Limbo

October 26, 2025 – March 22, 2026

American-Portuguese artist and filmmaker Gabriel Abrantes has been invited to the Collection Lambert for his first major exhibition in France.

Internationally recognized for his films—including winning the Grand Prix of the Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival for the feature Diamantino in 2018—he will present in Avignon the full scope of his work, which blends video installations, films, paintings, and drawings, where new technologies meet poetry with power and elegance.

Within the rooms of the Hôtel de Montfaucon, he will showcase a series of recent drawings, paintings, and videos, including the large-scale installation Bardo Loops, commissioned in 2024 by the CAM Gulbenkian in Lisbon and exhibited on the occasion of the reopening of its modern art center.

Through this multiplicity of media, approached with astonishing virtuosity, Gabriel Abrantes depicts a strange world in which algorithms and artificial intelligence appear to have taken control.

The formal vocabulary of the digital and 3D worlds, as employed by major entertainment companies such as Pixar or Disney, unfolds from one room to another, from a drawing to a painting or video installation, becoming the primary means of representing the world of tomorrow. The human figure is almost absent, replaced by rats, ghosts, or robots whose behaviors and “overly human” traits hold up a disquieting mirror to us.

Caught in a liminal space with apocalyptic undertones, the characters engage in impossible conversations, with dialogues seemingly drawn from the controversies and polarizing debates of social media and 24-hour news channels. They argue or sing of despair caused by loneliness or the end of an unimaginable love, drifting over the ruins of a world irreversibly transformed by climate change, violence, and digital revolutions.

They appear alone, trapped in endless digital loops, grappling with existential questions where the personal intertwines with the political, and tragedy and farce constantly intermingle.

Yet the darkness is continuously tempered by the poetry emanating from these vulnerable, sensitive beings, whom we follow with almost instinctive empathy. Such is the intelligence of the artist: to create situations in which a sharp, uncompromising gaze on contemporary life unfolds at a measured distance, guiding us with subtle optimism toward an existential reflection that can bring us together.

BIOGRAPHY

Gabriel Abrantes (born 1984 in North Carolina) is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Lisbon. His horror film Amelia’s Children (2024) won the Jury Prize at the Gérardmer International Fantasy Film Festival and has been distributed in 50 countries. Diamantino (co-directed with Daniel Schmidt, 2018) received the Grand Prix at the Critics’ Week of the Cannes Film Festival. Recent projects include Bardo Loops (2024), a large-scale 3D animated video installation on four channels, commissioned by the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, as well as his participation in the Ljubljana Biennale (2025).

His work has been awarded more than 50 prizes, including the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival, multiple European Film Awards, and the EDP Young Artists Award. Abrantes has exhibited at the Tate Modern, Palais de Tokyo, MIT List Visual Arts Center, and the Serralves Museum, and has participated in the São Paulo and Lyon Biennales as well as the BIM – Biennale of Moving Image in Geneva.

Working across painting, cinema, and video, he explores historical and political themes through a distinctive blend of Hollywood genres, folklore, and humor, challenging conventional narratives. He is represented by Galeria Francisco Fino in Lisbon.