ArtYard is thrilled to present Landscape and Hierarchies, a solo exhibition featuring new works by Alexandre Arrechea on view Sept. 17, 2022 through Jan. 22, 2023.
Arrechea has earned acclaim as an artist whose work continues to move, surprise, and deliver the type of optimism that sometimes only art can provide. This exhibition marks 20 years of the artist’s solo career.
Landscape and Hierarchies explores the responsibility that lies between the individual and the collective and the ripple effects human actions have on society and nature. Curated by Elsa Mora, the exhibition was produced specifically for ArtYard and includes monumental watercolors, sculptures, and multimedia installations.
On Sunday, Sept. 18, ArtYard will host an Artist Talk and Gallery Tour with Alexandre Arrechea. The talk is moderated by Cuban-born American writer, curator, and art conservator Rosa Lowinger and features never-before-seen footage of the early stages of Arrechea’s career and a tour of the exhibition. More...information about this ticketed event is here.
For Landscape and Hierarchies, Arrechea draws inspiration from sports for his continued investigation into the power dynamics and structures of our everyday lives. Arrechea presents objects commonplace to baseball stadiums and playgrounds juxtaposed in surprising ways with natural elements such as glass trees, river water, and morning dew. His work transforms ephemeral moments like swinging and sketching into monumental acts, amplifying the importance of small actions. In addition, the artist offers multiple viewpoints into his creative process, blurring the distinction between what is personal and public while exploring the nature of truth.
“In Landscape and Hierarchies, sports is a reflection of humanity,” says Mora, ArtYard Artistic Director and Curator. “Arrechea interrupts the dynamics those at the top of social hierarchies have enacted over generations — competition over cooperation, winners and losers, rules and penalties, the separation of humans from nature. Through his work and creative process, the artist invites us into a collaborative space to co-create a future where people and the planet thrive.”
A summer residency at ArtYard offered Arrechea the time to reflect, experiment, and create work. During that period, he became fascinated by the Delaware River, which resulted in the largest piece of the exhibition and likely of its kind, a 71-foot watercolor titled River and Ripples employing water collected from the river.
The works also include Shared Words, five black and white portraits printed on an aluminum sheet mounted above a scoreboard-like acrylic grid covering the subjects’ mouths. Visitors are invited to give voice to those depicted by spelling words with sticks of white chalk.
Landscape and Hierarchies is an installation of a circular putting green inlaid with a track for a golf ball amid a forest of glass-blown sculptures of trees. The piece is flanked by video projections that offer alternative views of the imagined landscape.
In ArtYard’s VSG, or Very Small Gallery, are White Corner 2, 3, and 4, a series of three videos meant to be viewed through an intimate aperture showing two identical figures approaching a blind corner with raised weapons, unable to grasp the mutuality of their projected fears.
Arrechea, 52, who has roots in Havana, New York, and Madrid, is widely recognized for Nolimits (2013), a monumental project composed of 10 sculptures inspired by iconic buildings in New York City and erected along Park Avenue, and Katrina Chairs (2016), erected at the Coachella Music Festival, Palm Springs, California. Last December, he created Dreaming with Lions, an immersive rotunda resembling an enormous forum-like library installed at Faena Miami Beach. This June, Arrechea’s Orange Functional, a sculpture with orange branches 20 feet high that seems to blossom into 25 functional basketball hoops, opened at Art Omi, which commissioned the work.
Entrada actualizada el el 14 sep de 2022
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