Lygia Pape is one of the most significant Brazilian artists of her generation, having worked in a wide-range of media including sculpture, drawing, engraving, filmmaking and installation. Her work will be on view throughout three-floors of Hauser & Wirth New York’s 69th Street gallery this September.
The exhibition unpacks the artist’s singular vision, mining her profound and often playful approach to the physical and material experience of art, ultimately elucidating a deeply human understanding and unique reframing of geometry and abstraction.
Upon entering the exhibition, visitors encounter one of Pape’s most emblematic works, Ttéia 1A (1978/1979/1991). The silver thread installation is part of the artist’s iconic Ttéia series, first conceived in 1978. The word Ttéia, which Pape created, is an elision of the Portuguese word for ‘web’ and ‘Ttéia’ a colloquial word for a graceful and delicate person or thing. Installed in a corner of the gallery, the groupings of thread intersect and weave, coursing through the space to create phantom lines across the walls.
The second floor of the exhibition features three important artworks – ‘Roda dos Prazeres (Wheel of Pleasures)’ (1967), ‘Jogo de tênis (Tennis Game)’ (2001) and a series of collaborative collages produced with Concrete artist Ivan Serpa during the 1970s ~ that mark Pape’s increasing emphasis on participatory projects, collage, and video installations.
The exhibition concludes on the third floor with Pape’s early geometrical Tecelares (Weavings), woodcut prints from the 1950s that mark her transition from the Concrete to Neo-Concrete movement, of which she would become a founding member in 1959. Pape’s Tecelares have a direct lineage to her later ‘Ttéia series. Pape’s acute sensitivity to technique and material in these works allowed for what she believed was a ‘better presentation of the idea and the inventive richness.’
In explaining her approach, Pape once said, “My concern is always invention. I always want to invent a new language that’s different for me and for others, too…I want to discover new things. Because, to me, art is a way of knowing the world…to see how the world is…of getting to know the world.” Lygia Pape passed away on May 3, 2004 in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 77.
The exhibition, Lygia Pape, will be on view from September 6 to October 20, 2018, with an Opening Reception on Thursday, September 6 from 6-8pm, at Hauser & Wirth New York, 32 East 69th Street, NYC. This exhibition marks the gallery’s first solo presentation of Pape’s work in the United States since announcing worldwide representation of Projeto Lygia Pape in 2016.
The exhibition is accompanied by a forthcoming catalogue from Hauser & Wirth Publishers that includes a conversation between the artist’s daughter, Paula Pape, curator Paulo Herkenhoff, and poet Ferreira Gullar, with an additional commissioned text by author Alexander Alberro.