SAO PAULO.- Galeria Fortes Vilaça is presenting Lugar Comum [Commonplace] the fifth solo show by Valeska Soares. In recent wall works and sculptures the artist uses linen, embroidery frames, tapestry and pieces of furniture to explore the relation between abstraction, memory and day-to-day life. Lugar Comum metaphorically refers to an emotional common denominator that these objects of distinct natures and periods create in regard to the relation between the artwork and the public.
Ground (2016) is the title of a group of artworks made using carpets that have been cut up, painted, folded and rolled into simple geometric compositions that are structured in terms of size and pattern – nearly imperceptible due to the age of the carpets – but also according to their weight, sheen and color. The choice of carpet springs from its domestic and transcultural quality, being an object of religious use, as well as a decorative and even monetary object present in countless cultures in the history of both the Orient and the Occident.
Geometry is also present in the artworks of the series Conjunction (2016)made with embroidery frames applied directly onto raw and black linen, without stretcher bars. The embroidery frames delimit smooth areas in the draped surface which are then embroidered, painted or laminated. The palette is reduced to the beige tone of the linen, to the red, black and white of the threads and paints and, finally, to the silver and gold plating of the embroidery frames in the work Constellation (2016). The works are pervaded by indirect historical references to geometric abstraction. Constructivism, Minimalism, and Concretism suggest a place of origin of the artist – and of the works – without being explicitly revealed in one artwork or another.
In the work that lends the exhibition its title, Lugar Comum (2016), four thatched wooden chairs are united by their seats, forming a perfect cross, their shape relevance thus being replaced by their function. In a likewise precise movement, Valeska replaces a small rectangular window of an old door with a brass mirror to compose the work Untitled (2016). Both sculptures involve the same interplay between abstraction, feeling and memory found in all the artworks in the exhibition.
The exhibition’s opening will coincide with the launching of the book Valeska Soares, a co-publication by publishers Mousse (Milan) and Cobogó (Rio de Janeiro). The book covers the artist’s production over the last ten years and includes a text by Jens Hoffmann and an interview with the artist conducted by Kelly Taxter, respectively, the Director of Exhibitions and Assistant Curator of the Jewish Museum in New York (USA).
Valeska Soares has participated in the biennials of São Paulo (2008), Sharjah (2009), Istanbul and Taipei (2006), as well as the 51st Venice Biennale (2005). In 2009, her individual pavilion was inaugurated at Inhotim Centro de Arte Contemporânea (MG). She has held solo shows at many prestigious venues, most notably including the Jewish Museum, New York (USA); Bronx Museum of the Arts, USA; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Mexico; and New Museum, USA. Her work is found in important public collections, including those of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami; and Tate Modern, London, UK.
