Zielinsky is pleased to present “Vestigios de los días” by Shirley Paes Leme. The first solo exhibition of the Brazilian artist in Spain brings together a series of bronze sculptures and installations made in recent years.
Since the 1970s, Paes Leme has produced works in a variety of media, including installation, video, drawing, painting, sculpture, and works in public spaces. Over the years, the artist has been interested in the trail of fleeting and fluid materials, such as humus, light, soot, gunpowder, blood, pollen and fungi. For the exhibition “Vestigios de los días”, the word is the fleeting matter, which is captured by the artist through writing and later turned into sculpture. By materializing these words in bronze, the artist gives them an incarnated body, using a component that she wishes to remain over time: bronze, a key material in the history of sculpture and which offers excellent resistance to corrosion.
Four pieces-installations are present in the exhibition: a series of sculptures with proper names that are summoned to those that on the one hand are nouns used to designate people identified with the female gender, and on the other hand are a poetic bridge to other semantics – Estrella, Aurora, Pilar, Sol, Alma, Luz. In another part of the gallery, phrases and words under the ceiling towards the exhibition space, the artist turns to literature and extracts from her own writing, poetic fragments in English and Portuguese (Paes Leme’s mother language) loaded with a sublime dimensional sense – You poured stars on my way; O instante é semente viva (The moment is a living seed). Finally, “Garranchos”, a set of bronze sticks that compose through scribbles an enigmatic writing of an irrational order and “Vivir desconcierta”, an installation made up of a reflective pavement in which the viewer participates in a writing executed in the space. The image of this walking body is multiplied along the walls and the statement that tells us that living is a way of undoing order.
Shirley Paes Leme (1955, Cachoeira Dourada, Brazil) lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. After graduating from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil (1975-1978), the artist received a scholarship from the Fulbright Foundation and began a master’s degree at the University of Arizona, Tucson, USA (1983). Later she moved to Berkeley, where she began a doctoral program at John F. Kennedy University (1986). In addition to her artistic practice, the artist is also a theoretical and academic and has taught at the Federal University of Uberlândia and Faculdade Santa Marcelina, Brazil.
Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and biennials, including: Lausanne Biennial (1993); Poland Biennial (1995); Mercosur Biennial, Brazil (1999, 2005); Havana Biennial, Cuba (2000); Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Portugal (2000); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany (1997); Musée d’art contemporain, Bordeaux, France (2001); Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil (2007); Museu da Vale, Vitória, Brazil (2012) among others.
Her work can be found in numerous public and private collections, such as: MAM-Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil; MAC-Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil; National Museum in Aalborg, Denmark; Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brazil; Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil; Gilberto Chateaubriand/Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Inhotim, Minas Gerais, Brazil; Museum of Art of Brasília, Brazil; Museum of Contemporary Art of Ceará, Brazil; Patricia Cisneros, New York.