Installed over the lake in Serralves Park, PONTE, a work by Pedro Cabrita Reis, revives the romantic tradition of nineteenth-century gardens, where human intervention created picturesque settings with caves, waterfalls, suspension bridges, viewpoints, and other evocative structures.

This new bridge, which presents itself as a “contemporary ruin,” explores the idea of passage between different landscapes and, symbolically, the passage of time. PONTE reveals a transformation that goes from the pure geometry of modernism to the dramatic intensity of forms that evoke the baroque grotesque. As a broken bridge, it suggests a state between disintegration and sedimentation, situated in an undefined time, where memory and matter coexist.

More than a functional or decorative intervention, Pedro Cabrita Reis' work invites contemplation and reflection on space, time, and impermanence, integrating itself in a unique way into the natural and historical ecosystem of Serralves Park.

The book PONTE brings together all the documentation of the process—from the study to its completion—an essay by Carlos Vidal, artist, critic, and professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon, and is prefaced by Philippe Vergne, Director of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art.