Carlos Bunga
Carlos Bunga
Carlos Bunga’s work can be described as painting that exists at the intersection of architecture and sculpture. Bunga is well known for his large-scale installations made of common, unassuming materials. These installations call to mind Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau project for their built quality and the creation of architecture in already existing spaces. Like Schwitters, Bugna’s installations respond to existing architecture, yet Bunga’s installations are painted in monochromatic planes of color and are built with the intention of ultimately being destroyed. Bunga first attracted international attention with his work at Manifesta 5 in San Sebastian, Spain (2004). Since then, he has been shortlisted for the Artes Mundi 6 prize (2014), and he was awarded both the ArtPrize 2013 Grand Rapids, MI and a visual arts grant by the Fundación Marcelino Botín, Spain (2006). He has had solo exhibitions at Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico City, Mexico (2013); Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2012); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2011); Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL (2009); and Museo de Arte Contemporanéa de Vigo, Spain (2009). Group exhibitions include Artes Mundi 6, Cardiff, UK (2014); Ruins in Contemporary Art at University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA (2012); Museu d’Arte Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, Spain (2009); Unmontumental at New Museum, New York, NY (2007); and inSite_05 at San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA (2005). His work is in the collections of such institutions as Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Serralves Foundation, Porto, Portugal; and Museo d’art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, Spain.
Installation view, Carlos Bunga & Olivier Mosset, 2015, Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica
Installation view, Carlos Bunga & Olivier Mosset, 2015, Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica
Intersection Series 1, 2015 cardboard, latex paint and wood 10-1/4 x 9-1/2 x 2-1/2 inches 24.8 x 21.6 x 3.8 cm CBU030
Intersection Series 2, 2015 cardboard, latex paint and wood 10-1/4 x 9-1/2 x 3 inches 24.8 x 21.6 x 7.6 cm CBU031
Intersection Series 3, 2015 cardboard, latex paint and wood 10-1/4 x 9-1/2 x 3 inches 24.8 x 21.6 x 7.6 cm CBU032
Intersection Series 4, 2015 cardboard, latex paint and wood 10-1/4 x 9-3/4 x 3 inches 24.8 x 21 x 7.6 cm CBU033
The Lady, detail
The Lady, 2015, mixed media, 39 x 30 x 20 inches, 99.1 x 76.2 x 50.8 cm, CBU029
Perception, 2015 cardboard and latex paint dimensions variable CBU028
Future Anterior, detail
Future Anterior, 2013, cardboard, tape, glue and paint, 12' high x 23' wide x 25' deep
Future Anterior, detail
Future Anterior, 2013, cardboard, tape, glue and paint, 12' high x 23' wide x 25' deep
Future Anterior, 2013, cardboard, tape, glue and paint, 12' high x 23' wide x 25' deep
Skin, 2012, slide projection (eighty 35mm color slide transparencies), dimensions variable, edition of 3, CBU003
Skin, detail
Future Anterior #12, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU015
Future Anterior #15, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 31-1/2 x 28-3/4 inches 80 x 73 cm (unframed) CBU021
Future Anterior #13, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU016
Future Anterior #3, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU006
Future Anterior #5, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU008
Future Anterior #9, 2013 latex paint and graphite on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU012
Sculpture as Drawing I, 2014 paper 13-1/2 x 16-3/8 x 1-1/4 inches (framed) 34.3 x 41.6 x 3.2 cm CBU024
Sculpture as Drawing II, 2014 paper and tape 13-1/2 x 16-3/8 x 1-1/4 inches (framed) 34.3 x 41.6 x 3.2 cm CBU025
Sculpture as Drawing III, 2014 paper 13-1/2 x 16-3/8 x 1-1/4 inches (framed) 34.3 x 41.6 x 3.2 cm CBU026
Crate Painting, detail
Crate Painting, 2013 cardboard, tape, wooden box 70-7/8 x 59 x 7 inches 180 x 150 x 18 cm CBU023
Installation view, Intento de Conservación, 2014, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico
Installation views, Intento de Conservación, 2014, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico
‘Exodus’ refers to the act or action of crossing, going out, the journey to escape from a hostile environment to another place. Exodus is a largescale structure made out of cardboard and packing tape, which mimics the archtectural features of the gallery space. Carlos utilizes these materials to suggest impermanence, crisis, and decay. A procession of freestanding columns leads viewers through the gallery. Shifting scales and surface details play with the audiences’ understanding of space and encourages us to think of ways that we might reimagine the environments that surround us. Exodus, 2014, Artes Mundi 6, National Museum Cardiff, U.K.
Alongside this new installation Carlos is also displaying a collection of smal scale sculptural works, drawings and a film. These artworks, whilst appearing like maquettes, are not preliminary plans for larger scale installations. Rather, they are pivotal objects in themselves which offer valuable insight and articulate the artists’ processes of thinking. The relationship between drawing, painting and sculpture is very important to Carlos’ practice, which blurs the boundaries between them to create new possibilities for objects and architectural forms.
