New York – Pace is pleased to present Sonia Gomes's first-ever solo show in New York at its 540 West 25th Street gallery. Gomes, who is known for her use of textiles and everyday materials in her complex assemblages, bringsphysicality and movement to the fore of her work. On view from November 4 to December 17, this presentation, titled O mais profundo é a pele (Skin is the deepest part), will also mark the artist's first solo exhibition with Pace since shejoined the gallery's program in 2020.
Gomes, a largely self-taught artist, first gained international recognition when the late curator Okwui Enwezor included her work in the 2015 Venice Biennale. In 2018, she became the first living Afro-Brazilian woman artist tohave a monographic show at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), and in 2021 she participated in the 13thGwangju Biennale in South Korea and the Liverpool Biennial in the UK. Born in 1948 in Caetanópolis—which islocated in state of Minas Gerais in southeastern Brazil and was once a textile hub—the artist has cultivated a practiceanchored by her deft and meticulous manipulation of varied materials. Featuring juxtaposing forms, colours, andmedia, Gomes's abstract assemblages have pushed the boundaries of conventional sculpture, forging connectionsbetween memory and abstract imagery.
In her first exhibition with Pace in New York City, Gomes will present works from 2021 and 2022, including hanging, free-standing, and wall-mounted sculptures. The artist's works often incorporate secondhand, gifted, andrepurposed textiles; furniture; driftwood; wire; and other seemingly disparate materials. Through kneading, twisting,and stretching, she grapples with the stories and memories rooted in the fabrics, imbuing her resulting sculptureswith personal and political resonances. In her laborious process for creating these multimedia works, Gomesconsiders sewing akin to drawing: a means to produce gestural marks and compositional balance.
Two vibrant new works from the artist's Torções (Twists) sculpture series, which will be included in Pace's exhibition, reflect her interest in interactions between fabric and iron that create volume. Three pieces in the newseries Entre Pérola e Vergalhão (Between Pearl and Rebar)—featuring freshwater pearls amid clusters of differentfabrics—evoke shells, cocoons, wombs, nests, and other natural incubators. Supported by rebars, these works standbetween three and four feet tall, encouraging viewers to bend their bodies to fully experience their formal nuances.
Among the other highlights in the show is the light installation Constelação II (2022), which projects the intricate linear forms of its constituent bird cage and fabric components as shadows against the gallery wall. In the way oftwo-dimensional works, the exhibition will spotlight eight new pieces from the artist's Tela-Corpo (Canvas-Body)series, in which she experiments with curved arrangements of graphic media amid colour fields. Two hangingsculptures from Gomes's Relíquia (Relic) series will be in the show—these works feature ornate abstractionscomprising lace, buttons, various metals, zippers, and other combinations of materials.
A group of layered collages—depicting vibrantly coloured natural forms—will also figure in the presentation. For these works, Gomes uses a wide range of materials, including Posca pens and watercolours, to make strokes, chromaticfields, arabesques, hatches, volutes, and stains. Utilising papers of various textures, weights, and shades, the artistconjures new visual effects in each collage.
A section of the exhibition will be dedicated to new works on paper Gomes created as part of a collaboration with her studio assistant, Juliana dos Santos. These small-scale, lyrical works depict organic—yet otherworldly—formsrendered with watercolour, acrylic, cotton lace, and other materials. A film documenting Gomes and dos Santos'sprocess and work in the artist's São Paulo studio will also be on view.
Gomes's work was recently acquired by the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Tate in London. She is represented in numerous collections around the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; thePérez Art Museum Miami; the Rubell Museum in Miami; the Minneapolis Institute of Art; the San Antonio Museum ofArt in Texas; the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; the Museu de Arte de São Paulo; the Museu de Arte do Rio, Riode Janeiro; the Instituto Inhotim in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, Brazil; and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.
Sonia Gomes (b. 1948, Caetanópolis) combines secondhand textiles with everyday materials, such as furniture, driftwood, and wire, to create abstract sculptures that reclaim Afro-Brazilian traditions and feminised crafts from themargins of history. Juxtaposing tensile and slack forms, Gomes's contorted sculptures exude a corporeality anddynamism that she attributes to her love of popular Brazilian dances. Gomes uses found or gifted fabrics, which,according to her, 'bring the history of the people that they belonged to.' 'I give a new significance to them,' she adds.Her assemblages thus tie Brazil's historical trajectory to the long-disregarded narratives of women, people of colour, andcountless anonymous individuals.
Through its recycling of used fabric, Gomes's work also evinces a principle of thrift that is both a consequence of Brazil's rapid and uneven industrial development and a dissenting answer to its accompanying culture of wastefulconsumption and environmental destruction. As a whole, her art is marked by a decolonising impulse, providingoblique responses to the social inequities and ecological urgencies of present-day Brazil and, more broadly, aglobalised world.
Press release courtesy Pace Gallery.
540 West 25th Street
New York, 10001
United States
www.pacegallery.com
+1 212 421 3292
Tuesday – Saturday
10am – 6pm