ALEXANDER OCHS GALLERIES BERLIN | BEIJING presents the second solo exhibition of renowned Brazilian artist Luzia Simons in its gallery space. Numerous exhibitions made Luzia Simons known for her visually powerful orchestration of tulip images. Recently, she realized a site specific installation at the Pinacoteca do Estao de Sao Paulo, Brazil while her work could also be admired in the exhibition Flowers & Mushrooms at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg (Modern Musuem Salzburg). Her arranged still lives of extraordinary colorfulness and microscopic precision are far more than a simple portraiture of floral arrangements since the selection of the plants in Luzia Simons work is always a metaphor for cultural identity.
With the exhibition Amazonas Path, she ties in with this concept as she herself describes it as an expedition to the unknown, understanding it as a sketchy attempt to grasp identity and cultural transfer. Her interest is rooted in her own biography: born in Brazil, she later studied History at first and then Fine Art at the Sorbonne in Paris. She lives in Berlin and travels back to the Amazon regularly. This makes her a commuter between two different worlds, who, drawing from her experience, shows us how the European view of Brazil’s pristine nature profoundly differs from the pragmatic perspective of the inhabitants of these landscapes. The elliptic image formats with broad frames cite 17th century Dutch painters and their quest for the lost paradise, yet Luzia Simons answers their domesticated gaze and the picturesque depiction with an unadorned shot of nature: Luzia Simons stages, using the means available to her, but the original motive of her photographs remains apparent. Primary sources of some of her works are Polaroid photographs. Their pictographic result eludes the photographer’s control and even the traces of the mechanism, such as the damage on the image surface, remain apparent. For Luzia Simons, always checking every detail in her scanograms, this is a new experience that also emphasizes the experimental value of this exhibition. At that point Luzia Simons examines more than she takes a photograph. The pictures of her expedition always merely show a small excerpt – from one image’s edge to the other- but her actual goal of visualizing her cultural fundament is almost impossible to capture in its entirety and therefore still remains an ongoing quest.
-Alexander Ocha Galleries Berlin l Beijing
Image: © Luzia Simons
Courtesy of the artist and Alexander Ochs Galleries Berlin l Beijing
