A Pioneer of Soft-Edge Brutalism: João Pombeiro

*First published in Wild Roof Journal Issue 6: Gallery 2, January 2021

On a bright October day at a café in Lisbon, I sat down with Portuguese video collage artist João Pombeiro. His videos and collages defy the digital age’s fanaticism for crisp edges and bright spectacle; rather, his work delves into the less defined realms of “dream and memory.”

In his music video for the music single “Kite,” his cut-out style and multilayered effects create a spell-binding magic that the viewer sees not as an altered reality but as a reimagining of recollections and landscapes.

João spoke of being influenced by the Brutalist movement of the 1950’s: “Brutalism has something underneath holding it up. What is beauty if there’s nothing behind it?”

The music video for “Kite” displays João’s artistry for blending hard lines and soft curves that complement the song’s emotional resonance of love and loss. He explained that the singer and songwriter, Nadia Schilling, is also his partner and he created the video after the birth of their son. He devoted six months to its creation, free of deadlines and external pressures. The video, which has since won numerous awards, incorporates the use of rigid geometric lines and blocky appearance of the images, that create a subtlety and refinement.

João’s work is a combination of improvisation and instinct. He likens his process to laying down railroad tracks just ahead of a moving train. “If an image grabs my attention, I use it.” Since he takes his images from public archives and public domain websites, he worries little about an image’s original concept. “I always flip the meaning. It’s my way to create something new.”

I asked if he worried about using images that may be seen as controversial. He replied, “I don’t care what people think. I live in a small country, so there’s always an echo right away. If I worried about this, I’d be frozen as an artist.”

João is both a digital archaeologist and an explorer often spending hours letting Google take him from one image to the next. He delves into the internet to find what lies buried in the mountains of images but also forges ahead in the world of collage and animation. He journeys between memory and imagination to create the next unknown world.

His music video for “Kite” and his other award-winning work can be viewed on Vimeo and on Instagram. The following images are stills from “Kite.”