There is Khôra but the Khôra does not exist Jacques Derrida, Kôra Carlos Bunga sets up a series of rules that allow him to generate both mental and real spaces in which the conceptual and objectual dimension intersect. His ephemeral installations are generated from a process of direct confrontation with the space. Bunga works without prior plans or blueprints using the gallery as an experimental laboratory. The work, which is always an open unfinished result, germinates within a game of mutual occupation where Bunga seems to produce as well as receive from the space he intervenes.
Khôra, 2013, University Museum of Contemporary Art, Mexico City, Mexico
Khôra reflects precisely on the relationship between giving place and receiving: a space that receives without appropriation and a receptacle that is not reduced to what it receives. By taking this mysterious concept of the work of Plato, Bunga allows himself to suggest a dissident movement to the imperative of intelligibility of Western’s civilization. Khôra is the name of a mise en abyme, a gap emerged in the very heart of philosophy. In Plato’s Timaeus, this term challenges the principle of non-contradiction that states, as we know, that a proposition and its negation cannot both be true at the same time. As described by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, Khôra seems to be neither this nor that, and sometimes both this and that. A giving place which is a constant oscillation between exclusion and participation. It is an abyss by excess, by dislocation, by possibility; an imprint holder of elusive and anachronistic properties whose only singularity is the ability to always escape determination. It has no form, it is not sensible, nor intelligible, under the premises of the philosophical paradigm it does not exist, although it has accompanied it from the beginning. Naming it in this exercises not a contraposition since Khôra does not offer itself to a binary logic, but it summones other ways of receiving and being received within the museums rational space. Opening up to them requires to renounce to any categorization or intelligibility support and to lean into the abyss without a safety net.
Ecosystem, 2013, ArtPrize, SITE:LAB, Grand Rapids, MI
Carlos Bunga’s site-specific work is located in one of the galleries of the former Grand Rapids Public Museum which still has on display original dioramas and showcases from the 1970s illustrating the diversity of the local wildlife. “Ecosystem” refers to the concept based on the interaction of living organisms with any other element in their local environment. On this occasion, the old dioramas interact directly with the installation itself. Bunga uses cardboard and paint to establish new associations, separating certain areas and joining others so that the new architecture created blends with the old building. The artist creates a new museology, with the painting and color allowing him to unify the whole space and create a unique 360 degree diorama, where the showcases are fully integrated with the surrounding painting. The viewer stands before a mural that combines large splashes of paint with still-life paintings.
Installation view, Agora, 2012, Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal
Installation view, Agora, 2012, Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal
Installation views, Mausoléu [Mausoleum], 2012, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Inside the Pinacoteca, Mausoleum is a large cardboard tower, built at the centre of the museum, housing a group of sculptures from its collection chosen by the artist. The tower imitates the architecture of the museum’s interior, but at the same time obstructs it: by transforming the way it is perceived we are reminded of its purpose. The access points have been shifted, the symmetrical Octagonal structure curves delicately, chinks and windows open out in the upper part, the colour of cardboard blends with the orange tones of brick, the layer of paint observable on the outside of the structure – all of these associations set in motion an interplay of assorted meanings related to the artist and to the history of the organizing institution. On the one hand, the unfinished look of the structure, exposing the insides of the walls, which brings to mind a never-concluded architecture, part and parcel of the history of the Pinacoteca’s building, is a way of stressing the idea of the museum as something under constant construction. On the other hand, in the centre of the room, the sculptures – the museum’s collection, the body preserved inside the mausoleum– are there to act as regents of time and space, immune to all curatorial messages or arrangements, possessing the full force of their materiality and specificity, ready for direct encounters with the visitor. In this fashion, Carlos Bunga has built a monument to celebrate the life and eternal time that dwell inside the museum.
Installation view, Landscape, 2011, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Instllation view, Simultâneo, fragmentado, descontínuo (Simultaneous, fragmented, discontinuous), 2010, There is Always a Cup of Sea to Sail in, 29th Biennial of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Instllation view, Simultâneo, fragmentado, descontínuo (Simultaneous, fragmented, discontinuous) 2010, There is Always a Cup of Sea to Sail in, 29th Biennial of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Installation views, Farsites: Urban Crisis and Domestic Symptoms in Recent Contemporary Art (part of inSite_05), 2005, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA
Installation views, Culturgest, 2005, Porto, Portugal
Installation view, Manifesta 5, 2004 Kursaal, San Sebastian, Spain
Installation view, Prémio Novos Artistas, 2003, Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal
Ollman, Leah. “Carlos Bunga packages experience in cardboard” Los Angeles Times, January 30, 2013.
Sommer, Danielle. “Carlos Bunga” Art in America, (May) 2013: 173.
Chassepot, Béatrice. “Bunga: beyond space” Art.es, (January) 2013: 127.
Amado, Miguel; Landers, Clifford E., “Carlos Bunga” Artform International, (Febuary) 2009.
