LILIANA PORTER Recent Work

In one monumental 5×20 foot painting, one calamitous installation and a dozen incongruous photographic works, Liliana Porter’s exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery explores with dark humor the nature of catastrophe and other frightening events.

Drawing from a large and eccentric collection of figurines, knickknacks, toys, and souvenirs to create an ensemble cast, Porter arranges her characters in unexpected circumstances. Kitsch objects are suddenly transformed into individuals with whom we instinctively empathize and identify, becoming actors that both elicit and exude emotion in mini dramas about life, death, love, longing, terror and loss.

The peculiar situations Porter invents invite political, philosophical and existential interpretation. Through manipulation of scale and context, she distills life into its basic elements with masterful simplicity.

Liliana Porter was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1941. In 1961 she moved to New York, where she has lived and worked ever since. In 1965 she founded the New York Graphic Workshop with Luis Camnitzer and Jose Guillermo Castillo.

Porter has shown extensively internationally, including most recently a two-person exhibition with Marcel Broodthaers at The New Museum, New York, a web project with Dia Art Foundation, and solo exhibitions at the Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires; Palacio Aguirre de Cartagena, Spain; and the Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona. Her work is in numerous public and private collections in Latin America, Europe and the United States, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Smithsonian Museum of American Art; Daros-Latinoamerica Collection, Zurich; and Tate Modern, London.