After his first solo show in 1966 at the AXIOM Gallery in London, Waldemar d´Orey’s second solo show takes place after 55 years at Lumiar Cité in Lisbon. A resurrection of a work of art, which was mysteriously lost during the artist’s 1960s swingeing days in London, constitutes the core of d’Orey’s show ‘Something is missing’. The kinetic cantilevering sculpture Mobile appeared on the cover of the prestigious Whitechapel Gallery catalogue "New Generation 1965", photographed by the no less prestigious photographer Lord Snowdon. At the time, Mobile was notably absent in the exhibition itself, the cover image of the catalogue together with some other washed-out shots, as well as the artist’s meticulous memory were all that was left.

Opposite the gallery in Alta de Lisboa, a wall text from Lumiar Cité’s first exhibition in 2005 states: When something is missing it can be added. Sixteen years later, this public artwork by Teolinda Varela echoes and seems to fulfill itself in d’Orey’s project for Lumiar Cité. Dedicating the residency at Maumaus and the exhibition budget to the reconstruction of Mobile, the artwork is no longer missing. It will forever remain missing in the 1965 Whitechapel gallery exhibition though – we wonder how many visitors, having the catalogue in hand, were searching for the rather photogenic work on the cover. The object’s missing has been undone at Lumiar Cité, so the ‘original’ forever lost is now evoked by its substitute, by a new ‘original’, which is only possible because of the first original having been lost, which in turn constitutes the conceptual punchline of d’Orey’s 2021 exhibition.

The title of the sculpture, Mobile, suggests a reading of the word as an adjective instead of a noun: looking at this object as a carrier of a modern promise, it conveys an energy today often evoked as lost. Here the exhibition title may be accurate – with synonyms such as loose, agile, versatile, flexible, speedy or changeable coming to mind. D’Orey’s Mobile is restrainedly colourful, not intrusive but playful, advocating a choreography of modern sculpture that brings alive the energetic prospects from another time: no nostalgia and archaeology, something is missing.


Waldemar d’Orey (Lisbon, 1940) lives and works in Lisbon. He studied architecture and painting at Escola Superior de Belas-Artes de Lisboa (Lisbon, 1958-1960) and sculpture at Saint Martin's School of Art (London, 1960-1964) with the artists Anthony Caro and Phillip King. He was a grant recipient from Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (1962-1964) and taught at The Oxford School of Architecture, Birmingham School of Art, Coventry School of Art and Design and Saint Martin's School of Art (1964-1968). Besides a solo exhibition at the prestigious AXIOM Gallery (London, 1966), he participated in the group exhibitions ‘Young Contemporaries’ (London – 1961, 1962, 1963), ‘New Generation’, catalogue cover, Whitechapel Gallery (London, 1965), ‘Forma Viva, International Sculpture Symposium’ (Ravne na Koroškem, Slovenia, 1966), ‘New Sculpture’, The Museum of Modern Art (Oxford, 1966) and ‘Sculpture in Leicester’ (1967).