| Dates: | born 1958
| | Biography: | 1958 Born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
Lives and works in Belo Horizonte, Brazil
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1999 Stephen Friedman Gallery, London
Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo
1998 Galeria Camargo Vilapa, Sao Paulo
Stephen Friedman Gallery, London
Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo
1996 Casa Triangulo, Sao Paulo
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1999 O Jardim dos Caminhos que se
Bifurcam, Nordjyllands Kuntsmuseum,
Aalborg; Edsvik Konst &. Kultur,
Stockholm
SITE Santa Fe Biennial, Santa Fe, New
Mexico
Calming the Clouds, Oslo
1998 The New Museum of Contemporary
Art, New York
The Garden of the Forking Paths,
Kunstforeningen, Copenhagen; Oslo;
Helsinki
Camargo BIS, Galeria Camargo Vilaca,
Sao Paulo
1997 5th International Istanbul Biennial,
Istanbul
Trade Routes: History & Geography, 2nd
Johannesburg Biennale, Johannesburg
Material Immaterial, The Art Gallery of
New South Wales, Sydney
1996 Latino America 96, Museu
Nacional de Belas Artes de Buenos
Aires, Buenos Aires
1995 A Infancia Perversa, Museu de Arte
Moderna, Rio de Janeiro; Solar do
Unhao, Salvador, Brazil | | | Source: | "Trace, 1st Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art", Festival catalogue | | | Date of source: | 1999 |
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| | Description: | Rivane Neuenschwander creates
intricate and ephemeral installations out
of organic substances and domestic
objects, manipulating the symbolic
qualities of materials as ordinary as
garlic husks, soap or dust. In a recent
installation at Stephen Friedman Gallery
in London she traced the outline of the
parquet tiles on the floor in fine lines of
white powder.
This exquisite and fragile drawing could
have been blown away or scuffed out of
existence by any inadvertent passer by.
Walking around the edge of the
installation made one very aware of one's
own presence as a threat. By outlining
the cracks she also initiated a sense of
unease that can come when the gaps in
our world are drawn to our attention. Not
walking on the cracks in case the bears
get you is a childhood enactment of this
basic fear: the fear that our reality may
be porous to unknown forces. The
Aboriginal people of Australia have a
spirit creature called the crack man who
is shown as a menacing spidery
presence drawn along the crack lines in
cave wall paintings.
Neuenschwander's coconut soap
drawings are elegant geometric
sculptures that contain linear designs.
Each rectangular block of white soap
has been pressed into dust along its
narrow edges. The blocks are then
welded together to make a larger
rectangle so that the edges show up as
a linear grid. At a distance these objects
appear to be elegant modernist designs
in marble or some other valuable
material. At close range, however, it is
apparent that the sculpture is made of
soap and the lines are dust: the intimate
residue of a bathroom or some other
domestic space. The rich smell of
coconut also belies the initial sense of
pristine materiality.
| | Description Source: | "Trace, 1st Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art", Festival catalogue | | Description Source Date: | 1999 | | Gender: | female | | Type: | person |
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