Alexandre da Cunha, Eric Ellington (fan), 2005, skateboards and mixed media, 100 x 100 x 100 cm, © the artist.
Alexandre da Cunha, from Swapshop, 2009, Camden Arts Centre. |
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Camden Arts Centre
Arkwright Road
London
+44 (0)20 7472 5500
Alexandre da Cunha:
Laissez-Faire
July 10-
September 13, 2009
Camden Arts Centre has commissioned London-based Brazilian artist Alexandre da Cunha to create a new sculptural installation for Gallery 3.
His dynamic, large-scale sculptures improvise on the concept of the readymade by reusing everyday objects: job lots from pound shops, surplus fabrics and recycled goods, reflecting on their specific histories and aesthetics.
Prior to the exhibition Da Cunha is artist in residence in Camden Arts Centre’s Artists’ Studio. He often incorporates plinths or pedestals into pieces, examining classical ideas of presentation and the relationship to where the piece begins or ends.
Recently he has collaborated with crafts people such as wool spinners and dyers, transforming materials from their humble beginnings into spectacular objects.
Da Cunha’s work often deals with the wider concern of the human condition, commenting on the distribution of wealth in his native Brazil.
Da Cunha's commission and residency are supported by outset.
In his work, Alexandre da Cunha (*1969, Rio de Janeiro ) uses ordinary domestic materials and puts them into a new context by lifting them from their usual environment. However, the objects he finds do not function as readymades in a Duchampian sense, as they have been worked on and changed by the artist and thus enter into a contemporary dialogue with the vocabulary and aesthetics of classical modernism. Not only are these references to art history an important element in Da Cunha's practice, but also concerns of our current times, which he picks out as a central theme by his particular way of reusing and sampling. Da Cunha's homage to modernism always contains a "gambiarra" twist — a Brazilian tradition to make do with what you have.
Alexandre da Cunha's recent solo exhibitions include: The Gentle Art of Collapsing the Expanded Field, Cardenas Bellanger, Paris, 2008; and This is not a Void, Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo, 2008. |