CHECKLIST (To request pricing information, please click on a description):
Intersection Series 1, 2015 carboard, latex paint and wood 10-1/4 x 9-1/2 x 2-1/2 inches 24.8 x 21.6 x 6.3 cm CBU030
Skin, 2012 slide projection (eighty 35mm color slide transparencies) dimensions variable edition of 3 CBU003
Intersection Series 2, 2015 cardboard, latex paint and wood 10-1/4 x 9-1/2 x 3 inches 24.8 x 21.6 x 7.6 cm CBU031
Perception, 2015 cardboard and latex paint dimensions variable CBU028
Intersection Series 3, 2015 cardboard, latex paint and wood 10-1/4 x 9-1/2 x 3 inches 24.8 x 21.6 x 7.6 cm CBU032
Future Anterior #12, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU015
Intersection Series 4, 2015 cardboard, latex paint and wood 10-1/4 x 9-3/4 x 3 inches 24.8 x 21 x 7.6 cm CBU033
Future Anterior #15, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 31-1/2 x 28-3/4 inches 80 x 73 cm (unframed) CBU021
The Lady, 2015 mixed media 39 x 30 x 20 inches 99.1 x 76.2 x 50.8 cm CBU029
Future Anterior #13, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU016
CHECKLIST (To request pricing information, please click on a description):
Future Anterior #3, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU006
Future Anterior #5, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU008
Future Anterior #9, 2013 latex paint and graphite on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU012
Sculpture as Drawing I, 2014 paper 13-1/2 x 16-3/8 x 1-1/4 inches (framed) 34.3 x 41.6 x 3.2 cm CBU024
Sculpture as Drawing II, 2014 paper and tape 13-1/2 x 16-3/8 x 1-1/4 inches (framed) 34.3 x 41.6 x 3.2 cm CBU025
Sculpture as Drawing III, 2014 paper 13-1/2 x 16-3/8 x 1-1/4 inches (framed) 34.3 x 41.6 x 3.2 cm CBU026
Crate Painting, 2013 cardboard, tape, wooden box 70-7/8 x 59 x 7 inches 180 x 150 x 18 cm CBU023
CARLOS BUNGA Born 1976 in Porto, Portugal Lives and works in Barcelona, Spain Education 2003
BA in Fine Arts, Escola Superior de Arte e Design (ESAD), Caldas da Rainha, Portugal
2007 Aldaba Art, Mexico City, Mexico 2006 Carlos Bunga, Milton Keynes Gallery, Milton Keynes, UK 2005 Culturgest, Porto, Portugal
Solo Exhibitions
Group Exhibitions
2015 Carlos Bunga & Olivier Mosset, Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2015 Kaleidoscope: asbtraction in architecture, Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (forthcoming)
2014 Museo de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá
2014 Impulse, Reason, Sense, Conflict - Abstract art from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, FL Artes Mundi 6, Cardiff, UK (próximamente) Beyond the Supersquare, Bronx Museum, New York, USA
2013 Ecosystem, Grand Rapids Public Museum, Michigan, USA Carlos Bunga, Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, CA Carlos Bunga solo project, Galeria Elba Benítez at Frieze New York, NY Carlos Bunga: Desterritorialización, Casas Riegner, Bogotá, Columbia For the love of dissent, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (MUAC), Mexico City, Mexico Carlos Bunga: Future Anterior, Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, CA 2012 Agora, Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal Em Construção, A Gentil Carioca Galleria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Laboratorio, Galeria Elba Benítez, Madrid, Spain Mausoléu, Pinacoteca Art Museum of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil 2011 Hammer Projects: Carlos Bunga, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA 2010 Espacio mental, OPA, Oficina para proyectos de Arte A.C., Guadalajara, Mexico The Temporality of Space, Espaço Avenida, Trienal de Arquitectura de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal 2009 Metamorphosis, Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL Heterotopías, Espazio Anexo, Museo de Arte Contemporanéa de Vigo, Vigo, Spain Marxitecture, Krome Gallery, Berlin, Germany Performance, EMPTY CUBE Project, Appleton Square, Lisbon, Portugal 2008 Yuxtaposiciones, Galería Elba Benítez, Madrid, Spain
2013 Individual Order, curated by Mariana Garin, KARST, Plymouth, UK Open Monument, Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien, Berlin, Germany Galería Casas Reigner, Bogotá, Colombia 2012 Ruins in Contemporary Art, University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA Performing Abstraction, Luciana Brito Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil Guimarães 2012 European Capital of Culture, ReaKt-Views and Processes, Art & Architecture, Guimaraes, Portugal Selección del archive. Restos Impresos, LiMAC, Madrid, Spain Delimitations – An Exhibition of Contemporary Spanish Art, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Herzliya, Israel 2011 Subtle Construction, Plataforma Revólver, Lisbon, Portugal Estación experimental: Investigación y fenómenos artísticos, CA2M, Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid, Spain The Draftsman Contract, Carlos Garaicoa Open Studio 5.0, Madrid, Spain The Future Lasts Forever, Gävle Konstcentrum, Gälve Art Center, Gälve, Sweden 2010 LET’S TALK ABOUT HOUSES: When Art Speaks Architecture (Building, Unbuilding, Inhabit), Chiado Museum, Lisbon, Portugal There is Always a Cup of Sea to Sail in, 29th Biennial of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil Post-Monument, XIV International Sculpture Biennale of Carrara, Carrara, Italy
