BORDALO II
Portugal
Artur Silva (b. 1987) is today recognized as Bordalo II, the artistic name he chose as a tribute to his grandfather, promoting a continuity and reinvention of his artistic legacy.
His youth was spent with the company of his grandfather – the painter Real Bordalo and his incessant passion for water-colours, and his adventures around illegal graffiti in Lisbon´s underworld.
He states that the three years he spent abd the Beaux Arts Faculty of Lisbon allowed him to discover sculpture and the experimentation with various materials which distanced him from painting – the original art expression which lead him there in the first place.
The public space would become his chosen canvas for his explorations on colour and scale and the platform where he gradually transformed his habits and channeled his experiences in construction and development of his artistic work – currently focused on questioning the materialistic and greedy society which he (also) belongs to.
The excessive production of “things” or the exaggerated consumerism – which results in the constant production of “trash” and consequently in the destruction of our Planet, are the main themes of his artistic production. That “trash” becomes the singular and peculiar raw material which he uses in the construction of small or large scale pieces which he has spread throughout the world and which aim – above all – to be an universal manifesto.
