Adriana Varejão

January 7 - February 12, 2000
540 West 26th Street

Press Release

Lehmann Maupin is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of new paintings by Brazilain artist Adriana Varejão. The exhibition will open Friday, 7 January 2000, and continue through 12 February 2000.

The visually arresting work of Adriana Varejão draws on her heritage as an artist living and working in Brazil. Incorporating both popular and art historical images in her painting, and appropriating potent remnants of Brazil's colonial past, she constructs sculptural paintings that often take the fragmented or eviscerated human body as their subject. Extremely tactile and often saturated in blood-red hues, Varejão's highly visceral work recalls the pain and pleasure that accompanies both colonialism and the creative process. Her work defies narrow classification. Although her work is of a culture, it reaches beyond geographical boundaries.

In her new paintings, Varejão uses the sea as a point of departure. Continually reexamining and re presenting Brazil's cultural history, Varejão views the sea as the common link between countries such as Portugal, China and India- all countries sharing in Brazil's development. The ocean-inspired images in the show are comprised of layers of stretched canvas hung as one. The result is an installation that uses multiple canvases and the wall as if they are a continuous plane. The image of the sea begins to float. In conjunction, Varejão will show several self-portraits that also question space and identity.

Born in 1964, Adriana has been included in the São Paolo Biennial 1998, the Johannesburg Biennial 1995, and was included in the first Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, which opened in September 1999. In addition, she has exhibited internationally at Galeria Carmargo Vilaça in São Paolo, Gislaine Huseenot in Paris, and Soledad Lorenzo in Madrid.

Artists in this exhibition

• Adriana Varejão

Exhibition Works

Linha Equinoctial III (Equatorial Line III), 1999 oil on canvas, colored strings and porcelain 58.75 x 70.25 inches (canvas only) 149.2 x 178.4 cm LM1954


Azulejaria 'De Tapete em Carne Viva' (Carpet-Style Tilework in Live Flesh), 1999 oil, foam, aluminum, wood and canvas 59 x 75 x 9.8 inches 149.9 x 190.5 x 24.9 cm LM1811


Azulejaria 'de Tapete' sobre Telas (Carpet-Style Tilework on Canvases), 1999 oil, foam, aluminum, wood and canvas polyptych 95 x 140 x 38 inches 241.3 x 355.6 x 96.5 cm LM1817


Carne Marinha (cinco pratos), [Marine Meat (five plates)], 1999 oil, foam, porcelin on canvas 28 x 39 inches (canvas only) 72 x 100 cm 63.5 x 39 inches (canvas including plates) 161.3 x 99.1 cm LM1816


Tela Sobre Platos (Painting on Plates), 1999 oil on canvas, 200 plates 58.75 x 70.5 inches (canvas only) 149.2 x 179.1 cm LM1958


Cacos e Peixes (Fragments and Fish), 1999 oil, plaster, glue on canvas 60 x 77.5 inches 152.4 x 196.9 cm LM1813


Margem (Edge), 1999 oil on canvas and wood - triptych 62.6 x 85.8 inches (Left panel) 159 x 217.9 cm 85.8 x 62.6 inches (Middle panel) 217.9 x 159 cm 85.8 x 62.6 inches (Right panel) 217.9 x 159 cm LM1810