Francisco Tropa was born in 1968, he lives and works in Lisbon.

 

Francisco Tropa elaborates complex installations, associating different media: sculptures, paintings, drawings, photographs, image projections, performances multiplying references to literature, art history, science.

 

The use of all these media allows him to concentrate his artistic approach around sculpture by revisiting it through subjects such as the body, death, nature, landscape, memory, origins or time.
Francisco Tropa creates a work that reveals itself gradually, with hidden meanings, that is not limited to the obvious of what is visible.

 

At the Atelier Calder, Francisco Tropa, continued the development of his project entitled TSAE (Submerged Treasures of Ancient Egypt), a vast, heterogeneous and cosmogonic installation. The new part, developed at the Atelier Calder, consists of three sets of works. First of all, "The Dream of Scipio", evokes the vision of the cosmos revealed to Scipio in a dream and told by Cicero. Francisco Tropa in turn suggests this cosmic organization through metal sculptures symbolizing the sun, the moon and the earth.

They are both poetic and surprising, playing on the perception of suspended volumes and their movements.

 

"Les Antipodes", sculptures made of different materials (wood, marble, bronze, metal...), with simple geometrical shapes, but their manipulation shows a complex architectural game offering infinite possibilities of installations and configurations.

Finally, "Scripta" brings together on the studio floor a set of objects and their bronze replicas, forming an imaginary landscape.

 

Francisco Tropa represented Portugal at the Venice Biennale in 2011. He participated in the Istanbul Biennale, Manifesta in 2000, the Melbourne Biennale and the Sao Paulo Biennale (1999). In 2013, he gave a performance at the Palais de Tokyo "Gigante". Several solo exhibitions were devoted to him in 2013: at La Verrière, Fondation d'entreprise Hermès: "TSAE, Trésor Submergés, de l'Ancienne Egypte", at the Gregor Podnar gallery in Berlin and "Arenaire" at the Jocelyn Wolff gallery (2014), which represents him in France.

In parallel with his residency in Saché, the Centre d'art contemporain, les Moulins de Paillard in Poncé sur le Loir (72), presented a solo exhibition of Francisco Tropa from April 4 to June 7, 2015. moulinsdepaillard.wordpress.com

The Regional Museum of Contemporary Art of Sérignan (Languedoc-Roussillon) presents a solo exhibition of Francisco Tropa from June 28 to August 30, 2015. The works produced in Saché will be included in this exhibition. 

mrac.languedocroussillon.fr

 

Francisco Tropa is represented in France by the Jocelyn Wolff Gallery.