Bosco Sodi

Biography

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Untitled, 2023

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Born in Mexico City, Mexico, 1970
Lives & Works in New York and Oaxaca, Mexico

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Photo by Spencer Wells.

Bosco Sodi is known for his use of raw, natural materials to create large-scale textured paintings and objects. Sodi has discovered an emotive power within the essential simplicity of his materials and the vivid pigments he sources. He has described his creative process as a “controlled chaos” that makes “something that is completely un-repeatable.” Focusing on material exploration, the creative gesture, and the spiritual connection between the artist and his work, Sodi seeks to transcend conceptual barriers. His works become memories and relics symbolic of the artist’s conversation with the raw material that brought them into creation.

Sodi mixes raw pigment with sawdust, wood, pulp, natural fibers, and glue to create the dense surfaces of his monochrome paintings. As the layers of material dry, structures form without the guidance or intervention of the artist. These fissured “landscapes” are both products of the artist’s creative process and the unpredictable and chance in nature.
"Whether in painting, sculpture, or architecture, Sodi tries to respect the natural order of things. Call it a studied mindfulness, or a will toward simplicity. In either case the artist has taken many cues from Japanese philosophy and aesthetics, several of which—namely a zen impulse and an embrace of wabi sabi—are critical to his identity." —Matthew J. Abrams
Bosco Sodi: Tabula Rasa. Kasmin | König Galerie for Art Basel, Parcours, 2022.

While Sodi creates his paintings in his studio in New York, his sculptural practice takes a wider turn toward the traditions of his Mexican heritage. At his studio in Oaxaca, he extracts raw earth from the ground and combines it with water and sand to form clay. He uses this elemental material, one of ancestral significance, to create minimalist sculptures. He shapes the clay with his hands to form smooth, solid cubes, which are left to dry in the sun prior to their firing in a kiln, hand-built from brick and coconut husks. During this process, the material transforms in hue and texture, infusing each cube with its own unique identity. Stacked into columns, the cubes both relate to one another and assert their individuality. More recently, Sodi began creating spheres by a similar process: the artist begins again by using his hands to shape wet balls of clay before leaving them to dry for four months in the shade and three months in the sun, later firing the works in a traditional kiln for sixteen to twenty-four hours.
Sodi collects solidified volcanic magma from the Ceboruco volcano in Mexico to make his rock sculptures. He covers these fragments of the natural world with ceramic glaze and precious metals. As they are fired, the volcanic rocks metamorphose into sculptural objects that unite geological processes with traditional and contemporary art-making techniques.

In 2022, the artist founded Assembly, a nonprofit exhibition venue in Monticello, New York. In 2013, he founded Fundación Casa Wabi near Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico, an arts center dedicated to promoting cultural exchange between international contemporary artists and local communities. Designed by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando, the foundation’s headquarters hosts artist residencies and exhibitions, among other initiatives.
Bosco Sodi has exhibited his work internationally and throughout the United States. In 2022, the Fondazione dell’Albero d’Oro organized the solo exhibition What Goes Around Comes Around at the Palazzo Vendramin Grimani in Venice, Italy. The University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa staged the solo exhibition Básico in the same year. In 2021, Sodi opened a major sculpture show in the garden at Dallas Museum of Art, and completed his second public installation, Tabula Rasa, in Washington Square Park. Other notable institutional exhibitions include ergo sum, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain (2020); Por los siglos de los siglos, Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City (2017); Museum of Stones, the Noguchi Museum, New York (2015); and Pangea, Bronx Museum, New York (2010). His work is in significant public and private collections worldwide including the JUMEX Collection, Mexico; the Contemporary Art Foundation, Japan; the Harvard Art Museum, Massachusetts; the Nasher Sculpture Center, Texas; the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; the Walker Art Center, Minnesota; the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Connecticut; the New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, among others.
Works

Bosco Sodi

Untitled, 2022

mixed media on canvas
73 1/4 x 73 1/4 inches
186 x 186 cm

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