Tag Archives: woman

Objects on the New Landscape Demanding of the Eye (part 3)

We are pleased to present Julião Sarmento’s fourth exhibition at Galeria Joan Prats, titled Objects on the New Landscape Demanding of the Eye (part 3), in which we will show his recent work, with installation, sculpture and painting.

 

The title of the exhibition recalls that of the first exhibition held at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1957, which included paintings by various artists and in which the installation and assemblage pioneer, Edward Kienholz, participated.

 

In the exhibition, the installation Crash Dummy, 2016, and the sculpture Broken Alice, 2014, coexist with a series of paintings that show triangular shapes, delicately drawn, based on the fundamental principles of fractal geometry, and other works inspired by the Little Dancer Aged Fourteen of Degas. This diversity of supports and techniques present in the exhibition is characteristic of the artistic practice of Julião Sarmento and, on this occasion, stands out for the combination of materials that could be defined as poor with materials subject to advanced technological processes.

 

Julião Sarmento produces a work that adopts multiple forms with drawings, paintings, sculptures, performances and videos that speak of the artifices of seduction and the mechanisms of desire. From its beginnings, in the middle of the seventies, the work of Julião Sarmento has been characterized by its archival character. Thus, in his works, they can appear feminine silhouettes, architectural plans, literary fragments and objects.

 

Often, these coded iconographies explicitly present us with the signs needed to identify to the source of his imagery and its meanings. This constant oscillation between appearance and reality, fiction and documentation, invention and fact with which Sarmento confronts us is not at all a gratuitous game. The assemblages fashioned by the artist play on this dialectic of superficial interpretation, where many elements are perfectly identifiable, even banal or anodyne, and deeper interpretation that drives us to seek correspondences, links and relations without realizing that the very fact of carrying out this search is itself the meaning we are supposed to discover.

Victoria Civera

Port de Sagunt, Valencia, 1955

Lives and works between New York and Saro (Cantabria)

 

 

Victoria Civera’s career began in the seventies, working mainly photomontage. Over the next decade she focused on painting, abstract at first, but then introduced figurativism. In the middle of this decade Victoria Civera moves to New York and integrates photography and sculpture to her practice. Her creations undergo a transformation, making them more introspective.

 

Because of the iconography of her work, focused on the feminine universe, and because of her oneiric content, Victoria Civera has achieved a personal language, full of nuances. She moves in between large-scale pieces, in which she uses industrial materials, and suggested and poetic understatement pieces, often incorporating ordinary household objects.

Julião Sarmento

Lisbon, 1948- Estoril, 2021

 

 

From the early seventies, Julião Sarmento has explored the possibilities of painting, photography, sculpture, installation and video. There is a process of suggestive hiding in his works that situates the spectator not only as an observer but also as a participant of his narrative.

 

The woman is a recurring motive in his works and from it he elaborates concepts linked to sexuality, desire or seduction. The relationships he evokes, on latent tension, violence, obsession or mystery, are obtained from a meticulous dynamic between the participating agents in the physical space, in the case of installations, or in the edition, in case of films and videos. The resulting works unleash all the detached intrigue of the images in constant suspense and tension.