Joana Vasconcelos
Glacée dorée. Seconde partie
15 February - 27 April, 2019
Press release in French
Press release in English
Press release in Italian
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Article: [en ligne]: La Portugaise Joana Vasconcelos est aujourd'hui partout. Même à Genève!, Bilan [en ligne], by Etienne Dumont, 25.02.2019
Gowen Contemporary is pleased to present the second part of the exhibition Glacée dorée, the first part of which was exhibited at artgenève 2019, from January 31 to February 3.
Generous, exuberant, feminine and unconventional, Joana Vasconcelos offers us an extravagant and avant-garde artistic universe, a very enlightened mirror of our time and its socio-cultural models.
The artist questions with humour the contemporary society and its paradoxes by combining crafts and industry, tradition and modernity, popular culture and erudition. Ambitious in terms of contents and visual impact, and also often for their monumental scale, her works bring together several different mediums and techniques: ceramics, textiles, crocheting, lighting, cements, installations or decorated ceramic tiles. The Crochet Paintings series, including Camélia (2015), Gestalt (2017) and Swirl (2016), mix references to painting and sculpture, guration and abstraction, while taking the viewer into unreal landscapes in baroque and contemporary tones.
Joana Vasconcelos unfolds her magic world by playing with the codes of luxury and design as well as the potential of elements drawn from the domestic universe. Through the decontextualization of elements chosen for their semantic charge and the use of the accumulation, replication and subversion of everyday objects, her works create a kaleidoscopic world of endless combinations of materials, shapes and colors that undermine the dogmatism of the established perspective and the pre- established routine.
Glacée Dorée carries us into a playful, poetic and sensory world, where domestic objects, applied arts and Portuguese craftmanship and culture join together to further explore the female identity in a universal perspective.
Joana Vasconcelos (Portugal, b. 1971) lives and works in Lisbon. She has exhibited regularly since the mid-1990s. Her work became known internationally after her participation in the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, with the work A Noiva [The Bride] (2001-05). She was the rst woman and the youngest artist to exhibit at the Palace of Versailles, in 2012. Recent highlights of her career include her current solo exhibition at the Musée d’art moderne et contemporain of Strasbourg, France (2018-2019); a travelling solo exhibition initiated in 2018 at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; the project Trafaria Praia, for the Pavilion of Portugal at the 55th Venice Biennale; the participation in the group exhibition The World Belongs to You at the Palazzo Grassi/François Pinault Foundation, Venice (2011); and her rst retrospective, held at the Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon (2010).
Vasconcelos’s work has been widely featured in many books, international magazines and renowned newspapers. Recent highlights include I’m your mirror. Joana Vasconcelos, La Fabrica, 2018; Joana Vasconcelos: Material World, Thames & Hudson, 2015; L’Art Contemporain, by Éloi Rousseau, Larousse, 2015; The Twenty First Century Art Book, Phaidon, 2014; XXL Art: When Artists Think Big, Prestel, 2014; Nature Morte, by Michael Petry, Thames & Hudson, 2013; Sculpture Now, by Anna Moszynska, Thames & Hudson, 2013.
Her work is represented in various private and public collections, including Amorepaci c Museum of Art, Seoul; ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark; Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Lisbon; Centro de Artes Visuales Fundación Helga de Alvear, Cáceres, Spain; Domaine Pommery, Reims, France; Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la création, Paris; FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon, France; Fundação EDP, Lisbon; Gerard L. Cafesjian Collection, Yerevan, Armenia; MACE – Coleção António Cachola, Elvas, Portugal; MUSAC, Léon, Spain; Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; and the Pinault Collection, Paris and Venice.