Bosco Sodi

Bosco Sodi - Untitled

Artist Biography:

 

Bosco Sodi (b.1970) is known for his minimalist sculptures and highly textured, vividly pigmented paintings. Working between New York and Mexico, the artist demonstrates the dichotomy within these two different environments through an investigative admission of their conceptual and geographical climates. Process and elements of chance become fundamental to Sodi's practice. Much of the artist's work is influenced and dictated by the traditional Japanese "Wabi-Sabi" aesthetic philosophy that finds it epitome in the structure of Casa Wabi, residence, studio and non-profit arts center in Oaxaca, Mexico. Taking this philosophy as an essential reference, Sodi's paintings take form and shape by embracing the accidental, the moment of non-control, while working in complete harmony with the natural elements. The artist creates a unique texture by mixing sawdust with natural pigments and glue as a binder, applying it directly to the canvas with his bare hands. Sodi works in an intensely direct and performative manner that supports a uniquely transcendental transmission between the creator and work, rejecting any appliances or other forms of assistance. The result reveals a surface of rough texture, cracks and chasms that allow a reading of time and agency. Once monochrome bodies, their material is fractured, revealing beautifully organic structures that subvert the painting and stand as relics of the artist's direct intervention. His works are shaped by the choice to embrace the accidental, that moment of non-control, while working in complete harmony with the natural elements. He rejects the use of tools and does not delegate the production of his pieces. Rather, he works in an intensely direct, gestural, and performative manner, therefore generating a uniquely transcendental line of transmission between artist and artwork. These processes at the basis of both his sculptural and painterly practices result in surfaces rich of rough textures, cracks, and chasms. Once monochrome bodies created mixing natural materials (ground minerals, stone, clay, wood) to manmade ones (sawdust, glues, glazes), their surfaces are modified by the passing of time. They are subject to natural drying processes, left to experience and show the marks of weathering, or fired in high temperature kilns, ultimately revealing beautifully organic structures that subvert the artistic form and stand as relics of Sodi's direct intervention into nature. His continuous dialogue with nature and landscape, influenced by his interests in Japanese aesthetics and abstract expression, lies in the groove between Arte Povera and Land Art, two post-war movements that emphasise the use of radically simple materials and a profound connection between art and the land.