2009 Time as Matter, New Acquisitions, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) collection, Barcelona, Spain Warsaw Under Construction, Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland Lá Fora, Museu da Electricidade, Lisbon, Portugal 2008 Low Key, Fundación Marcelino Botín, Santander, Spain Lá Fora, Museu da Presidência da República, Viana do Castelo, Portugal Construír, Habitar, Pensar, Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia, Spain ArtUnlimited, Art Basel 39, Basel, Switzerland Parangolé, Museo Patio Herreriano, Valladolid, Spain Informed by Function, Lehmann College Art Gallery, New York, NY Where Are You From?, Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA 2007 Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century, New Museum, New York, NY Mobility at work, Justus Lipsius Building, Brussels, Belgium Fundación Marcelino Botín, Santander, Spain Future Nomad, Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia, PA 2006 Architecture Au Corps, Galerie Anton Weller, Paris, France En Voyage, Frac Île-de-France / Le Plateau, Paris, France Frontera: Esboço para la criación de una sociedad del futuro, Frontera, Mexico 2005 Farsites: Urban Crisis and Domestic Symptoms in Recent Contemporary Art (part of inSite_05), San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA Unspoken Destinies, Convento de SS Cosma e Damiano, Venice, Italy Things Fall Apart All Over Again, Artists Space, New York, NY Portugal: Algumas Figuras, Laboratorio de Arte Alameda, Mexico City, Mexico 2004 Pilot 1, London, UK Manifesta 5, Kursaal, San Sebastian, Spain Album, Bartolomeu 5, Lisbon, Portugal Oh Dear, Zé dos Bois, Lisbon, Portugal
Grants, Prizes and Residencies 2013 ArtPrize 2013, Grand Rapids, MI 2007 Residency grant in New York from Fundacion Ilidio Pinho, Porto, PortugalResidency Aldaba Art, Mexico 2006 III International Prize of Painting Diputación de Castellón, Castellón, Spain Fundación Marcelino Botín, XIII Convocatória Becas de Artes Plásticas, Santander, Spain The International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York, NY 2005 Helsinki International Artist in Residence Program (HIAP), Helsinki, Finland Collections Centro des Artes Visuales Fundacíon Helga de Alvear, Cáceres, Spain Colección Banco Espíritu Santo, Lisbon, Portugal Fundaçao Ilidio Pinho, Porto, Portugal Fundaçao Marcelino Botín, Cantabria, Spain Fundaçao PLMJ, Lisbon, Portugal Fundaçao Serralves, Oporto, Portugal Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA Museo d’art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, Spain Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Bibliography 2013 Sommer, Danielle. “Carlos Bunga,” Art in America, (May) 2013: 173. Ollman, Leah. “Carlos Bunga packages experience in cardboard,” Los Angeles Times, January 30, 2013. Chassepot, Béatrice. “Bunga: beyond space,” Art.es (January): 127.
2003 Prémio Novos Artistas, Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal
2012 Carlos Bunga, Sonae/Serralves Project, Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal. Jecu, Marta. “Carlos Bunga, Simultâneo, fragmentado, deScontinuo,” Journal of Curatorial Studies 1, no. 1 (February).
2002 Jovens Criadores, Coimbra, Portugal Caldas Late Night, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal
2010 Jecu, Marta. “Concepts Are Mental Images: The Work as Ruin,” e-flux journal 18 (September). A temporalidade do espaço, Athena, Lisbon.
2001 Jovens Criadores, Porto, Portugal
2009 Space Craft 2. More Fleeting Architecture and Hideouts. Gestalten, Berlin. Artistas Portugueses. Là Fora, Museu de la Presidencia da Republica, Fundaçao EDP, Lisbon, Spain. Reis, Pedro. “Accellerated architecture or painting process?” Bypass 1: 14-15.
Amado, Miguel and Clifford E. Landers. “Carlos Bunga,” Artforum International (February). 2008 Sustracción añadida. Elba Benitez, Madrid, Spain. 2007 Unmonumental, New Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. 2006 Carlos Bugna. Culturgest, Lisbon, Portugal. Amado, Miguel. “Carlos Bunga,” Contemporary 87 (November – December): 26-29. Carlos Bunga, Milton Keynes Project. Milton Keynes Gallery, Central Milton Keynes, UK. Moriente, David. “Destrucción Controlada,” AV Monografias 120 (July-August): 9-11.
