João Leonardo
ONE HUNDRED AND SIX COLUMNS,
FOUR HEADS AND ONE TABLE
12-02-2011 — 11-03-2011
Opening Friday 11 of February, 19h00 pm
Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia
Concordiastraße 28
96049 Bamberg
Germany
The International Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia is pleased to invite you to the exhibition ‘One Hundred and Six Columns, Four Heads and One Table’ by the artist João Leonardo.
This exhibition is the result of the work developed during his residency at the Villa Concordia since April 2010, with the help of a grant from the Bavarian State. The works presented were created from an ongoing collection of one of the lowest categories of garbage; cigarette butts. The artist has patiently and obsessively collected these objects from the streets of the city of Bamberg in an intervention that can be seen as a continuous performance. He then proceeded to carefully separate them in different categories and materials. When this distillation process was completed he created objects that range from figurative sculptures made with filters, to paintings made with liquid nicotine extracted from the found cigarette butts, a collection of carefully arranged leftovers of cigarette papers, a piece made with cigarette packs from his series of calendar works and a diptych acrylic glass piece, the same size as the artist, filled with discarded tobacco and cigarette ashes. Also on display, as a piece in its own right, is the table used by Leonardo in his studio, which challenges aura of the other objects by allowing the viewer access to the process of the production.
Formally the works are reminiscent of the vocabulary and the aesthetics of modernist movements such as Conceptual and Minimal Art and Art Povera. João Leonardo critically engages with these historical precedents but infuses them with a personal, almost autobiographical trace.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an introductory text by Nora-Eugenie Gomringer, Director of the Villa Concordia, an essay by essayist and curator Paulo Cunha e Silva as well as an interview with João Leonardo conducted by curator Jürgen Bock.
Born in 1974 in Odemira, Portugal, João Leonardo lives and works in Malmö, Sweden. He studied Art History in Lisbon (1992-96) and Graphic Design in Sydney (1999-2001). He completed the Independent Study Programme of Maumaus School of Visual Arts in Lisbon (2005) and the Masters Programme in Fine Arts of the Malmö Art Academy, Lund University in Sweden (2009), with a study grant from the Gulbenkian Foundation. In 2005 he was awarded the EDP-Prize ‘New Artist’.
Recent solo exhibitions include Another Autointerview, Instituto Franco-Portugais, Lisbon (2010), Timeline, Galeria 111, Lisboa and Porto, João Leonardo (with Franko B), The Mews, London (2009), Time After Time, KHM Gallery, Malmö (2008) and As Time Goes By, Galeria 111, Lisboa (2006).
Recent group exhibitions include A culpa não é minha, Museu Colecão Berardo, Lisboa,Tirésias, Centro Cultural de España, Montevideo, Da outra margem do Atlantico, Centro de Artes Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro, Happiness Machines, Rise Berlin Gallery, Berlin (2010), Lista de Verbos, Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Elvas, Elvas, A Eminencia da Queda, Galeria Diário de Notícias, Lisboa, Em Bragança, Centro de Arte Contemporanea Graça Morais, Bragança (2009), Á Volta do papel, Centro de Arte Manuel de Brito, Algés, My name is red, Gallery Furini, Arezzo, E-flux Video Rental, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisboa, Hardware-Software, Skaftell Center for Visual arts, Seydisfjörd, Where are you from?, Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell, Iowa (2008).
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