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Marepe

Past exhibition
October 25 - December 21, 2013
  • Overview
  • Installation Views
  • Works
  • Press
Overview
Marepe Cabeça Ciclica, 2012 Bicycles and wood 72 1/2 x 86 1/8 x 24 3/4 inches (184.2 x 218.8 x 62.9 cm)
Marepe
Cabeça Ciclica, 2012
Bicycles and wood
72 1/2 x 86 1/8 x 24 3/4 inches
(184.2 x 218.8 x 62.9 cm)

For his third solo show at Anton Kern Gallery, Brazilian artist Marepe presents a group of seven sculptures made of common objects and put together with great formal rigor and poetic potential. These works achieve a complex layering of references and meanings addressing the linkage between the individual and society.

 

Marepe's sculptures are made from everyday materials such as plastic buckets and tables, ironing boards, brooms, bicycles, wheelbarrows, and chipboard. Some titles, such as Embutido Sanfona (embedded accordion), are inspired by popular music, others are factual and descriptive, such as Empilhamento (stacking). The work allows for a direct reading, and perhaps more importantly, leads toward a sensory experience; an intimacy of touch and interaction, comparable to the deeply emotional experience and immediacy of listening to music.

 

Duchamp and Neoconcretismo may be part of Marepe's inspiration, but it is the artist's deep concern for the social and for human interaction that drives his art. He combines quotidian objects and materials to form disarmingly simple monuments, some suggesting abstract forms, others depicting figures engaged in dance-like interaction, and in some cases allowing cut-out chipboard to assist in creating specific figures.

 

Many of Marepe's titles refer to Brazilian music or lyrics. Embutido Sanfona for example, can be translated as “built-in concertina,” the slightly smaller version of the accordion which is the lead instrument in Forró, a thrilling and infectious folk-pop music from the North-East of Brazil, the region where Marepe grew up and still lives and works. "Embutido Sanfona" also refers to Marepe's previous wooden models for rooms and trucks and his interest in communal and shared spaces. It is simultaneously a minimalist kinetic sculpture, a model for multi-purpose housing, and a musical celebration.

 

Marepe's work speaks, or rather sings of everyday life and love, celebrating and elevating the specific materials and origins of the work to the universal. The ordinary shines in its simple beauty declaring its liberating and transformative power.

Download Press Release
List of Works
Installation Views
  • Installation view of Marepe's third solo show at Anton Kern Gallery, featuring seven readymade sculptures.
  • Installation view of Marepe's third solo show at Anton Kern Gallery, featuring seven readymade sculptures. Another view of the show.
  • Installation view of Marepe's third solo show at Anton Kern Gallery, featuring seven readymade sculptures. Marepe's plastic sculptures.
  • Installation view of Marepe's third solo show at Anton Kern Gallery, featuring seven readymade sculptures. Detail of plastic works.
  • Installation view of Marepe's third solo show at Anton Kern Gallery, featuring seven readymade sculptures. An additional vantage point of the show.
  • Installation view of Marepe's third solo show at Anton Kern Gallery, featuring seven readymade sculptures. Marepe's wood and metal work in the front.
  • Installation view of Marepe's third solo show at Anton Kern Gallery, featuring seven readymade sculptures. Other works in the show.
  • Installation view of Marepe's third solo show at Anton Kern Gallery, featuring seven readymade sculptures. Marepe's reimagining of the bicycle.
Works
  • Marepe Cabeça Ciclica, 2012
    Marepe
    Cabeça Ciclica, 2012
  • Marepe Peixe Com Auréola, 2012
    Marepe
    Peixe Com Auréola, 2012
  • Marepe A Coruja (The Owl), 2012
    Marepe
    A Coruja (The Owl), 2012
  • Marepe Empilhamento II, 2013
    Marepe
    Empilhamento II, 2013
  • Marepe Empilhamento I, 2013
    Marepe
    Empilhamento I, 2013
  • Marepe Embutido Sanfona, 2013
    Marepe
    Embutido Sanfona, 2013
  • Marepe Sistema M, 2013
    Marepe
    Sistema M, 2013
Press
  • Marepe's "Necessities" at Anton Kern Gallery in Chelsea

    Daniel Gauss, Examiner, November 6, 2013
    This link opens in a new tab.
  • Review: Marepe

    Howard Halle, Time Out New York, November 1, 2013
    This link opens in a new tab.

Related artist

  • Marepe

    Marepe

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Press Inquiries:
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