Carlos Bunga’s work can be described as painting that exists at the intersection of architecture and sculpture. Bunga is well known for his large-scale installations made of common, unassuming materials. These installations call to mind Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau project for their built quality and the creation of architecture in already existing spaces. Like Schwitters, Bugna’s installations respond to existing architecture, yet Bunga’s installations are painted in monochromatic planes of color and are built with the intention of ultimately being destroyed. Bunga first attracted international attention with his work at Manifesta 5 in San Sebastian, Spain (2004). Since then, he has been shortlisted for the Artes Mundi 6 prize (2014), and he was awarded both the ArtPrize 2013 Grand Rapids, MI and a visual arts grant by the Fundación Marcelino Botín, Spain (2006). He has had solo exhibitions at Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico City, Mexico (2013); Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2012); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2011); Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL (2009); and Museo de Arte Contemporanéa de Vigo, Spain (2009). Group exhibitions include Artes Mundi 6, Cardiff, UK (2014); Ruins in Contemporary Art at University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA (2012); Museu d’Arte Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, Spain (2009); Unmontumental at New Museum, New York, NY (2007); and inSite_05 at San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA (2005). His work is in the collections of such institutions as Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Serralves Foundation, Porto, Portugal; and Museo d’art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, Spain.
Installation view, Carlos Bunga & Olivier Mosset, 2015, Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica
Installation view, Carlos Bunga & Olivier Mosset, 2015, Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica
Intersection Series 1, 2015 cardboard, latex paint and wood 10-1/4 x 9-1/2 x 2-1/2 inches 24.8 x 21.6 x 3.8 cm CBU030
Intersection Series 2, 2015 cardboard, latex paint and wood 10-1/4 x 9-1/2 x 3 inches 24.8 x 21.6 x 7.6 cm CBU031
Intersection Series 3, 2015 cardboard, latex paint and wood 10-1/4 x 9-1/2 x 3 inches 24.8 x 21.6 x 7.6 cm CBU032
Intersection Series 4, 2015 cardboard, latex paint and wood 10-1/4 x 9-3/4 x 3 inches 24.8 x 21 x 7.6 cm CBU033
The Lady, detail
The Lady, 2015, mixed media, 39 x 30 x 20 inches, 99.1 x 76.2 x 50.8 cm, CBU029
Perception, 2015 cardboard and latex paint dimensions variable CBU028
Future Anterior, detail
Future Anterior, 2013, cardboard, tape, glue and paint, 12' high x 23' wide x 25' deep
Future Anterior, detail
Future Anterior, 2013, cardboard, tape, glue and paint, 12' high x 23' wide x 25' deep
Future Anterior, 2013, cardboard, tape, glue and paint, 12' high x 23' wide x 25' deep
Skin, 2012, slide projection (eighty 35mm color slide transparencies), dimensions variable, edition of 3, CBU003
Skin, detail
Future Anterior #12, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU015
Future Anterior #15, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 31-1/2 x 28-3/4 inches 80 x 73 cm (unframed) CBU021
Future Anterior #13, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU016
Future Anterior #3, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU006
Future Anterior #5, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU008
Future Anterior #9, 2013 latex paint and graphite on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU012
Sculpture as Drawing I, 2014 paper 13-1/2 x 16-3/8 x 1-1/4 inches (framed) 34.3 x 41.6 x 3.2 cm CBU024
Sculpture as Drawing II, 2014 paper and tape 13-1/2 x 16-3/8 x 1-1/4 inches (framed) 34.3 x 41.6 x 3.2 cm CBU025
Sculpture as Drawing III, 2014 paper 13-1/2 x 16-3/8 x 1-1/4 inches (framed) 34.3 x 41.6 x 3.2 cm CBU026
Crate Painting, detail
Crate Painting, 2013 cardboard, tape, wooden box 70-7/8 x 59 x 7 inches 180 x 150 x 18 cm CBU023
Installation view, Intento de Conservación, 2014, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico
Installation views, Intento de Conservación, 2014, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico
‘Exodus’ refers to the act or action of crossing, going out, the journey to escape from a hostile environment to another place. Exodus is a largescale structure made out of cardboard and packing tape, which mimics the archtectural features of the gallery space. Carlos utilizes these materials to suggest impermanence, crisis, and decay. A procession of freestanding columns leads viewers through the gallery. Shifting scales and surface details play with the audiences’ understanding of space and encourages us to think of ways that we might reimagine the environments that surround us. Exodus, 2014, Artes Mundi 6, National Museum Cardiff, U.K.
Alongside this new installation Carlos is also displaying a collection of smal scale sculptural works, drawings and a film. These artworks, whilst appearing like maquettes, are not preliminary plans for larger scale installations. Rather, they are pivotal objects in themselves which offer valuable insight and articulate the artists’ processes of thinking. The relationship between drawing, painting and sculpture is very important to Carlos’ practice, which blurs the boundaries between them to create new possibilities for objects and architectural forms.
