• The Anarchist, 2012
    Shelf with figurine and yarn, wall installation
    56 h. x 43 x 10 1/4 inches

Liliana Porter: The Task

April 28—June 9, 2012


Carrie Secrist Gallery is pleased to announce Liliana Porter: The Task, opening Saturday, April 28, 2012 from 5-8 PM. The Task is Porter’s fourth solo exhibition at Carrie Secrist Gallery.

Liliana Porter’s expansive body of work includes prints, drawings, collages, works on canvas, photography, installations, film, and video. With enchanting incongruity, Porter’s work playfully subverts convention, disrupts time, and challenges reality. Mixing the absurd with the philosophical, Porter creates extraordinary situations luring us into the realm of her idiosyncratic cast of characters.

In the main gallery, Porter casts a performance of eclectic figurines, knickknacks, toys, and souvenirs acting in unexpected combinations and circumstances. Porter’s ensemble of inanimate figurines performs mundane tasks, such as weaving, sweeping, and chopping wood. The peculiar situations she invents, where disparate events occur simultaneously, or dissimilar characters interact, wittily invite political, philosophical and existential interpretation.

In the second gallery, other members of this cast of souvenirs engage in quiet contemplation or confront one another in staged interactions. By creating dialogues between dissimilar characters that come together from different times and places, Porter demonstrates the non-linear nature of time. Porter’s space of representation fashions a new reality where everything can come together. The enigmatic figurines, then, act as objects of reflection – mirrors the viewer employs to discern or even produce meaning.

Liliana Porter (Argentine, b. 1941) lives and works in New York and exhibits extensively nationally and abroad. Recent exhibitions include a two-person exhibition with Marcel Broodthaers at The New Museum, New York, a web project with Dia Art Foundation, and solo exhibitions at the Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires; Palacio Aguirre de Cartagena, Spain; and the Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona. Her work is in numerous public and private collections in Latin America, Europe and the United States, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Smithsonian Museum of American Art; and Tate Modern, London.

For more information please contact Carrie Secrist or Stevie Greco at 312.491.0917.

Images

  • Man with Pickaxe (pink shirt), 2011
    Metal figurine on wood panel
    8 x 6 x 1 1/2 inches

  • Black Spill (man in green outfit), 2011
    Figurine, ship, and acrylic on wooden shelf
    6 3/4 x 14 x 7 1/2 inches

  • Situation with White Wagon, 2009
    Acrylic and assemblage on canvas
    44 1/4 x 60 x 4 inches

  • The Anarchist, 2012
    Shelf with figurine and yarn, wall installation
    56 h. x 43 x 10 1/4 inches

  • The Anarchist, 2012
    Detail
    Shelf with figurine and yarn, wall installation
    56 h. x 43 x 10 1/4 inches

  • The Other One (red sweater), 2008
    Acrylic, mirror, metal figurine on paper
    14 3/4 x 10 3/4 inches

  • Tiger V, 2006
    Digital embroidery, thread on paper
    17 3/4 x 22 inches
    Edition of twenty-five

  • Red Girl, 2006
    Digital embroidery on paper
    17 1/2 x 22 inches
    Edition of twenty-five

  • To Sweep, 2009
    Acrylic and assemblage on canvas
    44 x 44 x 4 inches

  • The Pond, 2011
    Acrylic, assemblage and figurine on canvas
    12-inch diameter

  • To Go Back (blue bell), 2011
    Porcelain bell, figurine, ink and shelf
    9 x 24 x 6 inches

  • Two of Them, 2005
    Collage and colored pencil on paper
    14 1/2 x 11 inches

  • Dialogue with sitting man, 2011
    Diptych, figurines on 2 wooden shelves
    2 x 8 3/4 x 2 inches

  • Dialogue with sitting man, 2011
    Detail
    Diptych, figurines on 2 wooden shelves
    2 x 8 3/4 x 2 inches

  • The Tale, 2011
    Figurines on wooden shelf
    6 x 12 x 6 inches

  • Forced Labor (seamstress), 2012
    Shelf with figurine and fabric
    10 x 43 1/4 x 10 1/4 inches

  • Forced Labor (seamstress), 2012
    Detail
    Shelf with figurine and fabric
    10 x 43 1/4 x 10 1/4 inches