Alexandre da Cunha: Amazons

CRG Gallery is delighted to announce Amazons, an exhibition of new work by Alexandre da Cunha, which will inaugurate the gallery’s new Lower East Side location. This show will mark the Brazilian born, London based artist’s second exhibition with CRG Gallery. The exhibi- tion’s title references both the mythological female warriors as well as a region in Brazil. This will be da Cunha’s first exhibition to focus exclusively on wall works.

Amazons consists of commercially produced, printed beach towels mounted to stretchers with a collage of found fabrics applied. The found fabrics are place mats, sails, clothing (replete with use stains); t-shirts, raincoats, etc. In several towels there is an image of a quasi- naked figure with an animal (tiger, snake, horse). For the artist, these images reference goddesses of classic iconography found in historic painting. In other works, multiple towels with the same image are sewn together in a serial sequence and dyed with different tones.

These suggest a comparison to conventions of some contemporary “figure paintings” e.g. Alex Katz, Robert Rauschenberg, Sigmar Polke, Martin Kippenberger.

The objet trouvé approach is fundamental to Alexandre da Cunha’s practice. Known everyday objects when removed from their familiar context take on a new significance. Beach towels simultaneously evoke the exotic and stereotypes (beach culture, tropical countries, tourism, etc.). Jens Hoffmann wrote about da Cunha’s works as “tropical ready mades”, an association the artist likes.

Alexandre da Cunha was born in 1969 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

He lives and works in London and San Paulo. Concurrently, the artist has an installation of three large scale sculptures at The Museum of Contemporary Art Plaza, Chicago. He will participate in the upcoming BAS8 (the British Art Show 8) opening October 9th at City Art Gallery and traveling to Edinburgh, Norwich and Southhampton, UK.