• Valeska Soares
  • Valeska Soares
  • Valeska Soares
  • Valeska Soares
  • Valeska Soares
  • Valeska Soares

Valeska Soares

“The Art of Catastrophe Calms Me”

The Art of Catastrophe Calms Me

(SKU. 12060)

  • Date

    2023
  • Technique

    bench, wooden blocks, metal frame
  • Dimensions

    (H x W x D) 130 x Ø 34 cm
  • Edition

    10 + 3PA

  • Comes with certificate of authenticity


Regular price R$ 35.000,00
Regular price Sale price R$ 35.000,00
Available for immediate shipping

According to Valeska Soares, “The Art of Catastrophe Calms Me” refers to an excerpt from the book “Fragments of a Lover’s Discourse” by the French writer Roland Barthes.

“The idea is always a scene of ‘pathos’ which I imagine and which moves me. In short, a Theater. And it is the theatrical nature of the idea from which I benefit. This theater, of a stoic genre, amplifies me and gives me stature. By imagining an extreme solution (a definitive solution and another defined one), I produce a fiction, I become an artist, I create a scene, I paint my way out. The idea is seen.
The art of catastrophe calms me.”
(BARTHES, 1977, pg 176)

BARTHES, Rholand. “Fragments of a loving discourse” - Free translation by Valeska Soares - “Edit (Ideas of Solution), 2012”.

Biography

Valeska Soares - Carbono Galeria

Valeska Soares

b. 1957, Belo Horizonte (MG), Brazil | Lives and works in São Paulo (SP), Brazil.

Valeska Soares' sculptures and installations utilize a wide range of materials including mirrors, reflective surfaces, books, antique objects and furniture, marble, and perfume bottles.

In two- or three-dimensional media, his work creates a complex web between time and memory, invoking the human body and objects on the verge of disappearance. Starting from an active creation of absence, his works unfold the ambivalence of memory, in a tenuous balance between permanence and transience. The material employed, as well as the memory that

Soares often takes up the subject, disappears, and fades away, but this disappearance is also the creation of a unique effect. 

Among her recent solo exhibitions, highlights include: "Equivalents", Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brazil (2022); "Entrementes", Estação Pinacoteca, São Paulo, Brazil (2019); "Any Moment Now", Phoenix Museum, Phoenix, United States (2018) and "Unfold", Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, United States (2017). She has also participated in the group exhibitions Brasil Futuro: "Formas da Democracia", Museu da República, Brasília, Brazil (2023); "Movement: The Legacy of Kineticism", Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, United States (2022), "16h Biennale de Lyon", Lyon, France (2022); "GLASSTRESS", Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, United States (2021) and Understudies, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2021).  

Valeska Soares has works in important public collections, such as the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, United States; Daros Foundation, Zurich, Switzerland; Itaú Cultural Foundation, São Paulo, Brazil; Fundación “La Caixa”, Barcelona, ​​Spain; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, United States; Inhotim Institute, Brumadinho, Brazil; LACMA – Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, United States; MAC-USP, Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; MACBA – Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona, ​​Barcelona, ​​Spain; MAM – Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; MAM – Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; Pampulha Art Museum, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; MARCO – Museum of Contemporary Art, Monterrey, Mexico; MOCA – Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, United States; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, United States and Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom.

Representative galleries

Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel , Brazil