LA JOLLA, CA.-Tasende Gallery, La Jolla, presents an exhibition of sculptures and drawings by Mark di Suvero opening today, January 28, 2011 and continuing through March 12. The exhibit includes nine works on paper and six steel/stainless steel sculptures, among them the monumental Ave Delirio an 18 feet high work installed on Prospect Street, La Jolla. A fully-illustrated color catalogue with text by Robert Pincus accompanies the exhibition.

Mark di Suvero, an American born in Shanghai in 1933, moved to San Francisco with his family in 1942. He attended U.C. Berkeley where he earned a degree in philosophy and also became engaged in poetry, music and sculpture. In the late 1950s di Suvero moved to New York where he experienced the demolition of numerous old buildings, and from the debris discovered materials he could recycle to express his poetic architectural constructions: I-Beams, rusty chains, old tires. While rehabilitating from a construction related accident and confined to a wheel chair, di Suvero strengthened his welding techniques and developed ideas for incorporating movement into his work. Historically di Suvero follows the emotionally charged Abstract Expressionist painters of the 1950s. Along with his contemporaries, minimalist and monumentalist sculptors, he embraced the concepts of scale and presence, the ability to impact the viewer and cause them to be participants in the work. Unlike the minimalists, di Suvero also brought to his work his poetic references, symmetry and movement, non-pristine materials and a sense of randomness of life and of human emotions. Scale, movement and human interaction are hallmarks of di Suvero’s sculpture.

“Despite their colossal size, di Suvero’s sculpture is not to be thought of as static monuments. Unlike the works of Calder or Rickey, they don’t derive their kineticism from the forces of nature, such as air and wind; their emotional charge derives instead from a sense of human gesture, and human gesture makes itself responsible for the activation of the possible movement of some of their parts.¹”

Mark di Suvero, with the help of crew and crane, has installed major sculpture exhibitions around the world including Le Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, the City of Stuttgart, the City of Valence, Venice and Storm King Art Center in New York. His work is found in the most important public and private sculpture collections in the world.