Crivelli Soft Core by Paul Branca

Project Space: Paul Branca 11.9.2021, 6—8PM
By appointment through 12.1.2021

Figura Avulsa is pleased to present a painting by Paul Branca installed in Figura Avulsa’s building lobby. This is Branca’s first presentation in Lisbon.

New York-based artist Paul Branca is known for his research on the social connectivity found within both food culture and painting's rich history. Branca has shown in a number solo and group exhibitions around the world, including The Kitchen, NY, Giorgio Galotti, Turin; Joan, Los Angeles, Galerie Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Longhouse Projects, NY, MARS, Milan, Belmacz, London; Journal Gallery, NY, Le 116 Centre d’art contemporain, Montreuil, Sculpture Center, NY, Socrates Sculpture Park, NY, among others.

Branca is often drawn to the restaging of lost or overlooked subjects and objects found within the museum's collections of painted things. In the work for Figura Avulsa he compiled and remixed elements from his inquiries into the work of the Venetian Renaissance painter Carlo Crivelli, playing with and over-sexualizing his rendered still life objects. Crivelli may be the first artist who acknowledged and rendered a peach as an ass, a phallocentric cucumber as an erotic offering, a fava pulsating with perverted pleasure or perhaps not. They are left behind, upon a ledge or a marble floor, to be made active by the devout participant. In other words, these sexy signifiers, similar to landmines that remain active long after a war has ended, are available for anyone to mistakenly blow themselves up with.

Work on view: Paul Branca, Untitled (Crivelli Soft Core: Barocco), 2021, oil on linen, 200 x 85 cm