NEW YORK, NY.- L’SPACE Gallery presents Where Time Stands Still, a solo exhibition by internationally acclaimed Argentine artist Nicola Costantino on view November 5 - December 19, 2026. A leading figure in contemporary Latin American art, Costantino is known for her provocative and multidisciplinary practice, which has challenged conventional ideas of beauty, identity, desire, and the human body for more than three decades. She represented Argentina at the 2013 Venice Biennale, and her work is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.
In this new chapter of her practice, Costantino turns toward beauty itself as a form of provocation. Far from being merely decorative or reassuring, beauty can be unsettling, disturbing, and even threatening. Through flowers and botanical forms, the artist continues her longstanding exploration of mortality, desire, and the boundaries between the human and natural worlds.
Drawing on Pardes, Costantino’s ongoing botanical project, whose name comes from the Hebrew word for orchard or garden and is historically connected to the word “paradise,” the exhibition transforms the gallery into an imagined garden where flowers defy gravity, human and animal identities merge, and time appears momentarily suspended.
The exhibition brings together ceramic sculptures, botanical installations, tapestries, and hybrid figures inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. These works connect Costantino’s longstanding exploration of the body and animality with her fascination with the natural world. Working with traditional ceramic techniques, including Japanese Nerikomi, she creates intricate botanical forms that blur the boundaries between craftsmanship, sculpture, and nature.
Suspended clusters of ceramic flowers appear to float in space, suggesting a world in which time has momentarily stopped. Their permanence challenges the natural cycle of blooming and decay, invoking the centuries-old tradition of memento mori, the reminder that beauty, even at its height, carries the inevitability of its disappearance.
Throughout Where Time Stands Still, Costantino explores the tension between permanence and impermanence, pleasure and consumption, beauty and mortality. Her garden offers a space in which familiar distinctions begin to dissolve, inviting viewers to reconsider their relationship with the living world.
As the artist writes:
“The garden does not eliminate time. It holds it for a moment. And we enter it.”
Nicola Costantino (b. 1964, Rosario, Argentina) is an internationally recognized multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans sculpture, photography, installation, performance, video, and film. For over three decades, her work has challenged conventions of beauty, identity, desire, and the human body.
Her groundbreaking debut, Cochon sur canap (1992), established her as a pioneering figure in contemporary Latin American art. She participated in the So Paulo Biennial (1998) and Liverpool Biennial (1999), followed by solo exhibitions at Deitch Projects, New York (2000); Fundaci Joan Mir, Barcelona (2000); Herzliya Museum, Israel (2002); and Daros Latinamerica, Zurich (2011).
In 2013, Costantino represented Argentina at the 55th Venice Biennale with Eva–Argentina: A Contemporary Metaphor, a multimedia installation exploring the life and legacy of Eva Pern.
Her work has been exhibited at major institutions, including MoMA, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Smithsonian Institution, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney. Her works are held in collections including MoMA, MALBA, Daros Latinamerica, and the Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat Collection.
Her distinctions include the Konex Award for Sculpture (2002), Argentina’s National Salon of Photography Grand Honor Prize (2007), and Ita Cultural First Prize (2010).
Costantino lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
L’SPACE is an independent art gallery that treats research as its starting point and artistic vision as its measure. Founded in 2023 by artist Lili Almog, the gallery presents artists across generations and disciplines, with a particular commitment to women’s artistic voices, textile-based practices, and artists whose work deserves renewed recognition. Original curatorial projects, archival research, and sustained artistic collaborations drive a program that revisits artistic legacies, challenges established narratives, and explores new ways of presenting and experiencing art. Equally important is the gallery’s commitment to cultivating lasting relationships with collectors, and helping both new and established collectors build personal, considered, and meaningful collections making collecting feel accessible, and helping both new and established collectors build personal, considered, and meaningful collections.
