Sandra Cinto
24 Oct - 21 Dec 2013
SANDRA CINTO
Piece of Silence
24 October - 21 December 2013
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is very pleased to present Piece of Silence, an exhibition of new drawings, paintings and sculptures by Sandra Cinto. Building on her repertoire of Surrealist imagery and Romantic narratives, Cinto's sixth solo show at the gallery features scenes of musical scores, spiraling landscapes and turbulent seas rendered across gallery walls and large-scale canvases, to more intimate works on paper. Through sound and silence, movement and stillness, these new compositions explore the passage of time within broader narratives of existence and transcendence, creating spaces for reverie that encourage a deeper reflection on both the course and transience of life.
Since the beginning of her career, Cinto has pushed the formal boundaries of drawing by incorporating different media such as photography, sculpture, found objects and, in the case of her large-scale works and installations, the existing architecture of a space itself to help her narratives unfold. Expanding on her earlier work with music, the artist's newest installation, Piece of Silence, engages with both the architecture and recent history of the ground floor exhibition space through mesmerizing wall drawings of thin, horizontal lines reminiscent of musical staffs, albeit empty and oversized. In place of notes, clefs and measures, these scores are punctuated by sculptures - bronze flutes and white string instruments decorated with drawings of water, rocks and waves – that protrude from the walls as objects in space, stripped of their musical functions similar to Cinto's skewed staffs. Rather than registering the passage of time through notation, sound and tempo, these instruments and bar lines now seem to suspend it entirely by denoting only silence and pause. Merging dream and reality, the artist also incorporates physical manifestations of time through references to recent events – here, the water line that Hurricane Sandy left in the gallery one year ago, which forms the horizon line of the wall drawings. Within this quiet and ethereal space, Cinto invites viewers to look beyond traditional notions of time that dictate life's course and, for a brief moment, lose themselves in her sublime world.
Similar narratives emerge on a group of large-scale canvases within the gallery's main upstairs space. Entitled One Day, After the Rain, this series captures a growing storm through paneled drawings of capping waves and squalls. Intricate and animated patterns of silver ink and acrylic unfurl across a sequence of blue backgrounds that recall the gentle color gradations of early twentieth century painter Arthur Dove. Echoing her installation in the downstairs gallery, these works also chronicle the passage of time, yet here through cycles of the natural world marked by movements of water, sun and moon. The symbolism of the series' title shines through in these scenes, as the storm's progression and transitions from day to night parallel stories of human challenge and triumph, the journey of life and the possibility of transcendence.
The exhibition continues into the adjacent gallery with the artist's newest drawings on paper and canvas. In the suite of framed drawings along one wall, delicate lines of black ink come to life as spiraling torrents and bursts of light. Similar imagery appears in illustrations of white ink set against a bright green background in Cinto's latest large-scale work, Emerald III. Reminiscent of a cloud in a clear sky, or perhaps hope amidst life's hardships, this work is a remarkable example of the artist's meticulous process as well as her increasingly daft and clever touch, which together continue to expand the limits and possibilities of drawing.
Born in 1968 in Santo André, Brazil, Cinto currently lives and works in São Paulo. Recent presentations include A Casa das Fontes (The House of Fountains), an installation conceived for Casa do Sertanista in São Paulo, Brazil, 2013 (solo), Circuitos Cruzados: O Centre Pompidou encontra o MAM (Crossed Circuits: The Centre Pompidou finds the MAM), Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo (group), One Day, After the Rain, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 2012-2013 (solo), DECADE: Contemporary Collecting 2002-2012, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, 2012-2013 (group), Encontro das Águas (Encounter of Waters), Olympic Sculpture Park Pavilion at the Seattle Art Museum, Washington, 2012-2014 (solo), and Solar, a site-specific project for Espaço Cultural do Complexo Hospitalar Edmundo Vasconcelos, São Paulo, 2011 (solo).
Piece of Silence
24 October - 21 December 2013
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is very pleased to present Piece of Silence, an exhibition of new drawings, paintings and sculptures by Sandra Cinto. Building on her repertoire of Surrealist imagery and Romantic narratives, Cinto's sixth solo show at the gallery features scenes of musical scores, spiraling landscapes and turbulent seas rendered across gallery walls and large-scale canvases, to more intimate works on paper. Through sound and silence, movement and stillness, these new compositions explore the passage of time within broader narratives of existence and transcendence, creating spaces for reverie that encourage a deeper reflection on both the course and transience of life.
Since the beginning of her career, Cinto has pushed the formal boundaries of drawing by incorporating different media such as photography, sculpture, found objects and, in the case of her large-scale works and installations, the existing architecture of a space itself to help her narratives unfold. Expanding on her earlier work with music, the artist's newest installation, Piece of Silence, engages with both the architecture and recent history of the ground floor exhibition space through mesmerizing wall drawings of thin, horizontal lines reminiscent of musical staffs, albeit empty and oversized. In place of notes, clefs and measures, these scores are punctuated by sculptures - bronze flutes and white string instruments decorated with drawings of water, rocks and waves – that protrude from the walls as objects in space, stripped of their musical functions similar to Cinto's skewed staffs. Rather than registering the passage of time through notation, sound and tempo, these instruments and bar lines now seem to suspend it entirely by denoting only silence and pause. Merging dream and reality, the artist also incorporates physical manifestations of time through references to recent events – here, the water line that Hurricane Sandy left in the gallery one year ago, which forms the horizon line of the wall drawings. Within this quiet and ethereal space, Cinto invites viewers to look beyond traditional notions of time that dictate life's course and, for a brief moment, lose themselves in her sublime world.
Similar narratives emerge on a group of large-scale canvases within the gallery's main upstairs space. Entitled One Day, After the Rain, this series captures a growing storm through paneled drawings of capping waves and squalls. Intricate and animated patterns of silver ink and acrylic unfurl across a sequence of blue backgrounds that recall the gentle color gradations of early twentieth century painter Arthur Dove. Echoing her installation in the downstairs gallery, these works also chronicle the passage of time, yet here through cycles of the natural world marked by movements of water, sun and moon. The symbolism of the series' title shines through in these scenes, as the storm's progression and transitions from day to night parallel stories of human challenge and triumph, the journey of life and the possibility of transcendence.
The exhibition continues into the adjacent gallery with the artist's newest drawings on paper and canvas. In the suite of framed drawings along one wall, delicate lines of black ink come to life as spiraling torrents and bursts of light. Similar imagery appears in illustrations of white ink set against a bright green background in Cinto's latest large-scale work, Emerald III. Reminiscent of a cloud in a clear sky, or perhaps hope amidst life's hardships, this work is a remarkable example of the artist's meticulous process as well as her increasingly daft and clever touch, which together continue to expand the limits and possibilities of drawing.
Born in 1968 in Santo André, Brazil, Cinto currently lives and works in São Paulo. Recent presentations include A Casa das Fontes (The House of Fountains), an installation conceived for Casa do Sertanista in São Paulo, Brazil, 2013 (solo), Circuitos Cruzados: O Centre Pompidou encontra o MAM (Crossed Circuits: The Centre Pompidou finds the MAM), Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo (group), One Day, After the Rain, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 2012-2013 (solo), DECADE: Contemporary Collecting 2002-2012, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, 2012-2013 (group), Encontro das Águas (Encounter of Waters), Olympic Sculpture Park Pavilion at the Seattle Art Museum, Washington, 2012-2014 (solo), and Solar, a site-specific project for Espaço Cultural do Complexo Hospitalar Edmundo Vasconcelos, São Paulo, 2011 (solo).