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Vasco Mourão




hello@mistermourao.com

Photo by
Brian Scott Peterson
Tokyo, 2019

Vasco Mourão works on the perception, texture and memory of the urban landscape. Only with a pen and time, his practice obsessively focuses on the representation of cities through drawings.

Inhabiting a place between fine art and illustration, Vasco Mourão creates bespoke artworks and large scale murals for various private collectors, galleries and institutions, while working also on selected editorial commissions. Originally from Portugal, now based in Barcelona (when not on the yearly work & travel walkabout).

Represented in France by Galerie Porte B.



Selected Clients & Collaborators

Apple, The New Yorker, The New Yorker Festival, The Washington Post, Fundação Bissaya Barreto, Museu Picasso Barcelona, UnderDogs Gallery, Established & Sons, Architectural Review, Espacio 88, Ogilvy, Domus, Gestalten, El País, etc.




Exhibitions

Tokyo Surface 
Embassy of Portugal
11-12/2023. Tokyo, Japan

Soul of the City
Galerie Porte B
6-9/2023 . Paris, France

No Man’s Land
Galerie Porte B
10-11/2022 . Paris, France

Portuguese
Sovereign Art Prize

04-06/2022
Lisbon, Porto & Estremoz Portugal


ImageText 
Mirus Gallery
11/202 . Denver, USA

Arquivo 
Underdogs Gallery12/2021 . Lisbon, Portugal

Right Now - group show
Underdogs Gallery05/2020 . Online

Variations 
Underdogs Gallery12/2020 . Lisbon, Portugal

Elipse

CONCRETA fair
10/2019 . Porto, Portugal

Vasco Mourão e Cassiano Branco
Júlio Dinis Museum2019 . Ovar, Portugal

Breathing Line
Fundació La Caixa
09.2019 . Barcelona, Spain

Remember Tokyo
Almost Perfect05/2019 . Tokyo, Japan

Remember Hong Kong
ACO gallery03/2019 . Hong Kong, China

Fragments . Drawings on Stone
Oitavo Gallery02/2019 . Porto, Portugal



Face Plastic
Espacio 88
01/2019 . Barcelona, Spain

Ouroborus . Drawings on Wood
Uivo 8 - Centr'Arte 01/ 2019 . Matosinhos, Portugal

Portugal Múltiplo
Bissaya Barreto Foundation2018 . Coimbra, Portugal

Urban Fragments
Ilustração à vista Festival 2018 . Ílhavo, Portugal

Ouroborus . Drawings on Brass
Underdogs Art Store 2017 . Lisbon, Portugal

Ouroborus . Drawings on Wood
Espacio 882016 . Barcelona, Spain

Matsudo Perceptions
Paradise AIR2016 . Matsudo, Japan

Drawing Poble Nou
Espacio 882015 . Barcelona, Spain

New York Perceptions
The Invisible Dog 2014 . New York, USA

Drawings for The New Yorker
Mitte Gallery2014 . Barcelona, Spain

Daily Drawings
Minho University2010 . Guimarães, Portugal

Obsession
Casa Portuguesa2008 . Barcelona, Spain
Selected talks

PechaKucha 2019 . Tokyo, Japan

TheCreativeFest
2017 . Barcelona, Spain

PechaKucha 2016 . Tokyo, Japan

Apple Headquarters2016 . Tokyo,  Japan

Apple Stores2016 . Tokyo, Osaka & Nagoya,  Japan

Walk&Talk Art Festival 2015 . Ponta Delgada, Portugal

Get Set Festival2015 . Oporto, Portugal

Barcelona Design Week 2013 . Barcelona, Spain

Creative Camp 1802012 . Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal






The Visible Cities

by Jorge Carrión



The artist Vasco Mourão comes from the world of architecture and travels. This double genealogy brings him closer to those who imagined and designed the iconic buildings of the world as well to those who described it in their books, sketches or photographs.

But Vasco’s work does not focus on the detail but rather to the whole. From his point of view what matters most is not the architecture per se but the urban landscape, not so much the singular route but rather the labyrinth of networks weaved by the traveler or the driver when circulating in the contemporary metropolis.

Because the greater narrative and conceptual theme of Vasco’s work is the city. The urban landscape as multiplication and as a succession of mirrors. Although a drawing may speak of New York, Lisbon, Tokyo or Barcelona, in a simultaneous and inclusive plane it is also representing the invisible cities of Italo Calvino.

Like those of the Italian writer, the ones drawn by the Portuguese artist are made of illusion (optical and sentimental) and desire (of possession and order), counting on a memory shared by all human beings.


The city as transversal home, as a shared horizon. The city also as geometry, pattern and infinite combinations.No matter where you live you’ll recognise aspects of your own city in these visible cities in black and white.

The medium where Vasco draws on are also in tune with the urban history. On paper refers to the labor of recollection of data and events; on wood it connects the rural with the urban space, it recalls the beam that supports the building and the everyday furniture, work and rest: on metal is present the modern metropolis, its iron architecture, its infatuation with precious metals to underline luxury and stainless steel to claim technological advances. 

These materials are superimposed on the stone of a wall. Because his work is always mural. A second skin that covers the epidermis of the cities of the world that he, obsessively, is copying, imagining, collecting.