Intellectually rigorous, politically active, and highly conceptual, the programme of contemporary art gallery Mendes Wood DM places an emphasis on critical conversation, working to embrace the individuality of each artist while also supporting the discovery of intersections between practices that might initially seem disparate.
Read MoreMendes Wood DM was founded in 2010 by Felipe Dmab, Matthew Wood, and Pedro Mendes with a belief in the power of art to move individuals and create change in society at large. In 2017, the gallery opened additional spaces in both New York and Brussels.
Mendes Wood DM’s Brussels space was founded in collaboration with Carolyn Drake Kandiyoti. Reinforcing and extending the gallery’s reputation for collaborating with cutting-edge practitioners on a range of exhibitions and events, the Brussels space also hosts residencies for artists and curators.
Mendes Wood DM Artists
The artists of Mendes Wood DM represent a diverse range of nationalities, ages, and media, with more than 30 artists total on the gallery’s roster. This list includes a number of prominent artists, including Japanese sculptor Kishio Suga; the late American photographer Francesca Woodman; and Nigeria-born, Belgium-based visual and performance artist Otobong Nkanga.
While the vast majority of artists represented by Mendes Wood DM were born in the 1970s and 80s, a number of artists from earlier generations are also present in the gallery’s programme, including Italian artist Dadamaino and Brazilian artists Anna Bella Geiger, Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, and Celso Renato.
Mendes Wood DM Exhibitions and Art Fairs
Each year, Mendes Wood DM presents a range of solo exhibitions and curatorial projects across its three locations. In the solo presentation Après nous le deluge (24 August–10 November 2019), the gallery’s São Paulo location hosted a collection of pastels by Los Angeles-based artist Mimi Lauter. In this body of work, Lauter used portions of Greek mythology to enact an extended investigation of birth and death in the expanded field.
Mendes Wood DM has also participated in productive collaborations with other galleries. In 2019 it worked with Blum & Poe in New York to bring together Brazilian artworks spanning nearly a century. Titled Visions of Brazil: Reimagining Modernity from Tarsila to Sonia (30 April–22 June), the exhibition, curated by Dr Sofia Gotti, offered a new lens on Brazilian Modernism.
Visions of Brazil encapsulated a number of the gallery’s values, considering, in the words of Fawz Kabra for Ocula Magazine, ‘the possibility of a Brazilian Modernism that is horizontal, complex, and cross-temporal, in which concerns beyond form encapsulate the struggles and realities of each artist's background and sociopolitical perspectives.’
Mendes Wood DM has also participates in a range of art fairs around the world, including Independent, New York, and Art Basel in Miami Beach, Basel, and Hong Kong.
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Ocula Conversation Otobong Nkanga By Stephanie Bailey Otobong Nkanga has developed a practice that reads the world on material terms and maps out how the body fits into a shared, earthly narrative. Her 2012 project Contained Measures of a Kolanut followed the artist's research into the library of CIRAD, the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development in Paris' Bois De...
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Related Press Solange Pessoa at Mendes Wood DM 23 March 2020, Contemporary Art Daily Mendes Wood DM Brussels is pleased to present In the Sun and the Shade, the first European solo show of works by the Brazilian artist Solange Pessoa, coinciding with her acclaimed first solo institutional exhibition in the United States, currently on view at Ballroom Marfa. Utilizing the entirety of the Brussels gallery space, the show includes...
Related Press Sonia Gomes’s Sewn and Twisted Traces of History 5 March 2020, Hyperallergic BADEN-BADEN, Germany — Using recycled textiles, driftwood, and furniture, Brazilian artist Sonia Gomes creates oversized biomorphic sculptures that are palpably corporeal. In her Museum Frieder Burda exhibition I Rise – I’m a Black Ocean, Leaping and Wide, “Lona”(2010) takes the form of a dream catcher made from scraps of lace with a floral...
Related Press Anna Bella Geiger Probes the Nature of Brazilian Identity 25 February 2020, Frieze For over 60 years, the Brazilian artist Anna Bella Geiger has fluidly traversed painting, sculpture, video, installation and photography, exploring systems and frameworks as varied as the human body, self-representation, mathematical equations, cartography, geography, the art world and varied socio-political issues. This survey comprises 190...
Related Press Solange Pessoa Invites Nature to Take Over 20 February 2020, Frieze One of the most striking things about Brazilian artist Solange Pessoa’s exhibition In the Sun and the Shade at Mendes Wood DM is how effectively it intersects with both the natural world and its local setting. The former was to be expected: Pessoa’s paintings and sculptures often feature natural materials—including leaves, roots, eggs...
