2012 Catalogue Archive

Brazilian artist Alexandre da Cunha transforms everyday objects into humorous and wickedly sharp sculptures. Mops, beach towels, bottles, and planters have all found their way into his work, and da Cunha possesses a unique ability to elevate and transform these things in such a way that they enter into a dialogue with other Modernist and Minimalist works from the past. Here, a bottle half-full of sand sits upside down in a cast block of concrete, the bottle’s utilitarian quality forever stunted. The sand hints at an hourglass, though here it is frozen in one position in the wine bottle, perhaps a clever play on the alcohol’s ability to transform our perception of time. Da Cunha was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1969 and lives and works in London. His work has been in exhibitions at the Centro Cultural São Paolo; The Camden Arts Center, London; the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; and the Witte de With, Rotterdam. He was recently in the exhibition economy of means: Toward Humility in Contemporary Sculpture at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and will be included this fall in an exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum. He is currently in the 30th São Paulo Biennial. His work is in the collections of the Tate Modern, London; Museu de Arte de Pampulha, Belo Horizonte; Inhotim – Instituto de Arte Contemporanea, Brumadinho; CIFO – Cisneros Collection, Miami; Ellipse Foundation Contemporary Art Collection, Cascais; Rennie Collection, Vancouver; and Sammlung Marli Hoppe-Ritter, Waldenbruch.