Portals in the mind-stretching realm

Alejandra Seeber, Solo Show, Exposure, Expochicago, April 13-16, 2023

Alejandra Seeber presents a group of paintings of different sizes on a grid and some glass and ceramic sculptures.

Seeber’s paintings have a visual morphology in common. They are reticular images shaping different formations: knits, waves, spores, a brick- like structure, and a honeycomb-like structure. The paintings are hanging on a network of uniformly spaced horizontal and perpendicular lines. The images are geometrical patterns of different types of net-like structures situated on a system of control operating entirely in the perception field.

The installation opens strange portals in the mind-stretching realm. The fragmental images replicate themselves into different works of art, using motifs such as body parts, bricks, and waves. In the paintings and sculptures, there are legs and backsides, shredded lakes, snippets of landscapes, formations of beings, and collapsed objects from multiple realities. For instance, she creates a bag with holes from which small plants emerge; the back of the sculpture resembles a brick wall.

Seeber traces a system of signification distorting the notion of space and its visuality. The paintings and sculptures display rare events, so you need a sharp and keen eye to understand what you see; for Alejandra Seeber, an extra dimension may exist close to our familiar reality. It means there is a much richer universe at some deep underlying level.

About the ARTIST

ALEJANDRA SEEBER (b. 1969, Buenos Aires) has a dialogic approach to painting, where intentions and chance procedures, failures, and acceptances operate together without hierarchy. She uses painting as a medium capable of absorbing other surrounding media and influences, thereby stretching conventional ideas of the image.

Seeber conceptualizes painting, not by referring to history or traditions, nor through conventions. It involves a visual culture traversed by its journey in the alternative rock scene to backstage work at musical theaters, being part of the underground scene in the more rough Southern parts of Buenos Aires, and the digital software that began to be used in graphic design and advertising as a technological novelty at the end of the last century.

Home interiors were often the base of Seeber’s works. Currently, she is more focused on space research, architecture, decoration, and small details, which offer a particular image of the world the artist then stains, smears, and disperses all over the painting, making the relationship between the inside and outside world diffuse. A common denominator within Argentine art in the ‘90s was an aesthetic fascination for everyday life and the focus on studio practice. Within this, Seeber has created a special place for herself as she found a new way to connect to painting without leaving the medium.

Alejandra Seeber was born in Argentina. She has been living in New York City since 1999. She attended Prilidiano Pueyrredon School of Fine Arts in Argentina, the Beca Kuitca Studio Program, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, 2000. She had her first survey show at Malba, Buenos Aires, with Leda Catunda: Fuera de Serie (On of a Kind).

Her work has been shown in solo and group shows internationally, including presentations at Thyssen Museum, 2017; Madrid, Bronx Museum of the Arts, 2016; Mercosul Biennial, Brazil, 2009; Kunst Museum of Saint Gallen, Switzerland,2010; Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires, 2010 Malba (Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires), 2011 and S-files, El Museo del Barrio, New York, 2003.

She has had solo shows at Fundación PROA, Buenos Aires, in 2010 and in galleries such as Sperone Westwater (US) and Hausler Contemporary (Germany, Switzerland, and Austria). Her work is represented in collections such as the Collection Diana and Moises Berezdivin (Puerto Rico), Zabludowicz Collection (UK), Rolf Ricke Collection (Germany), Eduardo Constantini (Argentina), Collection Staaliche Graphische Sammlung (Germany), and the Museum of Modern Art (Argentina), among many others.

About the CURATOR

AIMÉ IGLESIAS LUKIN is the Director

and Chief Visual Arts Curator at the Americas Society in New York. Born in Buenos Aires, she received her Ph.D. in art history from Rutgers University with a dissertation titled “This Must Be the Place: Latin American Artists in New York 1965–1975,” which she presented as a two-part exhibition and a book at the Americas Society in 2021 and 2022. She completed her M.A. at The Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and her undergraduate studies in art history at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Her research received grants from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Terra and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations, and the ICAA Peter C. Marzio Award from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She curated exhibitions independently in museums and cultural centers. She previously worked in the Modern and Contemporary Art Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art, and Fundación PROA in Buenos Aires.