Edgard de Souza

L.A. Louver is pleased to announce an exhibition of new sculpture and works on paper by Brazilian artist Edgard de Souza. In this new work, Edgard de Souza continues to address the subject of corporality, which has been the artist’s concern for over a decade. The exhibition includes examples of the artist’s classical evocations of the male body, based upon the artist’s own. The exhibition also includes a major new multipart sculpture which is made up of eleven elements that together comprise a human body. The body is deconstructed, with its parts presented in a seemingly casual arrangement. The effect however is not of a body torn asunder, but rather one in which greater emphasis is accorded to each part of the body precisely because of its fragmentation. In this way, the issue of mortality is muted by a more acute examination of corporality.

Born in 1962, in São Paulo, Brazil, where he continues to live and work, Edgard de Souza graduated from the city’s Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado (FAAP). De Souza has exhibited internationally since the mid 1980s, including in Rio de Janeiro, Caracas, Sydney, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Madrid, Berlin, Rome, Bologna and New York. He participated in the 1991 and 1997 Panorama at MAM-SP, and in 1998 his work was included in the prestigious XXIV Bienal de São Paulo. In 2001 the Museu de Arte de Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Brazil presented a solo exhibition of de Souza’s work and in 2004 a retrospective was held at the Pinacoteca of the State of São Paulo.

De Souza’s figurative work is accompanied by examples of the artist’s Gotas, or drops and splatters, as well as vessel forms fabricated from animal pelts. These distilled, abstract forms are connected to an imaginary body that shaped them. They may be discerned as biological – from within the body or emanating from the body – and also allude to the animal, vegetable and mineral worlds. Whether formally figurative or abstract, the sculpture is materially seductive: De Souza uses bronze, marble, wood, acrylic and lacquer to create beguiling, mutable surfaces. Their sensuousness and intimacy of scale establishes a specific relationship with the viewer’s body. The sculptures are complemented by a series of drawings that evoke biomorphic forms. Edgard de Souza

Concurrent to this exhibition, L.A. Louver presents an exhibition of Ken Price recent watercolor paintings in the second floor gallery, and a new sculpture entitled “Fountain” by Gwynn Murrill in the skyroom.

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Edgard de Souza