Alexandre Estrela has been active as an advocate of experimental film and video for over a decade. Working at the intersection of moving image, sculpture and audio, his art interrogates the relationship between subject matter and imagery. Estrela plays with our sense of experience by using different anecdotal and artistic references. Utilising his technical expertise, Estrela’s practice can be described as speculations into perception theory, while his technical expertise lets him operate within the parameters of how we see, hear and relate to objects. Each work is a brand new investigation, that when displayed as a group of works, forms a unique body of non-empirical experiments.

For his solo exhibition titled Roda Lume (Portuguese for "Wheel of Fire", “Circle of Light” or “Spin Flame”), Estrela brings together a key selection of recent works, along with a new work produced for this exhibition. The title of the exhibition is derived from the groundbreaking video poem Roda Lume by E.M. de Melo e Castro, which first aired on Portuguese television in 1969. Together these artworks form a test site environment. The works all relate in various ways to the idea of, and the impossible search for perpetual motion. Whether planetary or human-induced, movement or rotation is the common leitmotif in both imagery and his use of technical apparatus. Estrela describes his works as “perception engines” – objects set in motion by perceiving them. Within this workshop for the senses, images resonate through sound, audio is used to map space and sounds are occasionally translated into movement, all resembling forms of artistic synaesthesia.

Alexandre Estrela lives and works in Lisbon. Recent solo exhibitions include Pockets of Silence at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2015-16), Vida y Costumbres de Alexander at Galeria Pedro Alfacinha, Lisbon (2015), and Meio Concreto at the Serralves Museum, Porto (2013). He organises an active series of screenings for experimental film at his non-profit space called Oporto.

You can find more information about the previous IN SITU exhibition (Otobong Nkaga - Bruises and Lustre) here.