Kunsthalle LAB starts the autumn season with a solo exhibition of Carmella Gross, an internationally acclaimed artist from Brazil. Among other institutions, her works are also included in the collection of the prestigious Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. The opening of the exhibition curated by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti will take place on Wednesday, September 13, at 6 p.m. The exhibition will last until November 26, 2017.
The exhibition project of prominent conceptual and light art artist Carmela Gross (*1946) will introduce a custom-made light installation O Fotógrafo (The Photographer) made of metal and light, a signature element of Gross’s work. Over the four decades of her career, she has been presented in numerous museums or art biennials (The Moscow Biennale, The São Paulo Biennial) and her works are in the collection of the prestigious Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, for example. The eponymous exhibition will also feature an accompanying video Luz del fuego (Light of Fire), created from found reportage photographs of explosions, war conflicts, or civil unrest incidents from different parts of the world.
Although the works of Carmella Gross are often related to public space and have an “urban” character, their creation often begins with drawing, which is also the starting point for her large-scale public art projects. The author prepared her exhibition in Kunsthalle LAB with the same approach. She explained herself in the accompanying text: “All done. Some metal stands almost invisible, a lot of tangled wires on the floor. Diffused reactors connecting cables and sockets. The traces of red light draw a short figure of a man in the empty space. Is he a photographer?”
Although limited in size and number of presented works, the exhibition can serve as an introduction to Gross’s poetics for the audience that encounters with her work for the first time. The exhibition project O Fotógrafo–which belongs to the cycle of her works in a direct or indirect relation to the urban environment (such as Cascata, 1999, or Hotel, 2002) due to the used medium (cables, stands, neon lights, clamps)–aims to highlight the basic recurring elements of her work.
With regard to the dramaturgy and character of the previous exhibitions, Kunsthalle LAB as a window gallery appears ideal for establishing communication of these works with the surrounding public space, as well as presenting one of the most prolific and fundamental contemporary Brazilian artists.
The exhibition is organized in cooperation with the Embassy of Brazil in Bratislava as part of the Brazilslava – Brazil Cultural Festival in Bratislava in September 2017.
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The Photographer
Carmela Gross
Curator: Jacopo Crivelli Visconti
Opening: September 13, 2017, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Exhibition duration: September 14 – November 26, 2017
Venue: Kunsthalle LAB, SNP Square 12, Bratislava