Cecilia De Torres Ltd - Eduardo Costa - Volumetric Paintings
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
			


	

Eduardo Costa - Volumetric Paintings 2001 Winter

Eduardo Costa - Volumetric Paintings: The Geometric Works

Since 1994, Costa's work has consisted of paintings with volume. Wall pieces and free-standing works are made of layers and layers of acrylic paint applied with brush and spatula. There is no canvas, wood or any other support.

In previous NY presentations (at the Elga Wimmer Gallery in 1995 and 1998,) Costa showed representational as well as abstract paintings. In this exhibition, the works are geometric monochromes that extend out from the wall and protrude up to 42 inches into space. The collection includes volumetric rectangles, spheres and triangles that are actually 'formed' chunks of paint. They make a convincing case for the extreme in art.

Costa is known as an early conceptualist who in the late 1960s was part of the NYC group that included Scott Burton, Vito Acconci, Marjorie Strider, Dan Graham, and others. His Fashion Fictions, a series of "interventions in media" that appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar between 1966 and 1984, were recently exhibited in GLOBAL CONCEPTUALISM, (Queens Museum, Walker Art Center, Miami Art Museum, and The List Art Center at MIT.) Similar work by Costa is currently on exhibit in HETERTOPÍAS at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, Spain - through February 27, and in May, his work will be in POP ART INTERNATIONAL at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Art critic Carter Ratcliff has written about Costa's volumetric paintings. "Costa is a conceptual painter - or, if you like, a painterly conceptualist. His conceptualism is anything but the usual kind, dry and didactic and determined to replace the sensuous presence of the work of art with theoretical discourse. These paintings are lush in form and texture, dazzling in color. Costa is a painter of ferocious delicacy."

Catalogue with essay by Alexander Alberro, interview by John Perreault, chronology, bibliography, 64 pages with color and b&w photographs.

"Costa employs the African tradition in the same way he utilizes the traditions of the European, North American, and South American avant-gardes to which his work is equally indebted. All are undone, broken apart, and reformulated in such a way that the four continents are fused and equally present in Costa's volumetric abstract paintings. In the end, this is the most striking and significant aspect of Costa's new series, for it at once melds not only the traditions of different regions of the globe but also the past and the new and as yet completely uncharted cultural possibilities of what will certainly be an unprecedentedly global twenty-first century." 
From Alexander Alberro's Reformulating Modernist Painting: Eduardo Costa's Geometrical Abstractions.

Karen Wilkin Review - Courtesy of The Partisan Review (2001)

Edward Leffingwell Review - Courtesy of Art in America (July, 2001)

Daniel Rothbart Review - Courtesy of New York Arts (January, 2001)

Eduardo Costa

Eduardo Costa is an Argentine artist who lived twenty-five years in the US and four in Brazil. He started his career in Buenos Aires as part of the Di Tella generation and continued to work in NYC, where he made a strong contribution to the local avant-garde. He collaborated with American artists Vito Acconci, Scott Burton, John Perreault and Hannah Weiner, among others. In Brazil, he participated in projects organized by Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape, Antonio Manuel, Lygia Clark, and others from the school of Rio. His work has been discussed in Art in America, Art Forum, and in the main books on conceptual art: A. Alberro, MIT, 1999; P. Osborne, Phaedon, 2002; Mari Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea, Yale/Houston Museum of Art, 2004; Inés. Katzenstein, MoMA, New York, 2004, Luis Pérez- Oramas and others, San Antonio Museum of Art, 2004; Luis Camnitzer, University of Texas, 2007, among others. Eduardo Costa ́s work has been exhibited at the New Museum, New York; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; Queens Museum of Art, Queens, New York; List Art Center, Boston; Miami Art Museum, Walker Art Center, Minnesota, MOMA, Buenos Aires; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, among others. A current project is to manufacture 30 Duchamp/Costa bicycles inspired by a 1980 model, for an exhibition on Duchamp-based work curated by Jessica Morgan (Tate Modern) for the Jumex Foundation in Mexico City. 

Please click for CV and chronology