There is Khôra but the Khôra does not exist Jacques Derrida, Kôra Carlos Bunga sets up a series of rules that allow him to generate both mental and real spaces in which the conceptual and objectual dimension intersect. His ephemeral installations are generated from a process of direct confrontation with the space. Bunga works without prior plans or blueprints using the gallery as an experimental laboratory. The work, which is always an open unfinished result, germinates within a game of mutual occupation where Bunga seems to produce as well as receive from the space he intervenes.
Khôra, 2013, University Museum of Contemporary Art, Mexico City, Mexico
Khôra reflects precisely on the relationship between giving place and receiving: a space that receives without appropriation and a receptacle that is not reduced to what it receives. By taking this mysterious concept of the work of Plato, Bunga allows himself to suggest a dissident movement to the imperative of intelligibility of Western’s civilization. Khôra is the name of a mise en abyme, a gap emerged in the very heart of philosophy. In Plato’s Timaeus, this term challenges the principle of non-contradiction that states, as we know, that a proposition and its negation cannot both be true at the same time. As described by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, Khôra seems to be neither this nor that, and sometimes both this and that. A giving place which is a constant oscillation between exclusion and participation. It is an abyss by excess, by dislocation, by possibility; an imprint holder of elusive and anachronistic properties whose only singularity is the ability to always escape determination. It has no form, it is not sensible, nor intelligible, under the premises of the philosophical paradigm it does not exist, although it has accompanied it from the beginning. Naming it in this exercises not a contraposition since Khôra does not offer itself to a binary logic, but it summones other ways of receiving and being received within the museums rational space. Opening up to them requires to renounce to any categorization or intelligibility support and to lean into the abyss without a safety net.
Ecosystem, 2013, ArtPrize, SITE:LAB, Grand Rapids, MI
Carlos Bunga’s site-specific work is located in one of the galleries of the former Grand Rapids Public Museum which still has on display original dioramas and showcases from the 1970s illustrating the diversity of the local wildlife. “Ecosystem” refers to the concept based on the interaction of living organisms with any other element in their local environment. On this occasion, the old dioramas interact directly with the installation itself. Bunga uses cardboard and paint to establish new associations, separating certain areas and joining others so that the new architecture created blends with the old building. The artist creates a new museology, with the painting and color allowing him to unify the whole space and create a unique 360 degree diorama, where the showcases are fully integrated with the surrounding painting. The viewer stands before a mural that combines large splashes of paint with still-life paintings.
Installation view, Agora, 2012, Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal
Installation view, Agora, 2012, Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal
Installation views, Mausoléu [Mausoleum], 2012, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Inside the Pinacoteca, Mausoleum is a large cardboard tower, built at the centre of the museum, housing a group of sculptures from its collection chosen by the artist. The tower imitates the architecture of the museum’s interior, but at the same time obstructs it: by transforming the way it is perceived we are reminded of its purpose. The access points have been shifted, the symmetrical Octagonal structure curves delicately, chinks and windows open out in the upper part, the colour of cardboard blends with the orange tones of brick, the layer of paint observable on the outside of the structure – all of these associations set in motion an interplay of assorted meanings related to the artist and to the history of the organizing institution. On the one hand, the unfinished look of the structure, exposing the insides of the walls, which brings to mind a never-concluded architecture, part and parcel of the history of the Pinacoteca’s building, is a way of stressing the idea of the museum as something under constant construction. On the other hand, in the centre of the room, the sculptures – the museum’s collection, the body preserved inside the mausoleum– are there to act as regents of time and space, immune to all curatorial messages or arrangements, possessing the full force of their materiality and specificity, ready for direct encounters with the visitor. In this fashion, Carlos Bunga has built a monument to celebrate the life and eternal time that dwell inside the museum.
Installation view, Landscape, 2011, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Instllation view, Simultâneo, fragmentado, descontínuo (Simultaneous, fragmented, discontinuous), 2010, There is Always a Cup of Sea to Sail in, 29th Biennial of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Instllation view, Simultâneo, fragmentado, descontínuo (Simultaneous, fragmented, discontinuous) 2010, There is Always a Cup of Sea to Sail in, 29th Biennial of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Installation views, Farsites: Urban Crisis and Domestic Symptoms in Recent Contemporary Art (part of inSite_05), 2005, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA
Installation views, Culturgest, 2005, Porto, Portugal
Installation view, Manifesta 5, 2004 Kursaal, San Sebastian, Spain
Installation view, Prémio Novos Artistas, 2003, Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal
Ollman, Leah. “Carlos Bunga packages experience in cardboard” Los Angeles Times, January 30, 2013.
Sommer, Danielle. “Carlos Bunga” Art in America, (May) 2013: 173.
Chassepot, Béatrice. “Bunga: beyond space” Art.es, (January) 2013: 127.
Amado, Miguel; Landers, Clifford E., “Carlos Bunga” Artform International, (Febuary) 2009.
