28/6/2007
Renata Lucas
Redcat, Los Angeles
Falha. The artist manipulates urban spaces and architecture to intensify the tension between inside and outside, public and private, past and present. Her practice is a critical interpretation of how our built environment determines actions, behavior and social relationships, and by extension, society's dependency on the preservation of prescribed definitions of space, property and order.
Falha
Renata Lucas manipulates urban spaces and architecture to intensify the tension
between inside and outside, public and private, past and present. Lucas’s practice
is a critical interpretation of how our built environment determines actions,
behavior and social relationships, and by extension, society’s dependency on the
preservation of prescribed definitions of space, property and order. The artist’s
work imagines a space where these barriers break down, where the possibility of
deconstructing boundaries might result in a different social dynamic. By offering an
alternative spatial imagination—one that brings into consideration malleability,
manipulation and play—Lucas provokes the possibility of new subjective and
collective engagement within our built environment.
In her recent contribution to the São Paulo Biennial, Quick Mathematics,
Lucas installed pavement, curbing and streetlights on top of the existing sidewalk,
a subtle but concrete gesture of doubling that necessitated a consideration of the
architecture of the street, one that promotes informal assembly, pedestrian transit,
and unexpected obstacles, coincidences and pleasures. As Lynn Zelevansky observes in
the exhibition catalogue: “Lucas is fascinated by the makeshift nature of Brazilian
construction, the way buildings are adapted and then readapted until they no longer
have a functional logic.”
For her Los Angeles debut, Lucas revisits the work Falha (Failure, 2003) an
ambitious installation of hinged sheets of plywood that initiates a series of
interactions with and reconfigurations of the site, thereby unleashing new
expectations of the relationship between individuals and the space of the gallery.
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication (forthcoming, August 2007) that
documents the artist’s work and includes contributions by REDCAT acting director and
curator Clara Kim, curator and critic Adriano Pedrosa, and Los Angeles County Museum
of Art curator Lynn Zelevansky.
Born in 1971 in Ribeiro Preto, Brazil, Lucas has had solo exhibitions at the
Galeria Millan Antonio in Sao Paulo, A Gentil Carioca in Rio de Janeiro,
Castelinho do Flamengo in Rio de Janeiro and Museu de Arte da Pampulha in Belo Horizonte. She participated in the 27th Bienal
de Sao Paulo in 2006. This year she will be included in exhibitions at
Encontro de Medellan, Colombia; the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami;
and the Tate Modern, London. Lucas received her BFA and MFA at the Universidade
Estadual de Campinas. Lucas lives and works in Sao Paulo.
This exhibition is made possible in part by the Nimoy Foundation and Ana Sokoloff.
Additional support provided by R-23.
Opening reception: Fri Jun 29, 6–9 pm. Artist’s talk: 6:30 pm
Redcat
631 West 2nd Street - Los Angeles
Gallery hours: noon–6 pm or curtain, closed Mondays
Free admission