Berna Reale Nara Roesler Galeria

Berna Reale, Comida Caseira, 2018, Galeria Nara Roesler

Berna Reale is one of the most important women in the current contemporary art scene in Brazil, recognized internationally as a key Brazilian performance artist. Also a forensic expert, she has produced a body of artwork consisting of performances, photographs, videos and installations, marked by a critical approach to the material and symbolic aspects of violence and the processes of silencing present in the most diverse segments of society.

Reale became outstanding in the art scene beginning with her participation in the XXV Salão Arte Pará (2006), where she presented the intervention Cerne, consisting of photographs of human viscera taken in the morgue and strategically installed in the meat market of the Ver-o-Peso complex, a traditional center of markets and stands bustling with tourists and local shoppers in Belém. This experience led the artist to successfully take an exam to be a forensic expert, afterward working at the Renato Chaves Forensic Center in 2010. From then on, her production has been mainly focused on performance art as a form of denouncement of situations of social injustice, operating as a sort of questioning “noise.” Reale’s performances, which are unfolded in photographic series and videos based on recordings of her actions, are also outstanding for presenting the artist as a protagonist, her own body entering as a further aesthetic element in the construction of the image.

Berna Reale was born in Belém do Pará/PA, Brazil, 1965, where she lives and works. She holds a degree in visual arts from the Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA), Belém. Her recent solo and group shows include: Brazil. Knife in the Flesh, a group show at Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea Milano (PAC-Milano), Milan, Italy (2018), at which she presented Camuflagem(2018), her first performance held outside her birth city; Lecture/Performance & Screenings: Berna Reale, a solo show at Miami Dade College Museum of Art + Design (MDC MOAD), Miami/FL, USA (2017); Video Art in Latin America, a group show at LAXART, West Hollywood/LA, USA, part of the event II Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA (2017); and Vão, a solo show at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (CCBB), São Paulo/SP, Brazil (2017). She was one of the artists representing Brazil at the 56th Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (2015), also participating in the 34th Panorama da Arte Brasileira, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP), São Paulo/SP, Brazil (2015), in the 5th Biennale internationale de la photographie et des arts visuels de Liège, Liège, Belgium (2006), and in the 13th Bienal de Arte de Cerveira, Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal (2005). She has received the following awards: 5th Prêmio Marcantonio Vilaça for Visual Arts, Brazil (2015); Prêmio PIPA Online 2012, Rio de Janeiro/RJ, Brazil (2012); and the Grand Prize of the Salão Arte Pará, Belém/PA, Brazil (2009). Her artworks figure in international collections such as those of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC USP), São Paulo/SP, Brazil; the Museu de Arte de Belém, Belém/PA, Brazil; and the Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), Rio de Janeiro/RJ, Brazil.

Ramiro Gomez P.P.O.W

Ramiro Gomez, Face/Janitor, 2108, P.P.O.W

Ramiro Gomez was born in 1986 in San Bernardino, California to undocumented Mexican immigrant parents who have since become US citizens. He briefly attended the California Institute for the Arts before leaving to take work as a live-in nanny with a West Hollywood family, an experience that did much to inform his subsequent artistic practice. Gomez’s work is known for addressing issues of immigration and making visible the “invisible” labor forces that keep the pools, homes, and gardens of Los Angeles in such pristine condition.

In 2013 Gomez had his first solo exhibition at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, and was also awarded with a residency to install a mural in West Hollywood Park, a project titled The Caretakers, which remains on view. In 2014 Gomez had his solo gallery debut at Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles, and went on to show widely across North America. In 2015 Gomez exhibited at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, the Chicago Humanities Festival, and again at Charlie James Gallery. In the spring of 2016, Gomez had his third show “On Melrose” at the Charlie James Gallery in conjunction with the publication of a monograph on his work by Lawrence Weschler (Abrams), titled “Domestic Scenes: The Art of Ramiro Gomez”. Gomez participated in the 2017 Whitney Biennial as part of Raf Esparza’s “Figure Ground: Beyond the White Field” installation. His work was also included in three of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA exhibitions – “Home—So Different, So Appealing” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), a joint show, “In West Hollywood” at the West Hollywood Library with his partner, David Feldman, and the Chapman University exhibition “My Barrio: Emigdio Vasquez and Chicana/o Identity in Orange County”. In August 2017, LACMA announced their acquisition of one of Gomez’s works, Cut-Outs (2015), into their permanent collection. Cut-Outs is a full-room installation of acrylic-on-cardboard panels and sculptures which Gomez started during his residency at Institute for the Humanities Gallery at the University of Michigan in 2015.

Gomez has exhibited at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, LACMA, Denver Art Museum, MFA Houston, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Torrance Art Museum, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, MCA San Diego and Museum of Latin American Art (MoLAA) among many others. Gomez’s work has been covered in the Atlantic, the New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, Hyperallergic, Huffington Post, and CNN among others. Gomez lives and works in West Hollywood, California.

Talia Chetrit Sies+Hoke

Talia Chetrit, Ever (Wet), 2018, Sies + Höke

Talia Chetrit was born in Washington, DC in 1982, and lives and works in New York. Chetrit’s work focuses on the human body, often her own, as a starting point to examine how images are constructed to support different agendas and interpretations of reality. After beginning her practice with an exploration of the manipulative nature of photography, Chetrit is increasingly interested in the relationship the camera has with the subject matter it documents. Her work has recently been featured in group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Sculpture Center in New York, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Studio Voltaire in London and LACMA in Los Angeles.

