BOSTON, MASS.- On August 21, The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston opened the first Boston presentation of Argentine-Swiss artist Vivian Suter (b. 1949, Buenos Aires, Argentina), who has been living and working Guatemala since the 1980s. Comprised of dozens of individual mixed-media paintings, this exhibition features a single installation by Suter in which unstretched canvases flood the gallery, creating a canopy of color and shape evocative of the natural environment surrounding her home and studio in Panajachel, Guatemala. On view from August 21 through December 31, 2019, Vivian Suter is organized by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator.

“Vivian Suter’s approach to installing her paintings is incredibly unique,” says Erickson. “She layers, suspends, and rotates her canvases, inviting visitors to meander through her work and its sumptuous gestures and colors.”

Suter works in close partnership with the natural environment surrounding her home of thirty years by Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. Her method often involves moving her canvases between the indoors and outdoors and exposing them to the climate in order to allow nature to comingle with her broad swaths of painted, vivid color. The mud and rain, insects that crawl across the soil, and avocados and mangos that drop from trees work in concert with Suter’s gestural compositions, which are inspired by the surrounding vegetation and landscape. To exhibit her work, she creates installations by layering and suspending unstretched canvases in space, referencing the organic modes of hanging and draping her canvases in the studio.

Vivian Suter was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, studied in Basel, Switzerland, and currently lives and works in Panajachel, Guatemala. Solo exhibitions of the artist’s work have been held at numerous international institutions including Gladstone Gallery, New York (2019), The Power Plant, Toronto (2018), Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois (2018), Jewish Museum, New York (2017), Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2014), and Kunstmuseum Olten, Switzerland (2004), and also included in documenta 14 (2017).