CHECKLIST (To request pricing information, please click on a description):
Intersection Series 1, 2015 carboard, latex paint and wood 10-1/4 x 9-1/2 x 2-1/2 inches 24.8 x 21.6 x 6.3 cm CBU030
Skin, 2012 slide projection (eighty 35mm color slide transparencies) dimensions variable edition of 3 CBU003
Intersection Series 2, 2015 cardboard, latex paint and wood 10-1/4 x 9-1/2 x 3 inches 24.8 x 21.6 x 7.6 cm CBU031
Perception, 2015 cardboard and latex paint dimensions variable CBU028
Intersection Series 3, 2015 cardboard, latex paint and wood 10-1/4 x 9-1/2 x 3 inches 24.8 x 21.6 x 7.6 cm CBU032
Future Anterior #12, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU015
Intersection Series 4, 2015 cardboard, latex paint and wood 10-1/4 x 9-3/4 x 3 inches 24.8 x 21 x 7.6 cm CBU033
Future Anterior #15, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 31-1/2 x 28-3/4 inches 80 x 73 cm (unframed) CBU021
The Lady, 2015 mixed media 39 x 30 x 20 inches 99.1 x 76.2 x 50.8 cm CBU029
Future Anterior #13, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU016
CHECKLIST (To request pricing information, please click on a description):
Future Anterior #3, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU006
Future Anterior #5, 2013 latex paint on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU008
Future Anterior #9, 2013 latex paint and graphite on silver bromide print 32-1/4 x 29-1/2 inches 82 x 75 cm (framed) CBU012
Sculpture as Drawing I, 2014 paper 13-1/2 x 16-3/8 x 1-1/4 inches (framed) 34.3 x 41.6 x 3.2 cm CBU024
Sculpture as Drawing II, 2014 paper and tape 13-1/2 x 16-3/8 x 1-1/4 inches (framed) 34.3 x 41.6 x 3.2 cm CBU025
Sculpture as Drawing III, 2014 paper 13-1/2 x 16-3/8 x 1-1/4 inches (framed) 34.3 x 41.6 x 3.2 cm CBU026
Crate Painting, 2013 cardboard, tape, wooden box 70-7/8 x 59 x 7 inches 180 x 150 x 18 cm CBU023
CARLOS BUNGA Born 1976 in Porto, Portugal Lives and works in Barcelona, Spain Education 2003
BA in Fine Arts, Escola Superior de Arte e Design (ESAD), Caldas da Rainha, Portugal
2007 Aldaba Art, Mexico City, Mexico 2006 Carlos Bunga, Milton Keynes Gallery, Milton Keynes, UK 2005 Culturgest, Porto, Portugal
Solo Exhibitions
Group Exhibitions
2015 Carlos Bunga & Olivier Mosset, Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2015 Kaleidoscope: asbtraction in architecture, Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (forthcoming)
2014 Museo de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá
2014 Impulse, Reason, Sense, Conflict - Abstract art from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, FL Artes Mundi 6, Cardiff, UK (próximamente) Beyond the Supersquare, Bronx Museum, New York, USA
2013 Ecosystem, Grand Rapids Public Museum, Michigan, USA Carlos Bunga, Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, CA Carlos Bunga solo project, Galeria Elba Benítez at Frieze New York, NY Carlos Bunga: Desterritorialización, Casas Riegner, Bogotá, Columbia For the love of dissent, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (MUAC), Mexico City, Mexico Carlos Bunga: Future Anterior, Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, CA 2012 Agora, Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal Em Construção, A Gentil Carioca Galleria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Laboratorio, Galeria Elba Benítez, Madrid, Spain Mausoléu, Pinacoteca Art Museum of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil 2011 Hammer Projects: Carlos Bunga, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA 2010 Espacio mental, OPA, Oficina para proyectos de Arte A.C., Guadalajara, Mexico The Temporality of Space, Espaço Avenida, Trienal de Arquitectura de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal 2009 Metamorphosis, Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL Heterotopías, Espazio Anexo, Museo de Arte Contemporanéa de Vigo, Vigo, Spain Marxitecture, Krome Gallery, Berlin, Germany Performance, EMPTY CUBE Project, Appleton Square, Lisbon, Portugal 2008 Yuxtaposiciones, Galería Elba Benítez, Madrid, Spain
2013 Individual Order, curated by Mariana Garin, KARST, Plymouth, UK Open Monument, Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien, Berlin, Germany Galería Casas Reigner, Bogotá, Colombia 2012 Ruins in Contemporary Art, University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA Performing Abstraction, Luciana Brito Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil Guimarães 2012 European Capital of Culture, ReaKt-Views and Processes, Art & Architecture, Guimaraes, Portugal Selección del archive. Restos Impresos, LiMAC, Madrid, Spain Delimitations – An Exhibition of Contemporary Spanish Art, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Herzliya, Israel 2011 Subtle Construction, Plataforma Revólver, Lisbon, Portugal Estación experimental: Investigación y fenómenos artísticos, CA2M, Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid, Spain The Draftsman Contract, Carlos Garaicoa Open Studio 5.0, Madrid, Spain The Future Lasts Forever, Gävle Konstcentrum, Gälve Art Center, Gälve, Sweden 2010 LET’S TALK ABOUT HOUSES: When Art Speaks Architecture (Building, Unbuilding, Inhabit), Chiado Museum, Lisbon, Portugal There is Always a Cup of Sea to Sail in, 29th Biennial of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil Post-Monument, XIV International Sculpture Biennale of Carrara, Carrara, Italy
