Extended through August 19, 2022
Works Exhibited
About
My pieces have stories, with beginnings and ends, that describe imaginary places.
—Cristina Iglesias
Gagosian is pleased to present an exhibition of new and recent works by the renowned Spanish sculptor Cristina Iglesias. This is her first solo exhibition with the gallery, opening during London Gallery Weekend and scheduled to coincide with her Royal Academy of Arts commission, Wet Labyrinth (with Spontaneous Landscape) (2022), a large-scale sculptural environment in the Annenberg Courtyard at Burlington House from early June through the summer.
Over decades, Iglesias has evolved and developed a distinctive sculptural vocabulary that unites architecture, literature, and site-specific cultural influences in immersive built environments, autonomous sculptures, and wall works. She employs a formal language that brings the abstract together with the natural and the artificial, rendered in diverse materials that include metals, stone, ceramic, and concrete. From cunningly mechanized Baroque structures to labyrinths, screens, tidal pools, and deep wells, she poetically redefines space by conflating interior and exterior to produce unexpected new sensory sites for the viewer.
The exhibition in London features works from Iglesias’s ongoing Entwined and Growth series, dense cyborg accumulations of real and imagined vegetal matter. Iglesias composes these by welding sections of cast aluminum, then studding the composite structures with free-form cabochons of colored glass, improvised directly on their surfaces. The Entwined works of 2022 are mural reliefs that spread invasively across the gallery walls, while Growth I (2018) is a freestanding sculpture in five adjacent parts that the viewer can enter to glimpse the world from within its textured contours. Its rhizomatic forms twist and torque, forming a dense yet open thicket. Aligned with the organic exuberance and grotesque theatricality of the Baroque imaginary, the effect is that of a primal sanctuary from the realm of science fiction, rendered in opulent detail.
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In Conversation
Cristina Iglesias
Iwona Blazwick
Friday, June 10, 2022, 7:30pm
Burlington Arcade, London
www.burlingtonarcade.com
Join Gagosian for a conversation between Cristina Iglesias and Iwona Blazwick, former director of Whitechapel Gallery in London, on the occasion of the artist’s exhibition at Gagosian, Davies Street, London, and concurrent outdoor commissions for the Annenberg Courtyard of the Royal Academy of Arts in London and Madison Square Park in New York. Blazwick, a prominent advocate of pioneering women artists, curated an exhibition of Iglesias’s work in 2003 and recently edited Liquid Sculpture, an extensive new monograph on the artist’s public commissions. Signed copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. To attend the event, register at eventbrite.com.
Left: Cristina Iglesias. Photo: Javier Salas. Right: Iwona Blazwick. Photo: Christa Holka
Visit
London Gallery Weekend 2022
Damien Hirst, Cristina Iglesias, Titus Kaphar, Richard Prince
May 13–15, 2022
London
londongalleryweekend.art
As part of London Gallery Weekend, Gagosian will have extended hours at all London locations, including the Gagosian Shop in Burlington Arcade, where visitors can browse Richard Prince artist’s books, posters, and other merchandise as part of his Shop takeover. Visitors can view the exhibitions Cristina Iglesias at Davies Street, which opens on Saturday, May 14; Titus Kaphar: New Alte̲rs: Reworking Devotion at Grosvenor Hill, before it closes on May 15; and Damien Hirst: Natural History at Britannia Street.
A range of activities will be offered, including exhibition tours and drop-in drawing hours for visitors of all ages, in addition to treats from Connaught Patisserie and Treats Club. In its second year, London Gallery Weekend is a free annual event featuring over 150 of the city’s leading contemporary art galleries coming together to celebrate culture and creativity.
Installation view, Titus Kaphar: New Alte̲rs: Reworking Devotion, Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London, March 17–May 15, 2022. Artwork © Titus Kaphar. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
