Pedro Cabrita Reis’ recent installation is part of his latest series, which began with the magnificent Scala Coeli (Stairway to heaven, 1992) presented in the group exhibition “Los Ultimos dias” (The last days, 1992). It is a series with a strongly allegorical content in which Cabrita Reis’ classic melancholy austerity is placed in the service of a ceremonial idea of art’s role. In Scala Coeli this reference was nearly explicit: the piece functioned as a banquet table for a secularized last supper without any promise of resurrection or paradise, but it still alluded to an ascending path.

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