Present Futures – Curated Section by Léon Kruijswijk and Joel Valabrega

For the upcoming edition of Artissima, Galeria Foco proposes a special project by Brazilian artist Gabriel Ribeiro (1990, Rio de Janeiro).

The project brings together works that explore processes of material transformation through light, heat, dehydration, circulation, and time. Ribeiro employs materials and techniques drawn from scientific and industrial contexts, shifting them between architecture and skin, infrastructure and biology.

Some of the works originate from Reservoir (Galeria Foco, Lisbon, 2025), Ribeiro’s latest solo exhibition, which explored water circulation and the limits of containment. Translucent amber and yellow glass forms are threaded through steel, hovering between the anatomical and the infrastructural. Tubes, vessels, and bottles are dismantled and recombined into speculative systems that evoke circulation while resisting function.

At the center of the booth, an industrial dehydrator runs continuously, concentrating fruit through the removal of water while doubling as a plinth for a cornucopia sculpture. The symbol of abundance reappears in the foam-based solar prints, produced by exposing foam to sunlight and allowing its colour to change gradually through light and time. These works connect different processes of exposure and transformation.

Together, these operations suggest a kind of protoscience, situated between art and biology, infrastructure and the cell, precision and the unintentional. Ribeiro redirects scientific and industrial processes toward speculation, asking not only what materials can do, but what else they might become.