Alexandre da Cunha @ Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples - Arena : Curated in dialogue with Jenni Lomax

Alexandre da Cunha: Arena
Curated in dialogue with Jenni Lomax
Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples
29 September - 12 December 2020

Alexandre da Cunha challenges the implicit value systems of objects. In his careful arrangement of material and things—whether domestic, utilitarian or disposable—da Cunha re-evaluates hierarchies of attention and perception by scrutinising the play of shape, form and colour.

For Arena, his first exhibition at Thomas Dane Gallery in Naples, Alexandre da Cunha presents certain aspects of his observations of how objects sit in the world around us. Through conversation with Jenni Lomax, with whom he worked for his 2009 show Laissez-faire at Camden Art Centre, an emphasis is placed on the spatial relationship of progression between rooms in the gallery; shifting perspectives of wall, floor and ceiling. 

Elements from the Camden Arts Centre show, such as assembled mop heads and coconut casts, are newly articulated in Arena, where Alexandre da Cunha’s sensitivity to material is enhanced by Lomax’s treatment of space and installation. Doorways are deliberately closed to organise movement through the gallery; uniformity reinforcing ‘the arena’ as the enclosed site of activity or conflict.

One of a series of floor works Quilt (Sahara), (2011), weaves leather between paving slabs, while for Kentucky (Napoli), (2020), dyed cotton mop heads are constructed to form a hanging textile that suspends diagonally from the ceiling. Elsewhere, discarded wheelbarrows and metal benches are recalibrated as lighting arrangements, activating both floor and wall. A sociological dimension is never far from view—concrete mixers, their surfaces rusted and worn, are displayed for their aesthetic qualities while reinstating the social economies of labour in which these objects circulate.

Through Alexandre da Cunha’s eyes banal objects are readdressed to overcome material contractions and to articulate a weightier sense of ambivalence. Marble, (2020), features an inflatable rubber ring draped with fabric which gathers over the floor in this subtle and intuitive positioning of material, challenging the perception of what may be hard or soft: Alexandre da Cunha lures the subtext of sensation to the foreground in a humorous undoing of conventional meaning.

The works in Arena possess harmony in their hybridity, and are testament to Alexandre da Cunha’s continued desire to edit form without diminishing meaning. The exposure and endurance of his handling of material generates a more sympathetic reading of the readymade, one that warms to the lived reality of objects and the communities or individuals who used them.

JENNI LOMAX was the Director of Camden Art Centre, London, from 1990 to 2017, where she established an influential and forward-thinking programme of international exhibitions, residencies and education projects. Previously, she established and ran the Whitechapel Gallery’s pioneering Community Education Programme. She is currently working independently on a range of curatorial, writing and archival projects whilst also acting in an advisory capacity for a number of charitable arts organisations and grant giving foundations. 

ALEXANDRE DA CUNHA was born in Rio de Janeiro and lives and works in London and São Paulo. He has exhibited widely throughout the world and his work is included in major private and institutional collections including the Tate, England; ICA Boston, Boston MA; and Inhotim, Brazil. Selected solo exhibitions include: Duologue with Phillip King, Royal Society of Sculptors, London, England (2018); Boom, Pivô, São Paulo, Brazil (2017); the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago IL (2015); and Dublê, Centro Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2011). Forthcoming commissions include Alexandre da Cunha: Figurehead II, The Box, Plymouth, England (2020); and a new permanent artwork at Battersea Power Station, commissioned by Transport for London, Art on the Underground (2021). 

Major outdoor sculptures by Alexandre da Cunha are on permanent view at the Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, MI; the Monsoon Building in London; the Rochaverá Tower in São Paulo; and at The Pierce Tower in Boston, MA. 

THOMAS DANE GALLERY
Via Francesco Crispi, 69 - Naples
thomasdanegallery.com

___________________

Alexandre da Cunha @ Galeria Luisa Strina, Sao Paulo - Portal

Alexandre da Cunha: Portal
Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo
February 4 — April 30, 2020

Galeria Luisa Strina presents Portal, a solo show by the artist Alexandre da Cunha, the artist’s sixth in the gallery. Presented in the two exhibiting rooms, it is possible to say that da Cunha exhibits simultaneously two separate and distinct solo shows. In the main space, the artist shows sculptures based on the structure of room dividers made of several materials and objects, such as parachutes, cleaning mops or aluminum trays. In room 2, dating from 1987 and 1998, Alexandre da Cunha shows two series of drawings that highlight themes and concerns present in his earlier production.

Most works structured as folding screens are shown for the first time. There is only one piece from this new body of works that was already shown in 2017, in the artist’s exhibition at Pivô. “It was a kind of door that came to be, as a matter of fact, as an appropriation from the daily labor work in the iron industry; they are sheets of iron primarily used to cut small stencils shapes in order to make repairs and, after having holes dug into them, are discarded.”

