On first glance, “Labor,” António Bolota’s first survey exhibition, presents a straightforward selection of the Sintra-based artist’s previous monumental outdoor and indoor projects (all works Untitled), imported to Culturgest in a museum-scale catalogue of his engineering prowess. Over time, however, each piece appears to grow in situ with the adaptivity of an invasive plant, made to last by the skilled hands of traditional master-builders.

Installed disorientingly low to the ground in the first room is a massive fragment of a Mediterranean roof (2006/2021). It cuts the rectangular space diagonally, offering its terracotta tiles to the visitor’s touch. An attic-like understructure is revealed from another corridor; an intriguing hideaway, it has the faux-earthy feel of an archeological excavation. Nearby, a knee-level limestone wall supported by a steel beam (2010/2021) forces crawling and claustrophobia on those wishing to inspect the skillful fabrication of the mortar on its hidden flank. Elsewhere, one encounters a circular, room-sized slab of concrete (2012/2021), which would sit flat on the ground if it weren’t for a nickel-plated iron sphere propping it up from one side. The dais’s slate gray pigmentation is an almost perfect match with the gallery’s floor, under which lies a reinforcing structure—invisible to our eyes—supporting the work and an even heavier, wash wood fence (2015/2021).

Off-kilter episodes such as these lend a teasing irony to Bolota’s sculpture. Defamiliarizing the utilitarian forms and materials of civil construction, these irreverent monuments to futility offer the peculiar satisfaction of seeing function imaginatively transformed into folly, and labor into play.

— Cristina Sanchez-Kozyreva