Sarah Lucas Kurimanzutto

Sarah Lucas, Red Sky Gha, 2018, Kurimanzutto

Sarah Lucas’s practice is characterized by irreverent humour and the creation of visual puns and vulgar euphemisms. Spanning sculpture, photography, and installation, her work evokes the body in its physical, cultural, and psychic dimensions. In her compositions, Lucas often uses everyday objects as a substitute for the human body: furniture, food, tabloid newspapers, tights, toilets, and cigarettes are usually coupled with slang and crude genital innuendo. These elements intertwine and transform into visceral, anthropomorphic representations of limbs, breasts, and phalli; forms that are embodied in light-reflecting bronze sculptures or as plaster casts taken directly from models. In order to probe representations of gender and national identity, Lucas also employs familiar references to postwar and contemporary British life. By appropriating and exhibiting lewd gestures that reveal the absurdity of sexual stereotypes, she subverts the male gaze and the tropes of what is considered feminine or masculine; in a similar vein, her defiant self-portraits invoke the sexual dynamics of the observer and the observed. Lucas’s artwork pushes the sculptural possibilities of bodily representation to question the way we understand and relate to inherent aspects of human experience such as sexuality, illness, and death.

Sarah Lucas is one of the leading figures of the generation of young British artists who emerged during the 1990s. She studied in London at the Working Men’s College (1982–83), London College of Printing (1983–84), and Goldsmiths’ College (1984–87).

Her most important exhibitions include: Sarah Lucas: Good Muse, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco | Legion of Honor (2017); FunQroc, CFA-Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin (2017); POWER IN WOMAN, The Soane Museum, London (2016); I SCREAM DADDIO, British Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennial (2015); Florian and Kevin, Aspen Art Museum, United States (2014); Sarah Lucas: SITUATION Absolute Beach Man Rubble, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2013); Lucas Bosch Gelatin, Kunsthalle Krems, Austria (2011); Nuds Cycladic, Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, Greece (2010); In-A-Gadda-Da-Vidda, Tate Britain, London (2004); Sarah Lucas, Tate Modern, London (2002); Penis Nailed to a Board, City Racing, London (1992).

Her work has also been included in group exhibitions at institutions such as: Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, United Kingdom (2017); The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel (2017); Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Germany (2016); Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, France (2016); Tate Modern, London (2016); Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, United Kingdom (2016); Musées d’art et d’histoire de Genève | Musée Rath, Geneva, Switzerland (2016); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2015); The Museum of Art, Kōchi, Japan (2014); New Museum, New York (2013); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2010); The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Ángeles (2009); Serpentine Gallery, London (2006); Kunsthaus Dresden, Germany (2004); Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (1998); Musée d’ Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (1996), among others. Sarah Lucas lives and works in London.

Zina Saro-Wiwa Tiwani Contemporary

Zina Saro-Wiwa, Phyllis-I am not alone, 2010, Tiwani Contemporary

Zina Saro-Wiwa is an artist working primarily with video but also photography, sculpture, sound and food. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York as well as running a practise in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria where she founded the contemporary art gallery Boys’ Quarters Project Space for which she regularly curates. Saro-Wiwa is one of Foreign Policy Magazine’s Global Thinkers of 2016 recognized for her work in the Niger Delta. She was Artist-in-Residence at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn 2016-2017 and in April 2017 was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts.

Saro-Wiwa’s interest lies in mapping emotional landscapes. She often explores highly personal experiences, carefully recording their choreography, making tangible the space between internal experience and outward performance as well as bringing cross-cultural and environmental/geographic considerations to bear on these articulations. The slippery dynamics between “truth”, “reality” and “performance” lie at the heart of her video performance work. The very idea of landscape and environment is constantly being interrogated in her video work, in the exhibitions she curates at Boys’ Quarters in Nigeria as well as in her work with food.

Saro-Wiwa’s first foray into the art world was in 2008 when her documentary This Is My Africa was shown at Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town. The film went on to be shown on HBO as well as film festivals and museums and galleries. In 2010 her career as an artist began in earnest in New York, when she was invited to curate her first ever contemporary art exhibition at SoHo’s, now disbanded, Location One Gallery. The group show – titled Sharon Stone in Abuja – was one that explored the narrative and visual conventions of the Nollywood film industry. In addition to curating the show, Saro-Wiwa created and contributed her first-ever installation pieces and experimental alt-Nollywood films.

Since her New York debut she has been commissioned by the Menil Collection and Seattle Art Museum, has had work shown at the Pulitzer Foundation, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Stevenson Gallery, Goodman Gallery, Nikolaj Kunsthal, Tate Britain, Fowler Museum in LA, the Brooklyn Museum and many other institutions.

Her first ever solo museum show Did You Know We Taught Them How To Dance? went up at Blaffer Art Museum in Houston in 2015 and opened at Krannert Art Museum in Illinois in November 2016.  Her recently published monograph for the show also titled Did You Know We Taught Them How To Dance? – published by Washington Press – is available at the Brooklyn Museum book store and Amazon.com. Saro-Wiwa’s work can be found in museums and private collections around the world.