NYAB Event - Monika Bravo “Landscape of Belief”

Monika Bravo “Landscape of Belief”

Y Gallery (319 Grand St.)

This event has ended.

We are pleased to present “Landscape of Belief,” the first solo exhibition of Monika Bravo at Y Gallery. Landscape of Belief is a series of five installation works that call into question how we construct our lives according to our belief systems. The viewer experiences each sculpture as animations composed of text projected and floating diaphanously in glass panels. These texts that generate skylines of real and imaginary landscapes were culled from descriptions of illusory cities and from conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. In Landscape of Belief, Bravo creates a parallel between literature and architecture, as they both define, translate, and shape physical and mind structures.

By carefully overlapping surfaces, a rich non-material space of emptiness is achieved throughout the time-based composition. As a whole, the installation presents nothingness as an object, thus allowing for the space of the metaphysical to challenge the viewer. As the viewers are immersed in the projection, they are given the opportunity to experience the prospect of awareness, of the power of their belief systems and how they define the landscape of their lives. The installation took three years to make and addresses two important issues in the trajectory of Bravo’s work, such as the shifting definition of the medium and the physical manifestation of the piece. Bravo employs a variety of mediums such as archival pigment on cotton rag and film, glass, and aluminum. The process began with finding the images in Google and then recomposing each city’s skyline by meticulously outlining and tracing their architectural components with Calvino’s text. No documentation will ever be able to transmit the feeling of the texts floating on the surface of the materials, or the possibility of viewing the sculpture from both sides. What is imperative for Landscape of Belief is the necessity for it to be experienced.

Monika Bravo is a multi-disciplinary artist born in Bogotá, Colombia. She studied fashion design in Rome and Paris and Photography in London and New York. In 1994, she relocated to New York to pursue a career in the Arts. Invited to participate in the 56th Venice Biennale, she will be representing the Vatican City-State, at the Pavilion of the Holy See. In 2015, she will be showing “URUMU” at the Centro Conde Duque in Madrid, Spain. Her work has been shown at Sternesen Museum, Oslo; Museo de Arte, Banco de la Republica, Bogota, Colombia; Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul; Seoul International Biennial of New Media Art; SITE Santa Fe; Centro de Arte Contemporaneo Caja CAB de Burgos, Spain; El Museo del Barrio and New Museum in New York. Her videos have been screened at the MOMA, Anthology Film Archives, Brooklyn Museum, New Museum, the Kitchen, Museo di Arte Contemporaneo di Roma, the New York Video Festival at the Lincoln Center and the Americas Society, LA MOCA, Tate Britain, and Museo Reina Sofia.

Media

• Sculpture

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