Sérgio Sister
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 30, from 11am to 3pm
The gallery is pleased to present Sérgio Sister’s second solo exhibition in New York. Renowned for his sculptural paintings assembled from objects resembling crates, porticos and window frames, these new bodies of work are continuations of an extensive career with roots in abstraction, minimalism and permutations of the ready-made.
Sister will present two Pontaletes (posts) and a new series of the Caixas and Caixinas (fruit boxes); both appropriating industrial materials while intuiting spatial reconfigurations. The color bands of the Caixas series interact with light and dark, color and depth; what the artist himself describes as "a coexistence of solidarity, with more differentiation and complexity." The Pontaletes structures appear to recline against the wall or precariously protrude from it, permitting architectural vantage points and emanating shadows.
Playing with scale and subtle variation, Sister will showcase a selection of intimate paintings in which layers of opaque color conceal a symbiotic color from beneath. Gestural brushstrokes and layers of pigment generate luminous vibrations of texture that convey both emergence and disappearance across the surface of the canvas. These smaller pieces are countered with large-scale diptych paintings, furthermore exploring synergies between warm and cool colors that simultaneously absorb and reflect light. Two large Diptychs, Alumínio e laranja and Amarehlo e Azul cintilante, command the viewer with their optical intensity and balanced rapport of color.
Sérgio Sister was born in São Paulo in 1948, where he currently lives and works. Sister studied painting at the Armando Álvares Penteado Foundation, in São Paulo in the 1960s. He undertook graduate studies in social sciences and post-graduate studies in political science at the University of São Paulo. In 1970, he was arrested for protesting the military regime and detained for 19 months at the Tiradentes Prison in São Paulo. Sister attended painting workshops held at the institution. In 2002, the monograph Sérgio Sister was published by the editions Casa da imagem, with essays by Alberto Tassinari, Lorenzo Mammì and Rodrigo Naves. His work has been shown extensively throughout Brazil and is included in major public collections such as the Museu de Arte Moderna, the Pinacoteca do Estado in São Paulo and the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro.