Artists in residence

Born in France, originally from Cape Verde and Italy, multidisciplinary artist Raphaël Moreira Goncalves is in search of paths to other dimensions. Through augmented reality sculptures, videos and virtual reality experiences, video games and computer generated images, he proposes creations that bridge the gap between the real and the fictional, while emphasizing the mystical dimension of the virtual. A graduate of Le Fresnoy and the Beaux-Arts de Lyon, his work has been exhibited internationally, notably at the Thaddaeus Ropac Pantin gallery in Paris, the ClearView gallery in London and the Mohsen gallery in Tehran.

“There is something from another galaxy in the practice of multidisciplinary artist Raphaël Moreira Gonçalves. And this is not only due to the barbed aesthetics of his work, but rather to the play of juxtaposition between dimensions that would eventually allow communication with other universes. Through augmented reality sculptures, videos and virtual reality experiences, video games and computer generated images, he proposes creations that bridge the gap between the real and the fictional, while emphasizing the spiritual and mystical dimension of the virtual.

‘For me, the virtual is close to a mental and energetic space that can be revealed in the physical world’. A vision that echoes the branar cosmology, a theory according to which all the dimensional strata would be so close between them, that we would not be able to differentiate them. And this proximity could be partly at the base of the ambiguity of our relation to the virtual and whose return to equilibrium would be done only at the time of the passage in the beyond.

Of course this is only myth and speculation, but this cosmic legend 2.0 constitutes one of the major ingredients of the narrative framework that gives rhythm to the universe imagined by Raphaël.”

– Benoit Palop, Point Contemporain, 2019