Lucia Koch
Materiais de Construção
1September–13 October 2012
Galeria Nara Roesler
Av. Europa, 655, São Paulo, SP
01449-001 Brazil
Hours: Mon–Fri 10–7pm; Sat 11–3pm
T +55 11 3063 2344
info@nararoesler.com.br
Galeria Nara Roesler is pleased to present Materiais de Construção (Construction materials), the new exhibition by Lucia Koch. Working with photography, installation, video, and interventions, Koch reorganizes spatial perception through the negotiations involved in the making of her works and the unsettling effects caused by their results. In her solo show, she presents new works which reintroduce materials used in previous interventions, but now detached from architectural spaces and arranged on industrialized displays
The exhibition is organized around two opposing situations:
In the gallery vitrine are the Entulhos (velho e novo) (Debris, old and new) (2012): two gridded boxes containing the accumulation of leftover cuts from sheets of different materials used by the artist over the course of ten years, and also resulting from the cutting of new pieces in the show. The discarded materials, that were before classified by type, color, and shape, are irreversibly mixed together.
On the opposite spectrum, the main exhibition space has been converted into a “showroom” occupied by metal displays with sliding panels, similar to those found at hardware stores. Each “sample display” contains a set of materials: laser-cut acrylic sheets or wood doors; translucent vinyl canvases with gradient-color prints; and pictures of fictitious walls created from photographs of tiles and facades found in different cities visited by the artist. Indifferent to whether their use is fulfilled or if they will remain as possibilities only, the materials are at the viewer’s disposal: the diversity, saturation, and superimposition of those pieces waiting to be maneuvered and experienced anew.
The new works of Koch deal with the logic of an ordinary civil construction: availability of organized materials (supposedly) to be selected and purchased; and debris, the result of demolition that both ends a process and points to the building of a new space.
Like a tool box, Materiais de Construção contains a collection of materials and procedures used by the artist. But paradoxically, by containing and showcasing them, the show expands and points to everything that, in the work of the artist, goes beyond and detours from the immediate use of these materials of construction.
About the artist
Lucia Koch was born in Porto Alegre in 1966. She lives and works in São Paulo. In the 1990s, she began making a series of interventions in household spaces, a practice she would later extend to museums and galleries with projects created for the places and situations she encountered. She has been featured in biennials that include: A terrible Beauty is born (Lyon Biennial, 2011), How to Live Together (São Paulo Biennial, 2006), More than this! (Göteborg Biennial, 2005), and Poetic Justice (Istanbul Biennial, 2003). Recent shows include Cromoteísmo (Capela do Morumbi, São Paulo, 2012), Seco, Sujo e Pesado, an intervention at Galeria Nara Roesler (São Paulo, 2011); Conjunto Nacional-Casa de Espelhos (Galeria Caixa Cultural, SP, 2009); Casa Acesa (La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2008); Correções de Luz (Centro Universitário Mariantonia, SP, 2007); and Two Todays (Starkwhite Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand, 2007). The works of Lucia Koch are included in major collections in Brazil and other countries.