pedrita studio uses discontinued industrial tiles to recreate 'lost and found' photographs

lisbon-based design studio pedrita — known for its contemporary exploration of discontinued portuguese industrial tiles — presents ‘lost and found.’ for this exhibition the studio, founded by pedro ferreira and rita joão, used several photographs found at random places that illustrate moments of everyday anonymous lives. the portraits create a poignant connection between the discontinued tiles and the old photographs, both being no longer in use and a record of a time that has passed. ‘lost and found‘ runs until july 28, 2018 in lisbon at underdogs gallery, co-founded by VHILS.

images courtesy of pedrita studio

a small, black-and-white photograph found, by chance, in the street, with the inscription “my grandfather” scribbled on the back formed the starting point for the second solo exhibition by pedrita studio at underdogs gallery. intentionally intersecting the analogue world and the digital world, the legacy of the past and the reality of the present, the series of showcased panels resorts to pedrita’s original composition technique. this technique is based on the use of discontinued industrial tiles following the principle of the pixel or photographic grain.

inspired by a set of lost (and found) images that capture mundane episodes and various expressions which are certainly familiar to us — from the drollest spontaneity to the most staged of poses — this meticulous body of work suggests an exercise in contemplation on the ideas of loss and recovery — of our individual memories, of our collective referents, of our cultural heritage.

the artists state: ‘to us, these analogue images found by chance around the various places of our daily lives contain details and compositions we appreciate and of which, with no measure of certainty, we can only question and try to guess their circumstances. in this limbo of uncertainty which, to us, seems beautiful, we considered a correspondence with the history of the material we have been using in our artistic practice and we crossed the analogue with the digital refined by hand in order to create a series of new abstract-figurative panels.‘