Valeska Soares: Bindings

VALESKA SOARES Bindings February 16 – March 18, 2012 | 11 Rivington St, NY

Eleven Rivington is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by gallery artist Valeska Soares, from February 16 – March 18, 2012.  The exhibition is concurrently on view with an exhibition of the same series of works at Galeria Fortes Vilaca in Sao Paulo.

Three large works on linen - selected from a larger series titled Bindings - will occupy the three walls of the gallery space. These paintings - constructions of vintage dust jackets and hardcover books applied onto unprimed Belgian linen - behave not only as compositions but also as color and language indexes. The paper jackets and covers - culled and arranged in a constructivist manner in grids - come from the artist’s vast collection of antique and first edition books. As used in the paintings they become non-hierarchical and free to interact with one another. As the viewer encounters each canvas, relationships inevitably form between the dozens of disparate titles within each composition; a different narrative emerges depending on how the viewer reads each painting. Though at first sight they appear as an exercise in chromatic and formal synergy, the readymade materials imbue the arrangements with sensuality familiar to Soares’ larger practice and expand her interest in narrative and fiction.

A second body of work, titled Edits, will accompany the paintings. The artist reproduces pages from Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse and masks large portions of the text with black volumes, revealing a kind of concrete poetry personal to the artist. Edits is an analytical exploration of text as image meant to complement the more synthetic process of the Bindings series.

Born in 1957 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Soares has lived and worked in Brooklyn, NY since 1992.  Her works are included in important museum collections such as the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C., The Guggenheim Museum, NY, The Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, PA and Tate Modern, London.  Soares has participated in various important exhibitions, including the Sharjah Biennial, the Sao Paulo Biennial and the Venice Biennale.  Solo exhibitions include Folly (2009), permanent installation at INHOTIM, Minas Gerais, Brazil; After, Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo (2007); Follies, The Bronx Museum, NY (2003); Puro Teatro at Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City (2002); and Vanishing Point, Vilaça, São Paulo, (1998).