February 24, 2021
Join Adriana Varejão at her studio in Rio de Janeiro as she prepares for her upcoming exhibition at Gagosian in New York. She speaks about the inspirations for her “tile” paintings, from Portuguese azulejos to the Brazilian Baroque to the Talavera ceramic tradition of Mexico, and reveals for the first time her unique process for creating these works.
Artwork © Adriana Varejão; directors: Pedro Buarque, Luisa Marques; producer: Pedro Buarque; executive producer: Cecília Fortes; director of photography: João Faissal; sound: JP; script: Luisa Marques, Ana Buarque; editing: Luisa Marques; soundtrack: Berna Ceppas; colorist: Sergio Pasqualino
Through June 22, the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, New York, is presenting a solo exhibition of Adriana Varejão’s work, including a new set of paintings from her Pratos (Plates) series and a site-specific outdoor sculpture. To accompany the show, Varejão has curated a selection of historical ceramic plates from the museum’s collection. Here, Louis Vaccara details the conceptual and formal references—and evolutions—in these works.
In conjunction with the exhibition Adriana Varejão: Don’t Forget, We Come From the Tropics at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, New York, Laura Dias Leite produced a video directed by Luisa Marques in which the artist discusses the genesis of the show. The exhibition debuts the latest works in Varejão’s Plate series (2011–), which, shown alongside historic ceramic plates from the museum’s collection, pose questions about aesthetic hierarchies.
To celebrate the publication of Phaidon’s new, expansive survey, we share an excerpt from Raphael Fonseca’s introduction and a few of the more than three hundred artists featured.
To coincide with the release of the first English-language monograph on the career of Adriana Varejão—in which her diverse body of work is explored in depth, from her earliest paintings in the 1990s to her most recent multimedia installations—the artist has curated a selection of films as part of a series copresented by Gagosian and Metrograph in the theater and online. The program features cinema exploring themes of eroticism, excess, and science-fiction fatalism.
The Summer 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Carrie Mae Weems’s The Louvre (2006) on its cover.
Curator Luisa Duarte considers the artist’s oeuvre, writing on Varejão’s active engagement with theories of difference, as well as the cultural specters of the past.
Sydney Stutterheim meditates on the power and possibilities of small-format artworks throughout time.
From October 19 to 21, 2017, Adriana Varejão’s video installation Transbarroco (2014) played across the façade and in the central courtyard of the historic John Sowden House, designed by Lloyd Wright in 1926.
Lilia Moritz Schwarcz explores themes that are central to the artist’s oeuvre.
Gagosian director Louise Neri discusses the evolution of the Azulejão series with Adriana Varejão.
This video presents a behind-the-scenes look at Jia Aili’s studio in Beijing. He elaborates on his in-progress works, the complexity of his compositions, as well as his philosophies of and motivations for painting.
With preparations underway for his 2018 exhibition at Gagosian in London, Phyllis Tuchman visited the artist’s studio in Long Island City, New York, to learn more about this new body of work.