Bosco Sodi: Totality Event

KÖNIG WIEN

KÖNIG GALERIE is pleased to present TOTALITY, a solo exhibition by Bosco Sodi in the Vienna gallery.

Sodi is mostly known for his roughly-textured relief paintings. In this recent series, COSMIC, he brings together multiple colours in the same composition for the first time; combining pure pigments in hues of black, gold, white, grey, and blue with glue and natural fibres. The resulting works are made up of shadows, faint light, and a movement suggestive of the vast, awe-inspiring nature of the universe.

These recent paintings are the outcome of an intensively physical process in which experimentation and chance play an important role. Laying the canvas horizontally, Sodi builds up layers of his paint mixture by hand over several days, giving the works a sculptural quality. He stops once the surface begins to crack, surrendering the process to time and the elements. Sometimes he turns the canvas to use gravity as a latent force as the work dries and fissures appear. Formed as a result of environmental conditions over time, there is an alchemy of sorts, as the artist captures the changing and atmospheric qualities of light, air, and weather in the paintings.

The site-specific role that the elements play in his works is also reflected in how Sodi sees them – as a series of objects that correspond to and belong in a certain space – creating a conversation between the works and the space around them.
Six clay spheres taken from the ground at Sodi’s studio in Oaxaca, Mexico, exemplify this dialogue. Smoothed by hand and hardened via a complex drying process that takes months to complete, they represent planets (as previously taught) of our solar system. Surrounded by the COSMIC paintings, the clay works present themselves as if creating their own gravitational fields and manifesting their own unique force.

Together, the works in TOTALITY engender reflection and meditation in the viewer. They speak of silence, contemplation, of the passage of time, of nature and humanity’s connection to it. As Sodi writes: “My deepest intention is that my work produces a feeling of totality, of connection to the viewer’s inner world, with their surroundings, and with nature.”