This kind of involuntary aesthetics or found eloquence is one of the artist´s work main leitmotifs and is also present in the sculptures made of concrete mixers which dent marks were not made by the artist, but seen by him as a material expression of interest. In the work shown at Pivô, named Portal, another of Alexandre da Cunha’s leitmotif was highlighted: the aesthetics appropriation of the metal modernist sculpture, as in Anthony Caro, William Tucker or Phillip King. With the latter, Alexandre da Cunha had a show in 2018 (Duologue, The Royal Society of Sculptors, London).

In the exhibition Portal, Alexandre da Cunha´s set of works is shown aligned, some of the pieces fastened perpendicularly to the walls and, others, self-supporting on the floor, with no diagonals: one thing after the other. The pieces are made of materials that are placed together and composed with gaps or holes; allowing the viewer to see one work through another. “Many people talk about the environment created in my exhibitions, which is not something that I aim at, as I think of each piece as an individual one, I make sculptures, not installations”, he claims.

Another aspect in this new series is the idea of borders, divisions, frontiers, which was previously explored by the artist in different ways. This seems to reappear here in a special manner because of the inversion that Alexandre da Cunha proposes: instead of creating a series of works which would be recognizable because of the choice of the materials used, a more recurrent practice in his work; in the exhibition only the structure is repeated, as the materials and objects used in the making of the pieces are different. “I have decided to play with this friction between one kind of material ‘against’ the other. This is a group defined by the piece’s typology. They are sculptures that cut through the space”.

Once in the space, the new sculptures develop a dialogue with architecture. The two pieces made of aluminium trays evoke the modernist architecture adapted to tropical weather. At the end of the 40s, the French architect Jean Prouvé designed an easily reproducible modular home in order to solve the housing problem in the French colonies in Africa; two of his Maison Tropicale prototypes were built, one in Nigeria and one in Congo, but the utopic social impact design wasn’t produced in large scale. However, the idea of the pre-fabricated object that is transformed in work of art is still alive in Alexandre da Cunha’s silver dividing frames: light and airy, they are made of inverted patterns (from horizontal to vertical, from table or oven to an elegant group piled inside a white cube), its social function (ready-made plate, industrial kitchen) hidden so that the materials can support themselves vertically as a sculptural presence.

About the drawings, Alexandre da Cuhna clarifies that he was surprised when revisiting these two work groups: one of the groups that deliberately emphasizes the figurative and narrative drawing lines; the other consisting of drawn volumes, something that could be considered closer to the research for which he has become known for. What he is interested in sharing from this (re)discovery is the presence of themes and gestures in those drawings that continue to star in his work: eroticism, for example.

ALEXANDRE DA CUNHA

“My working pro­cess is based on my observation of objects. I have always been intrigued by the massive amount of stuff one needs to live and the roles of objects in our surroundings. I am interested in the processes of design, man­ufacture, and distribution of them among ourselves. A great deal of my work consists of forcing myself to learn about the struc­tures of ordinary objects and the narratives behind them, their cultural uses and their im­plications in society. The method of transfor­mation or play with their appearance often happens through very subtle alterations; I believe this process has more to do with tim­ing than physical intervention, though. It is about creating a platform and allowing the viewer to see something familiar from a priv­ileged point of view.” [Alexandre da Cunha, in an interview to Jochen Volz for the magazine Mousse, 2017]

Recent solo shows include: Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples (upcoming, 2020); Duologue – collaboration with Phillip King, The Royal Society of Sculptors, London, England (2018); Boom, Pivô, São Paulo (2017); Mornings, Office Baroque, Brussels (2017); Free Fall, Thomas Dane Gallery, London (2016); Amazons, CRG Gallery, New York (2015); Real, Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo (2015).

Among Alexandre Da Cunha’s public intervention are works commissioned by Art on the Underground for Battersea Subway Station, Northern Line Extension, London (2021); for the Berkley Square, London (upcoming, 2020); by Samuels & Associates, Pierce Boston Collection, Boston (2017); MCA Chicago, part of the Plaza Project (2015), and Rochaverá Corporate Towers, in São Paulo (2015).

Important group shows include: Inaugural exhibition of The Box, Plymouth, UK (upcoming, 2020); Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer, Buckinghamshire village of Fulmer, UK (2019); Abstracción Textil, Galería Casas Riegner, Bogotá (2018); Soft Power, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2016); ‘Brazil, Beleza?! Contemporary Brazilian Sculpture’, Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague (2016);  British Art Show 8, Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds (2015); Cruzamentos –Contemporary Art in Brazil, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2014); ‘When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes’, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2013); Decorum: Tapis et tapisseres d’artistes, Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2013); 30th São Paulo Biennial (2012).

His work is part of the following collections: Tate Collection, England; Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim, Brumadinho, Brazil; CIFO Cisneros Collection, USA; Zabludowicz Collection, England; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil; FAMA, Itu, Brazil.

GALERIA LUISA STRINA
Rua Padre João Manuel 755 Cerqueira César
01411-001 São Paulo SP
galerialuisastrina.com.br