ALEXANDRE DA CUNHA at Vilma Gold Gallery until 11th May

Exhibition Description:

Alexandre Da Cunha’s work plays with everyday utilitarian objects, a tradition very much a part of Brazilian culture. This involves using and re-using objects and stripping them of their original use value and combining them to create new structures. Cunha's use of these materials is however loaded with reference to high-modernist art through structure, pattern and motif. The artist has constructed new works, from domestic objects such as furniture, mops, walking sticks, household objects, pots, planters and concrete.

Description:

Each piece, already having a patina of age or human touch, is transformed into a new object, resulting in ambiguous unknown structures, which look like fictional mechanical devices, or improvised tools, but retain an element of ambiguity as to their possible use value. A plinth or pedestal is incorporated as part of the work, examining classical ideas of presentation of the sculpture and relation to where the piece begins or ends.

“What is important to note, though, and this also relates to the idea of cannibalization, is that everything we take in is digested in a very specifically Brazilian way."
- Alexandre da Cunha in conversation with Jens Hoffman, ICA Wattis

The artist is also currently exhibiting in Passengers at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco until August, 2008. He has a forthcoming solo exhibition at Luisa Strina, Sao Paulo and is in a group exhibition at Pendre la Cremaillere, Sommer and Kohl, Berlin.

Full Contact Details:

VILMA GOLD
6 Minerva Street, London E2 9EH
t: 020 7729 9888 | f: 020 7729 9898