With his original architectural training the artist brings across the idea of design as an active agent: material possessing an ability to determine behaviour. (It is probably notable that Simões’s long-time muse, the concrete jungle of São Paulo, also catalyses extreme industriousness and enthusiastic hedonism.) The artist speaks of his sculpture in almost sentient terms, both products of desire and as machines in the production of desire. First he will sketch out a design, before reimagining this sketch on computer software and building up the moulds, often deviating intuitively from the original drawing. Within this process there are moments of potential, and moments of gratification: the sketch represents the possibility of something being in the world, the finished object the gratification of that desire (art making possessing far greater immediacy than architecture could ever provide). Moments of potential abound too in the finished sculptures: In Fenomenologia do Redondo (para Artemide) a series of stone bulges ooze out of an oxidized steel surface, perhaps about burst, perhaps to deflate sadly. In Dormente 9, a block of blue pigmented concrete sits precariously, hanging over one side, atop a steel armature. The artist returned to numerous paintings of resting and sleeping while making the show: O Sono, in which two pendulous mounds of concrete hang down from a steel support, takes its name from the Tarsila do Amaral’s 1928 lethargic landscape of palm trees. There is a painting too by Artemisia Gentileschi, the Allegory of Painting (c. 1620), which the artist was drawn to. A woman lies nude, reclining on the floor. A piece of textile wraps around her body, entwining her like the dance of materials Simões also employs. The woman seems to doze, her eyes closed, but she is also surrounded by painting materials, the moment of creative potential possible, or possibly past. Giorgio Agambem, the Italian theorist, imagines that the canvas is dreaming of its own creation, almost like Simões’s sketches dream of the sculptures they will become. Within sleep, the potential for action grows.