernando Marante’s approach is a quest to reveal visually something whose existence is only an intellectual speculation: how the lingering and evolving presence of objects in space, beyond the photographic snapshot, looks like.
The starting point is what the artist calls a hypothesis-image, an attempt to unveil one of the multiple possibilities that emerge when object and time are brought to dialogue with each other.
Variation, repetition, contraction and distension, accumulation and fragmentation are some of the formal traits we can find in his vocabulary, often borrowed from musical composition syntax. His work is also process driven, the result of a chain of problems and solutions, ending up in photographs that can be read as maps of the actions the artist took while creating the images.
Fernando Marante lives and works in Lisbon. He’s currently developing projects that will deconstruct his work process through the manipulation by the public of his photographic device; and, also, explore the relationship between images as the source of meaning in an artistic proposal.
SELECTED ARTWORKS
SOLO SHOWS
2023 ”Ballet Mécanique”, Bigaignon, Paris, France
2021 ”L’Image Divergente - 1 : Paysages et Constellations”, Gallery Módulo, Lisbon, Portugal
2019 ”The question Concerning the Thing”, Gallery Módulo, Lisbon, Portugal
2013 ”Naquele Outro dia”, Gallery Pickpocket, Lisbon, Portugal
GROUP SHOWS
2025 “Ligne(s) de mire”, off-site exhibition at the Bonisson Art Center, Bigaignon, Rognes, France
2024 Art Paris, Bigaignon, Paris, France
2024 Múltiplos, Carpe Diem, Lisbon, Portugal
2022 “Radical Perspectives”, Bigaignon, Paris, France
2021 ”Boutographies – Rencontres Photographiques de Montpellier”, Official Selection, Montpellier, France
2020 “É pelo olhar que muda o homem e o mundo”, Módulo Gallery, Lisbon, Portugal
2020 ”Bolseiros e Finalistas”, Pavilhão Branco, Museum of the City of Lisbon, Ar.Co – Centro de Arte & Comunicação Visual, Bolseiros e Finalistas, Lisbon, Portugal
2019 ”The question concerning the thing”, Gare du Nord, Paris Photo, Paris, France
2019 ”Speculum Cum Macula”, Módulo Gallery, Lisbon, Portugal
2019 “Official Selection”, Bienal de Fotografia de Vila Franca de Xira BF18 (Vila Franca de Xira), Portugal
2019 Bolseiros e Finalistas, Ar.Co – Centro de Arte & Comunicação Visual, Lisbon, Portugal
2018 ”Photomaton”, collective project with Bruno Parente et Rossella Nisio, Station de Cais do Sodré, Lisbon, Portugal
2018 “Official Selection”, XX Bienal Internacional de Arte de Cerveira (Vila Nova de Cerveira), Portugal
2018 “Arte Jovem Carpe Diem”, Gallery Águas Livres 8, Lisbon, Portugal
2018 “Panorama”, LeConsulat Gallery, Lisbon, Portugal
2018 ”9:3”, produced by Ocupart, Lisbon, Portugal
2017 ”Bolseiros e Finalistas”, Ar.Co – Centro de Arte & Comunicação Visual, Lisbon, Portugal
DISTINCTIONS
2021 Official Selection, Boutographies, Photographic Encounters of Montpellier
2020 Shortlisted, Athens Photo Festival
2020 Shortlisted, Mentor Award #Arles
2019 Winner, Paris Photo Carte Blanche Students
2019 Finalist, PHotoespaña Descubrimientos
2018 Scholarship Fundação Victor e Graça Carmona e Costa, Ar.Co
2018 Official Selection, Bienal de Fotografia de Vila Franca de Xira – BF18
2018 Finalist, Arte Jovem Carpe Diem Fundação Millennium BCP prize
2018 Official Selection, XX Bienal Internacional de Arte de Cerveira
2016 Scholarship Leonor e António Parreira, Ar.Co