Gasworks presents Bardo Loops, the first UK solo exhibition by artist and filmmaker Gabriel Abrantes. An installation presented over four screens, the work portrays two animated ghosts variously arguing, reconciling, and singing laments. Blending wry, ironic humour with overt melodrama, the dialogue blends autobiographical fragments from Gabriel’s own life with broader themes such as climate change and anxieties around a digitally dominated future.
Each of the four roughly two-minute films in Bardo Loops features spectres caught in limbo, trapped in circular arguments they can never resolve, but that they keep trying to. In one, against the backdrop of a wildfire, two ghosts argue about having a baby after suffering a tragic loss, seemingly unaware of their surroundings. In another, the ghosts converse next to a hurricane-ravaged coastline. With the histrionic rhetoric and moral signalling we often witness in online spaces, their arguments cycle through looping accusations relating to genetics and systematic oppression.
Gabriel uses ghosts as a way of exploring issues of loss, illness and health. They nod to animation and beloved cartoon characters, yet their simple form is deceptive – a white sheet with eyes and a mouth cut out – managing to draw us into complex worlds and emotions. Their vulnerable squishy-looking bodies create a parallel to contemporary life in 2026. Like the ghosts, despite the multiple catastrophes reverberating around us; the threat of ecological disaster, and the overwhelming nature of social media and AI, many of us remain totally oblivious.
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Gabriel Abrantes (b.1984, North Carolina, USA) is an artist and filmmaker living in Lisbon. His works have been presented worldwide in museums including Collection Lambert (Avignon), Salzburger Kunstverein (Salzburg), MAAT (Lisbon), Tate Britain (London), Tate Modern (London), the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), the MIT List Visual Arts Center (Boston), Museu Serralves (Oporto) and Kunst-Werke (Berlin), ICA (London), Lincoln Center (NY), Caixa Forum (Madrid), CAM – Gulbenkian (Lisbon), amongst others.