2009 Time as Matter, New Acquisitions, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) collection, Barcelona, Spain Warsaw Under Construction, Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland Lá Fora, Museu da Electricidade, Lisbon, Portugal 2008 Low Key, Fundación Marcelino Botín, Santander, Spain Lá Fora, Museu da Presidência da República, Viana do Castelo, Portugal Construír, Habitar, Pensar, Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia, Spain ArtUnlimited, Art Basel 39, Basel, Switzerland Parangolé, Museo Patio Herreriano, Valladolid, Spain Informed by Function, Lehmann College Art Gallery, New York, NY Where Are You From?, Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA 2007 Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century, New Museum, New York, NY Mobility at work, Justus Lipsius Building, Brussels, Belgium Fundación Marcelino Botín, Santander, Spain Future Nomad, Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia, PA 2006 Architecture Au Corps, Galerie Anton Weller, Paris, France En Voyage, Frac Île-de-France / Le Plateau, Paris, France Frontera: Esboço para la criación de una sociedad del futuro, Frontera, Mexico 2005 Farsites: Urban Crisis and Domestic Symptoms in Recent Contemporary Art (part of inSite_05), San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA Unspoken Destinies, Convento de SS Cosma e Damiano, Venice, Italy Things Fall Apart All Over Again, Artists Space, New York, NY Portugal: Algumas Figuras, Laboratorio de Arte Alameda, Mexico City, Mexico 2004 Pilot 1, London, UK Manifesta 5, Kursaal, San Sebastian, Spain Album, Bartolomeu 5, Lisbon, Portugal Oh Dear, Zé dos Bois, Lisbon, Portugal
Grants, Prizes and Residencies 2013 ArtPrize 2013, Grand Rapids, MI 2007 Residency grant in New York from Fundacion Ilidio Pinho, Porto, PortugalResidency Aldaba Art, Mexico 2006 III International Prize of Painting Diputación de Castellón, Castellón, Spain Fundación Marcelino Botín, XIII Convocatória Becas de Artes Plásticas, Santander, Spain The International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York, NY 2005 Helsinki International Artist in Residence Program (HIAP), Helsinki, Finland Collections Centro des Artes Visuales Fundacíon Helga de Alvear, Cáceres, Spain Colección Banco Espíritu Santo, Lisbon, Portugal Fundaçao Ilidio Pinho, Porto, Portugal Fundaçao Marcelino Botín, Cantabria, Spain Fundaçao PLMJ, Lisbon, Portugal Fundaçao Serralves, Oporto, Portugal Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA Museo d’art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, Spain Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Bibliography 2013 Sommer, Danielle. “Carlos Bunga,” Art in America, (May) 2013: 173. Ollman, Leah. “Carlos Bunga packages experience in cardboard,” Los Angeles Times, January 30, 2013. Chassepot, Béatrice. “Bunga: beyond space,” Art.es (January): 127.
2003 Prémio Novos Artistas, Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal
2012 Carlos Bunga, Sonae/Serralves Project, Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal. Jecu, Marta. “Carlos Bunga, Simultâneo, fragmentado, deScontinuo,” Journal of Curatorial Studies 1, no. 1 (February).
2002 Jovens Criadores, Coimbra, Portugal Caldas Late Night, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal
2010 Jecu, Marta. “Concepts Are Mental Images: The Work as Ruin,” e-flux journal 18 (September). A temporalidade do espaço, Athena, Lisbon.
2001 Jovens Criadores, Porto, Portugal
2009 Space Craft 2. More Fleeting Architecture and Hideouts. Gestalten, Berlin. Artistas Portugueses. Là Fora, Museu de la Presidencia da Republica, Fundaçao EDP, Lisbon, Spain. Reis, Pedro. “Accellerated architecture or painting process?” Bypass 1: 14-15.
Amado, Miguel and Clifford E. Landers. “Carlos Bunga,” Artforum International (February). 2008 Sustracción añadida. Elba Benitez, Madrid, Spain. 2007 Unmonumental, New Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. 2006 Carlos Bugna. Culturgest, Lisbon, Portugal. Amado, Miguel. “Carlos Bunga,” Contemporary 87 (November – December): 26-29. Carlos Bunga, Milton Keynes Project. Milton Keynes Gallery, Central Milton Keynes, UK. Moriente, David. “Destrucción Controlada,” AV Monografias 120 (July-August): 9-11.
