Pedro Pousada, PhD, is the Director of Colégio das Artes of Coimbra University, coordinator of its Contemporary Art PhD and an assistant professor at the Department of Architecture of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Coimbra (FCTUC) where he teaches drawing, modern art, art theory and art history. His current research interests deal with spatial practices from advanced modernist and contemporary art intertwined with the architecture realm and that have highlighted the colonization of the symbolic and the aesthetic by dominant economic forms. He is a visual artist with extensive experience in the field of contemporary drawing and painting, member of the Circulo de Artes Plásticas de Coimbra (CAPC) since 2010 and currently member of its direction. In 2015 he was the curator along with Carlos Antunes and Luís Quintais of the 1st Contemporary Art Biennial of Coimbra Anozero. His artwork is regularly shown and he has participated in individual and collective exhibitions http://capc.com.pt/site/index.php/pt/pedro-pousada-2/ https://umbigomagazine.com/pt/blog/2024/01/03/pela-parede-dentro-de-pedro-pousada-no-banco-das-artes-galeria/ https://umbigomagazine.com/pt/blog/2023/12/29/alguem-ninguem-de-pedro-pousada-na-galeria-pedro-oliveira/ He is represented by Galeria Pedro Oliveira (Oporto).He graduated in 1993 from the Curso Superior de Artes Plasticas/Pintura at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon and studied in the school year of 1995-1996 at the École Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris with Serbian painter Vladimir Velicovick. He concluded his PhD in 2010 with the dissertation A arquitectura na sua ausencia (Architecture on its absence). RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS In contemporary art theory there is a "steadily growing" body of scholar research both international (Hal Foster, Anthony Vidler, Beatriz Colomina, Jane Rendell, Giuliana Bruno, Jonathan Hill) focusing and debating the mutually inclusive relationships between artistic and architectonic culture. This "Beaux-Arts revisited"research has been done from different but not necessarily antagonistic or exclusive methodological standpoints such as psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology, urban studies, architectural theory, aesthetics, cultural studies, art theory and art history. Paraphrasing Hal Foster one can claim that within the world of cultural productions an "Art-Architecture complex" has, since the late 1960's, consolidated its stance. In my research I propose to address these dynamics from the portuguese visual arts outlook specifically from the practices that can be sited, spatially, in the "expanded field" [Rosalind Krauss], post-studio, post-conceptual contemporary framework of art making [Peter Osborne] and the temporality of the "art after the end of art" conceptual frame work [Arthur Danto]. Architecture appears in the context of these artistic practices as a space of production and socialization of intersubjective relationships [Jane Rendell's "critical spatial practices" has become a methodological instrument in my research]; it's the spatial configuration of anthropocentrism whose kinetics (History) puts itself between the haptic experience of the body and the space that remains undisclosed to the body. It also appears as the ("derisoire" or seductive) realism of the built object where artistic autonomy and Weltbildung (world making) become site specific-with its "given economies, cultures, materialities and promises of security"[Detlef Mertens]. My starting point is that the artists associated with these spatial practices seem to subvert Walter Benjamin's observation that "Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction"; artists stand as a collectivity in a state of optical and tactile enhancement of the built environment.