Artist Spotlight
Adriana Varejão uses the tactics of the Baroque—simulation, juxtaposition, and parody—to reflect on the mythic pluralism of Brazilian identity and the social, cultural, and aesthetic interactions that produced it. In various mediums, Varejão draws upon a potent visual legacy stemming from the histories of colonialism and transnational exchange to create a confluence of hybridized forms—paintings that are architectural or sculptural, theatrical painted sculptures, mesmerizing multichannel video—which expose the multivalent nature of memory and representation.
The Artist Spotlight series highlights the work of individual artists for one week each month. Launched in spring 2020 as a weekly platform, the series is now in its second season and is presented as a regular part of the gallery’s programming. Each Artist Spotlight features new online content, and artwork by the artist is made available with pricing information for forty-eight hours only.
Artist Spotlight: Adriana Varejão features a new painting by the artist. For more information, please contact the gallery at collecting@gagosian.com.
Photo: Vicente de Mello
Join Adriana Varejão at her studio in Rio de Janeiro as she prepares for her upcoming exhibition at Gagosian in New York. She speaks about the inspirations for her “tile” paintings, from Portuguese azulejos to the Brazilian Baroque to the Talavera ceramic tradition of Mexico, and reveals for the first time her unique process for creating these works.
From October 19 to 21, 2017, Adriana Varejão’s video installation Transbarroco (2014) played across the façade and in the central courtyard of the historic John Sowden House, designed by Lloyd Wright in 1926.
Lilia Moritz Schwarcz explores themes that are central to the artist’s oeuvre.
Gagosian director Louise Neri discusses the evolution of the Azulejão series with Adriana Varejão.
Through June 22, the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, New York, is presenting a solo exhibition of Adriana Varejão’s work, including a new set of paintings from her Pratos (Plates) series and a site-specific outdoor sculpture. To accompany the show, Varejão has curated a selection of historical ceramic plates from the museum’s collection. Here, Louis Vaccara details the conceptual and formal references—and evolutions—in these works.
In conjunction with the exhibition Adriana Varejão: Don’t Forget, We Come From the Tropics at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, New York, Laura Dias Leite produced a video directed by Luisa Marques in which the artist discusses the genesis of the show. The exhibition debuts the latest works in Varejão’s Plate series (2011–), which, shown alongside historic ceramic plates from the museum’s collection, pose questions about aesthetic hierarchies.
To celebrate the publication of Phaidon’s new, expansive survey, we share an excerpt from Raphael Fonseca’s introduction and a few of the more than three hundred artists featured.
To coincide with the release of the first English-language monograph on the career of Adriana Varejão—in which her diverse body of work is explored in depth, from her earliest paintings in the 1990s to her most recent multimedia installations—the artist has curated a selection of films as part of a series copresented by Gagosian and Metrograph in the theater and online. The program features cinema exploring themes of eroticism, excess, and science-fiction fatalism.
The Summer 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Carrie Mae Weems’s The Louvre (2006) on its cover.
Curator Luisa Duarte considers the artist’s oeuvre, writing on Varejão’s active engagement with theories of difference, as well as the cultural specters of the past.
Sydney Stutterheim meditates on the power and possibilities of small-format artworks throughout time.
