Galeria Leme presents Mariana Mauricio’s third solo exhibition in São Paulo, where the artist shows a new set of works, which deepen her exploration of the symbolic load of simple everyday objects, their inherent habits and the subjective construction of notions of intimacy, domesticity and femininity that arise from the interrelations between subject and such items.
The presented works are structured from the assemblage of objects that the artist gathers from the streets with original items that she creates and reworks. If the plastic quality of the abandoned objects results from external forces that are previous to the artist’s interventions, the new items she includes in her compositions are worked out to acquire a tactile and bodily quality that recreates the physical effect of the passage of time and of memories that never really existed. Through thoughtful combinations and juxtapositions, Mauricio creates configurations that amplify the “vibrations” of each one of the parts. Intensifying the formal limits of the elements and consequently reworking their subjectivity, in order to allow for the emergence of other narratives that are inherent to them but which remain dormant under the banality of their “use”.
This type of process is evident in the work that Mariana Mauricio develops from one of the structuring elements of the exhibition; an ironing board she rescued from an alley in London. The artist deconstructed its layers of fabric and foam, uncovering the stains and evidences that narrated its domestic story. When dissecting this element, she came across with two distinct types of fingerprints. On the one hand, the rubbing stains from the hot iron over the fabric, and, on the other, the orthogonal meshes given by the creases of the cloth’s folding which drew a Cartesian grid over the soft matter. The artist explores the confrontation between the abstract and orderly character of this grid and the organic and visceral forms that were accidentally emblazoned on these materials. Thus, the grid, the symbolic framework that organizes our time-space, is manually replicated by Mariana from the process of folding and ironing other fabrics. A process which generates a loop that connects the imprints created during the “useful life” of these found materials and the “artistic action” that replicates them, echoing the mundane operation that originated them in an earlier moment.
By emphasizing contradictory relations through compositions of immanent tension, the artist re-signifies the domestic lexicon making it a gateway to other important subtexts, such as the history of feminism, household oppression, the dubious space of sexuality, among others. While making them tangible through the exhibition’s experience.
About the artist:
Mariana Mauricio. (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1983. Lives and works in London, UK.)
Holds a degree in Fine Arts from Saint Martins College of Art and Design in 2008 and currently is enrolled in a master’s degree in arts at Goldsmiths University, London.
Participated in individual exhibitions such as: O fundo do poço, Die Raum, Berlin, Germany (2017); Lamb Arts, London, UK (2016), Galeria Leme, São Paulo, Brasil (2014 e 2012), among others. And of group shows such as: The House of Penelope, Gallery 46, London, UK (2017); Outras Coisas Visíveis sobre Papel, Galeria Leme, São Paulo, Brazil; Breaking Surfaces, Jette-Rudolph Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2012); Wit, Fear and Sarcasm, FAS Contemporary Art, London, UK; Versions and Diversions, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin, Ireland (2011); Frank-Suss Collection, Phillips de Pury at the Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2010), among others.
