2008 September

EDUARDO NAVARRO, New work: Installation and Drawings
9 September – 11 October 2008.
Opening: Tuesday, September 9, 6-8pm

Frederieke Taylor Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition entitled New Works: Installation and Drawings, by Argentinean artist Eduardo Navarro. This will be the artist’s first solo show in New York.

Eduardo Navarro creates installations that often work with specific groups of people. He constructs platforms that allow his practice to explore their condition. For example, in his previous works he has constructed an office for a psychologist in his studio at an artists’ residency, a Chapel for prayer at a university, and an underground bakery. Navarro explores his possibilities as an artist within the parameters of a given environment. In his drawings, his ideas and concepts become ‘automatic’ and free-flowing images sprung from the subconscious. As Meredith Mendelsohn states in ARTNews 2006, Eduardo Navarro’s works on paper are “figurative but frequently absurd or fantastic drawings that have a humorous and spontaneous quality.”

The installation in the main space is a Shelter or a cage, that could eventually be there only to catch the air or light coming in from the window-at the same time this shelter has the potential to be a functioning aviary. Navarro has placed items inside the Shelter such as bagels, newspaper, and common items used by humans (toothpaste, mirror) that may seem absurd at first sight. The Shelter is not only about the possibility of birds coming in, but is also about the Shelter itself and the act of trapping.

 

In the work “Ants and Glue”, Navarro creates a drawing by repetitively placing an ant on a drop of glue. This mechanical approach produces a field which has over 16,000 individual ants trapped in the glue. In the “Apply” series, the approach is also mechanical. Each job application (done by hand with pencil) is an enlarged copy of a real application. The applications are then all filled out repeatedly with one single silk-screen that contains Navarro’s personal information.

Also on view will be a new series of “Brown drawings” done on parchment paper. These drawings, made with sugar water and pencil, are baked in the oven until the sugar becomes brown. Navarro uses baking as a way to approach drawing as objects of consumption; just as sugar water can be food for ants.

Eduardo Navarro, originally a student of architecture, went on to work as an artist in the studio of painter Sergio Bazan. From 2003-2005 he studied with artist Guillermo Kuitca in the Program for the Visual Arts C.C.R.R. in Argentina. In 2006, he was at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and was named one of the “Young Artists to Watch” in ArtNews. This is Eduardo Navarro’s first solo show in New York. Navarro has had solo exhibitions in Buenos Aires and London and has been in numerous group shows in South America, Europe, and New York. He was included in the “UBS Young Art” exhibition in Switzerland and his works are included in the collection at the Malba Museum of Contemporary Art, Buenos Aires, as well as the UBS Drawing Collection, Switzerland.

In the Viewing Room, the gallery’s curated flatfile exhibition, will feature works on paper by Barry Canter, Carlos de Villasante, Romain Erkiletlian, and Mary Lum, curated by architect John Keenen.

For further information and visuals,
please contact the gallery.