Mendes Wood DM presents the first solo exhibition within South America of the seminal American artist Lynda Benglis. Benglis has played an indisputable role in contemporary art through innovative use of materials in sculpture and by challenging a predominantly minimalist art landscape to create iconic images.
The exhibition brings together works from different periods arranged according to a specific route inside the gallery, like a labyrinth that uncovers mysteries of life and death, including Benglis’ black polyurethane figures displayed at the gallery’s entrance. These are a sort of mysterious spirit, evoking, in their abstraction, key sculptures in the history of art, such as Laocoön and His Sons and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. The artist seems to extract from the past the essence of images in an attempt to re-signify myths – almost like a negative of the image. These earlier pieces are connected to the artist’s most recent works on...paper and chicken wire, which have different colours and are covered in glitter, revealing Benglis’ freedom to create different bodies. Benglis provides her sculptures with a sensually alive aspect. The works mimic specific moments in nature, like the iridescent skin of a snake, the relationships within the inner body, via bones and flesh, dancing in the air between power and lightness.
Her works also evoke wetlands, muddy jungles, a melancholic synthesis of earth, such as in The Fall Caught – a large-scale aluminum piece that emerges from the wall like a mud-spattered tree or melting magma, claiming back the earth. The images’ powerful, almost divine, character is evident in Black Ice, a black translucent version of the artist’s iconic composition Three Graces. Here, three towers are erected in the form of polyurethane vases, like totems that nourish the earth with something falling from the sky, paying homage to the source of life, connecting us to the idea of the divine, and simultaneously celebrating the three goddesses of feasting, glory and gratitude. The sculptures’ fragile and frozen appearance toys with the human capacity to copy nature, in a mimicking game that seeks essence in order to create an entirely new image.
Lynda Benglis (1941, Louisiana) lives and works in Santa Fe. Her career has followed a singular trajectory for making art. Celebrated for redefining sculpture in the 1960s, Benglis’ practice challenged the notions of form, gesture and materiality championed by minimalism, which was undeniably the predominant artistic current at the time. Using a technique that combines a radical use of materials – in particular, latex and polyurethane – with her signature ‘frozen gestures’, Benglis’ work is the product of a complex choreography involving both spontaneity and precision.
Benglis’ work is included in numerous museums and public collections worldwide, including Centre Pompidou, Paris / Dallas Museum of Art, Texas / Jewish Museum, New York / Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York / Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois / Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California / The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Serralves Museum, Porto / Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. / Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York / Tate Modern, London / Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Mendes Wood DM was founded in Sao Paulo, 2010, by partners Felipe Dmab, Matthew Wood and Pedro Mendes with the intent to exhibit international and Brazilian artists in a context conducive to critical dialogue and cross-pollination. Central to the gallery’s program is a concern for regional difference and individuation while fostering cosmopolitanism and collaboration. Inspired by a belief that artistic practices broaden the scope of human agency and have the power to both touch and change the world, Mendes Wood DM cultivates a program premised on conceptualism, political resistance and intellectual rigor.
In 2017, Mendes Wood DM inaugurated its first North American exhibition space in New York with a series of two-person shows juxtaposing historical and contemporary material; including artists such as Lucas Arruda and On Kawara, Sonia Gomes and A.R. Penck. In the same year, Mendes Wood DM expanded its European presence with a new gallery in Brussels founded in partnership with longtime friend and collaborator Carolyn Drake Kandiyoti. Located in a historic townhouse, the space lends itself to ambitious curatorial projects and monographic exhibitions, as well as welcoming artists and curators in residence. The residency is integral to the gallery project to establish a place for the active exchange, creation and reformulation of varying artistic narratives.
Entrada actualizada el el 25 mar de 2022
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