She had solo exhibitions at Hessel Museum - Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2023); Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City (2023); MASP, São Paulo (2021); Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK (2021); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2019); Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2019); Pivô, São Paulo (2016); SculptureCenter, New York (2015); Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs (2014), and Centro Cultural São Paulo (2012). Selected institutional shows are Geneva Biennale – Sculpture Garden, Geneva (2022); 57th Venice Biennale (2017), 32nd Bienal de São Paulo (2016), 34th Panorama of Brazilian Art, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (2015), 2013 Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2013), 9th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre (2013) and the 11th Biennale de Lyon (2011). Her work is present in the collections of Tate Modern, London; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo and Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo, among others.
The Life of Sculptures
© Victor&Simon - Joana Luz
Erika Verzutti: The Life of Sculptures
The Tower
East Gallery, Level 0
Starting from
Erika Verzutti (1971) is a Brazilian sculptor who lives and works between São Paulo and Europe. Verzutti was in residency at LUMA Arles from May through July 2024.
The residency provides a platform for Verzutti to produce a significant body of new work, present an exhibition, entitled The Life of Sculptures, and develop an ongoing film project that will be shot in Arles. Verzutti’s multifarious practice as a sculptor encompasses organic, human, and animal forms, references to Modern and Modernist art, citations of Brazilian art and architecture, and a playful suggestiveness bordering on eroticism. Often cast in bronze or concrete, the sculptures (and three-dimensional “wall works”) retain a light touch and colorful palette with forms that conjure associations of fruits, bodies, landscapes, and art history. For The Life of Sculptures, Verzutti has taken her signature vertical forms (they suggest the Endless Column of Constantin Brancusi with a tropical touch) and literally lays them down resting upon resin encased newspapers. This setting of sculptural repose or sheer exhaustion is situated among a number of bronze reliefs. These often share motifs such as body parts, orbs, or eggs, and traces of the artist’s hand or sculptural tools, creating a surreal and anthropomorphic dreamscape around the resting sculptures. The exhibition also suggests a studio space (the artist will also bring in clay models of work in progress), one in which the artist can absorb what has been made and what may come next. Also included are a series of clay models, rejects that lie in a “sculptural cemetery”, completing Verzutti’s life cycle of sculptures.
Verzutti’s upcoming exhibition, entitled Notizia, at the Fondazione ICA in Milan opens in April and runs through July 2024. Previous solo exhibitions include New Moons, CCS Bard Galleries, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2023), Tantra, Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City (2023), Churros and Rain, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, USA (2022), A indisciplina da escultura, Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo, Brazil (2021), Erika Verzutti, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK (2021), Erika Verzutti, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2019), Aspen art Museum, Aspen (2019), Pivô, São Paulo (2016), Sculpture Center, New York (2015), Tang Museum, Saratoga (2014) and Centro Cultural São Paulo (2012). Selected institutional exhibitions include the 57th Venice Biennale (2017), 32nd Bienal de São Paulo (2016), 34th Panorama of Brazilian Art, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (2015), 2013 Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2013), 9th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre (2013) and the 11th Biennale de Lyon (2011).
Curated by Vassilis Oikonomopoulos, Director of Exhibitions and Programs and Tom Eccles, Senior Consultant.
Erika Verzutti
Erika Verzutti was born in 1971 in São Paulo.
In her work, Erika Verzutti combines dissimilar elements and styles. She can work with classical materials such as bronze and clay or craftier ones such as papier-mâché and cardboard. Many of her sculptures reveal a special attention to nature through the use of cast fruits and vegetables, other works sources from current matters such as newspaper headlines and internet phenomena.
Erika Verzutti was in residence at LUMA Arles from May 1 to July 15, 2024.