CAIO FONSECA: SELECTED PAINTING AND SCULPTURE by Maya Frodeman Gallery

CAIO FONSECA

24 JUNE — 31 JULY 2022

CAIO FONSECA S E L E C T E D PA I N T I N G A N D S C U L P T U R E

TAYLOE PIGGOTT GALLERY

IDENTIFYING THE IRREDUCIBLE American artist Caio Fonseca is well known for his lyrical, abstract works of art. A talented classical pianist and composer, Fonseca is fascinated by the relationship between tone and form, which he explores in his paintings, sculpture, and works on paper. Representing the irreducible form of classical music, Fonseca’s work often displays blocks of color that create dynamic energy amid his textured, off-white backgrounds. The energy radiating from these colorful, geometric waves aims to evoke the invisible structure of meaningful compositions.

Fonseca remains unclassifiable –his work does not fit a mold of Neo-Geo, Appropriationism, or Neo-Expressionism of the artists who came of age in the 1980s. There is an undeniable Old World, European-modernist sensibility running through Fonseca’s work. The analogies with Kandinsky or Klée are arguable, given the musical training at the root of his practice. One might write essays linking his work with László Moholy-Nagy or even Piet Mondrian. Yet Caio Fonseca paints entirely in his own clear voice.

This exhibition presents a near-retrospective of an artist whose work is so individualized, so very identifiable in its personal vernacular, that one feels as though transported into Caio Fonseca’s abstract world. Presenting monumental canvases to tabletop sculpture and more midsize canvases, the exhibition encapsulates this visual world. Despite belonging to the same generation as American artists Peter Halley, Ross Bleckner, Ashley Bickerton and Jeff Koons,

"It seems that a great will of mine has been to identify what is irreducible." Fonseca’s music permeates his life as an artist. His studio practice involves upwards of five hours a day composing on his piano. “It’s certainly true that music affects my work,” he says. “I play the

piano and I’m interested in classical music and in classical composition. I suppose I am what is called a serious amateur. The relationship I have to music is not so much about the sound in music but an interest in the inner workings of music: the resolutions of intervals, the procession of melodies, oblique and parallel motions, the strands of simultaneous aterial— these kind of things.” However, once painting, he requires complete silence in the studio.

to identify what is irreducible. Getting to the bottom of this question is what kept me in a room painting day-in and day-out for ten years; I wanted to possess building blocks of irreducible elements and with these to create my own world, my own vocabulary.”

"Getting to the bottom of this question is what kept me in a room painting day-in and dayout for ten years; I wanted to possess building blocks of irreducible elements and with these to create my own world, my own vocabulary.”

Caio Fonseca thinks about abstraction in pure terms. According to the artist, “I have never been interested in relationship between objects but between elements, tones, contrasts, and proportions; not between the apple, the bottle, the table but a more secret life within that. If you think about an apple, it is a conglomeration of sensorial events: shadows, greenness, and light – all the incidental things that when seen together make up the apple to us but without which the apple does not independently exist. It seems that a great will of mine has been

Caio Fonseca is the son of artists. His father, Gonzalo Fonseca (1922-1997), is considered

one of Latin America’s leading modernist sculptors, and his mother, Elizabeth Fonseca, is an accomplished artist in her own right. Fonseca grew up in New York City, and later spent long summers in Pietrasanta, Italy, where his father maintained a separate studio. In 1985, Fonseca purchased an old marble workshop in the town that he converted into a studio. Today he divides his time between Pietrasanta and Manhattan. Fonseca spent his freshman year at Brown University, then joined his older brother, Bruno (1958-1994), in Barcelona where they studied with Augusto Torres (1913-1992), son of Joaquín Torres-Garcia (1874-1949), who trained their father a lifetime earlier.

Fonseca’s five years in Barcelona gave him a thorough grounding in the skills and intellectual underpinning needed to become a painter. After his formal studies he spent six more years abroad, in Pietrasanta and Paris, working independently to develop a distinctive approach to painting. As a result Fonseca’s work developed far from the trends and styles that characterized the mainstream American art scene in the 1980s. By the late 1990s, Fonseca’s work was shown in exhibitions at Charles Cowles Gallery, Knoedler Gallery, and Paul Kasmin Gallery, proving highly successful. Fonseca's work is held in numerous important public and private collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art New York, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Smithsonian Institution, D.C; The Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, D.C; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC, as well as many others.

"The relationship I have to music is not so much about the sound in music but an interest in the inner workings of music.."

SCULPTURE

MODULARE FORM 5, 2016 Cast raw aluminum 25 1/2 x 22 1/2 x 4 inches

MODULAR FORM 8, 2016 Cast raw aluminum 28 1/2 x 22 x 4 inches

MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS

FIFTH STREET C16.1, 2016 Mixed media on canvas 84 × 120 inches

FIFTH STREET C21.19, 2021 Mixed media on canvas 52 x 72 inches

PIETRASANTA C18.24, 2018 Mixed media on canvas 14 x 18 inches

FIFTH STREET C21.20, 2021 Mixed media on canvas 44 x 70 inches

FIFTH STREET C21.02, 2021 Mixed media on canvas 31 x 43 inches

PIETRSANTA C06.30, 2006 Mixed media on canvas 31 x 43 inches

PIETRASANTA C06.28, 2006 Mixed media on canvas 26 x 41 inches

FIFTH STREET C05.48, 2005 Mixed media on canvas 52 x 37 inches

FIFTH STREET C22.01, 2022 Mixed media on canvas 31 x 43 inches

PIETRASANTA C07.27, 2007 Mixed media on canvas 18 x 14 inches

PIETRASANTA C08.33, 2008 Mixed media on canvas 72 x 52 inches

PIETRASANTA C10.39, 2010 Mixed media on canvas 30 x 30 inches

PIETRASANTA C07.14, 2007 Mixed media on canvas 35 x 45 inches

FIFTH STREET C15.1, 2015 Mixed media on canvas 85 x 44 1/2 inches

FIFTH STREET C14.3, 2014 Mixed media on canvas 34 x 20 inches

FIFTH STREET C15.2, 2015 Mixed media on canvas 22 1/2 x 24 1/2 inches

PIETRASANTA C18.38, 2018 Mixed media on canvas 30 x 40 inches

PIESTRASANTA C07.26, 2007 Mixed media on canvas 12 x 16 inches

WORK S ON PAPER

WILDWOOD P16.39, 2016 Ink on paper 23 x 30 inches

Framed dimensions 26 x 33 inches

WILDWOOD P16.35, 2016 Ink on paper 23 x 30 inches

Framed dimensions 26 x 33 inches

WILDWOOD P16.24, 2016 Ink on paper 12 x 16 inches

Framed dimensions 16 x 20 inches

CAIO FONSECA

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Born in New York in 1959 Lives and works in New York, NY

Museum of Modern Art, New York The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

2016 Alan Avery Gallery, Atlanta, GA

The Brooklyn Museum, New York Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

2015 Octavia Gallery, New Orleans, LA

The Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.

2015 Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas The North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina

2014 Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Jackson Hole, WY 2013 Octavia Gallery, New Orleans, LA 212Gallery, Aspen CO The Drawing Room, East Hampton, NY 2012 Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY

The Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, Texas Kemper Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri The United States Embassy, Vienna, Austria

2011 The Drawing Room, East Hampton, NY Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Jackson Hole, WY

Cesar Pelli, architect. Reagan National Airport Washington D.C., Mural commission. Goldman Sachs, New York, New York

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