Pires Vieira has become one of the most prominent representatives of artistic practices associated with processes of reflection on the creative potential of reinvention and expansion in the field of painting.

Object of conceptual and visual research, the opening of the senses and of possibilities to the renovation of painting continues to be the central theme in his artistic career, which began at the end of the 1960s. Since then, Pires Vieira has been constantly investigating the characteristics and conventions of pictorial language, in an incessant dialogue with its history, its classical and modern representations, and its expansion and deconstruction. His artistic trajectory is based not only on homage and reference but also on the production of unfaithful replicas and deviations from legacies and established conventions.

This exhibition, on display from 4 July to 6 October 2019, brings together a selection of several of his most important works, as well as a series of new works and interventions produced specifically for the spaces of Museu Coleção Berardo.

As a whole, "Trash – Lixo de Artista" presents a comprehensive vision of artistic intervention and proposes an interdisciplinary practice open to sculpture, installation, and performativity. Very much influenced by notions of citation and appropriation, meeting and experimentation, it incorporates criticism, irony, and subversion as strategies to explore the nature of art, the history of painting, and visual representation. In this multiple pursuit, we recognise the boldness of the title: art as a process and endeavour generates waste which endures—far from the polished work that pretends its methods and dilemmas are non-existent.