Rudolfo Quintas

Rudolfo Quintas (Porto, 1980) is a Portuguese media artist creating data mapping installations, paintings, sculptures and performances using interactive, generative and artificial intelligence techniques. In a continuous dialogue between philosophy, science and technology Quintas’ work often brings the invisible to new forms of perception through simple elements like air, fire, body movement or cell biology to discuss invisible systems of power and control in the social, political and psychological domains.

Quintas has a deep interest in decolonizing body language and corporal behaviour, frequently designing algorithmic and computer based installations that involve cognitive feedback processes for the self-exploration of the audience. This research is presented in artworks such as Displacement (2004), Absorption (2014), Black Hole (2018), among other performative works such as Swap (2005), Burning the Sound (2007) or Darkless (2016). Described by curator Verónica Metello as ‘Sensitive-Contexts”.

In the past years, Quintas took these feedback processes to a greater scale by portraying society in data paintings and installation that speculate the relation between infodemic and mental health with News Feed (2019), KEYSTONE-I-II-III-IV (2019), Portugal In The Clouds (2021). This body of work has earned national and international distinctions by the way of grants, artistic residences, scholarships and art prizes such as the DGartes/ Portuguese Ministry of Culture and the Transmediale Distinction Award at the Transmediale festival in Berlin. The work is published in Performance Research (Routledge), research papers as NIME – New Interfaces for Musical Expression, and art editions such as the “Younger Than Jesus: Artist Directory” co-edited by New Museum New York and Phaidon Press among others.

Quintas work was shown in galleries, cultural venues and art festivals, such as the Transmediale/CTM festival (Berlin), Todays Art festival (The Hague), Dox Gallery and the ENTER festival (Prague), Fundació “La Caixa ” (Barcelona), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), STEIM (Amsterdam), the “Uncharted” exhibition at Santralistanbul (Istanbul), Pixelache festival at Kiasma museum (Helsinki), NIME (Sydney) or the Royal College of Art in London. In Portugal, Quintas has recently presented his work in Sónar Festival, the Index of Art and Technology festival in Braga, Foco Gallery in Lisbon, the Convento de São Francisco cultural center in Coimbra, the Criatek festival in Aveiro and the MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art Chiado. Quintas lives and works in Lisbon.