BOSCO SODI

Early Years

Born in Mexico City in 1970, Bosco Sodi was immersed in a culturally vibrant environment that shaped his philosophical and aesthetic approach to art. He later moved to Barcelona and Berlin, eventually establishing studios in New York and Oaxaca. This transnational lifestyle has become integral to his work, allowing his practice to evolve across multiple geographies.

Sodi’s early training was largely self-directed, focusing on the properties of pigments, earth, and organic materials. He later refined his practice in Europe and the United States, where his works began attracting attention for their meditative and tactile presence. The artist now lives and works between New York and Oaxaca, where he established Casa Wabi, a foundation and artist residency promoting dialogue through art and community engagement.

Artworks

Bosco Sodi’s artworks are defined by their use of raw materials—sawdust, clay, pigment, volcanic stone—and by his embrace of unpredictability in the creative process. Through painting, sculpture, and installation, Sodi creates art that resists narrative and instead draws viewers into a space of visceral, sensory experience.

Monumental Clay and Volcanic Works

Bosco Sodi’s clay sculptures—spheres, bricks, and blocks—are shaped by hand, fired in traditional kilns, and often displayed outdoors, where they weather naturally. These works reflect the artist’s interest in impermanence and process. Muro (2017), his most iconic installation, involved a wall of clay bricks built and dismantled by the public in New York’s Washington Square Park, evoking ideas of borders, collaboration, and ephemerality. In later series using volcanic rock, such as Tephra (2021), Sodi highlights the geological drama and raw energy of nature, fusing minimalist form with primal force and grounding contemporary art in ancient materials.

Textured Paintings

Sodi’s textured paintings are made by mixing pigment, sawdust, and glue into a thick paste that he spreads by hand onto large-scale canvases. Left to dry naturally, the surfaces crack and harden into richly patterned, monochrome fields. These abstract works evoke the natural world—deserts, maps, tectonic plates—while resisting fixed interpretation. Series such as Pangea and Vers l’Espagne reflect the artist’s fascination with entropy, imperfection, and the beauty of material transformation. By embracing accident and organic process, Sodi challenges traditional painting conventions and creates contemporary artworks that feel ancient, tactile, and deeply grounded in physical experience.

Earth and Time

Themes of time, nature, and community run through Sodi’s site-responsive installations. In works like The Last Day (2023) at the Dallas Museum of Art, he staged clay sculptures in grid formations, creating meditative spaces that echo ritual and ruin. At Museo Anahuacalli, Tabula Rasa (2020) responded to Diego Rivera’s volcanic-stone architecture with a raw, earthen aesthetic. These installations blur the line between contemporary art and spiritual encounter, inviting slow looking and physical presence. Sodi’s elemental approach—to fire, stone, and soil—offers a quiet yet powerful meditation on change, memory, and the fragility of human structures.

Public Commissions

• Muro, Washington Square Park, New York (2017)
• Bosco Sodi: The Last Day, Dallas Museum of Art (2023)

Awards and Accolades

• Founder of Casa Wabi, a non-profit arts foundation in Oaxaca
• Named among Artnet’s “Most Collectable Artists” in 2020
• Honoured by Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL), Mexico City, with a major solo show

Exhibitions

Bosco Sodi has been the subject of both solo exhibitions and group exhibitions at important institutions. A selection of important exhibitions are provided below.

Solo Exhibitions

• La Rendición de la Materia, Museo de Arte de Sonora, Sonora, Mexico (2025)
• Saptatathagata, Fundación Casa de México en España, Madrid
• What Goes Around Comes Around, Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, Fondazione dell’Albero d’Oro, Venice (2022)
• La fuerza del destino, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas (2021)
• Ergo Sum, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Málaga (2020)
• Por los Siglos de los Siglos, Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL), Mexico City (2017)
• Croatia, Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valenciá (2013)

Group Exhibitions

• Bosco Sodi at Kunsthal KAdE, Amsterdam (2022)
• Nasher Mixtape, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2021)
• National Gallery of Victoria Triennial, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2020)
• Beyond Wonder, Perspectives of Utopia, Nagoya University of the Arts, Nagoya (2018)
• Jay DeFeo: The Ripple Effect, Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2018)
• Museum of Stones, The Noguchi Museum, Queens, United States (2015)

Website and Instagram

Bosco Sodi’s website can be found here, and Bosco Sodi’s Instagram can be found here.

Critical Reception

Bosco Sodi’s work has been featured in leading publications including Apollo, Frieze, and Wallpaper*

Bosco Sodi FAQs

Ocula | 2025