Tunga

One of the most influential artists of his generation, Tunga (b. Palmares, Brazil 1952) lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Tunga's extraordinary practice encompasses sculpture, performance, poetry and video. For over thirty years he has created an integrated body of work characterized by an associative interplay of mirroring and self-reference between individual pieces. Derived from his own constructed mythology Tunga creates installations and sculptures that seem to recall the ancient ritualistic practices of some lost civilization.

For his first exhibition with the gallery, Tunga has created a series of meticulously constructed sculptural assemblages deploying the symbolic materials central to his sculptural vocabulary. Held together by magnetic force fields alchemic assemblages of talismanic objects sensually evoke the delicate equilibrium between life and death.

Fusing lead, glass goblets, steel braiding, crystals, and bodily fluids this series of Untitled works form the latest manifestation of Tunga's symbolic universe in which the harmonious and the subversive coexist.

Tunga has exhibited internationally since the 1970s. In 2006 a monumental installation entitled A la Lumiere des Deux Mondes occupied the area beneath the glass pyramid at Musée du Louvre, Paris.  In 2007 Tunga's solo exhibition entitled Laminated Souls occupied two floors at MoMA PS1, New York. Further solo exhibitions include Whitechapel Gallery, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; MARCO, Museum of Contemporary Art, Monterrey, Mexico; and Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo and Brasilia. Tunga has participated in two Venice Biennales (1995), (2001), in Documenta X (1997), and four São Paulo Biennials. His work is represented in public collections worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Los Angeles, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid and Moderna Museet, Stockholm.