ISHMAEL RANDALL-WEEKS’ LABORATORY OF FORMS

For more than two decades, Ishmael Randall-Weeks has been deploying a complex laboratory of forms. In his work, the eye of a builder and a deep technical skill in making with his hands converge. His work is a constant in and out of architecture. Although the starting point is abstract language, his works are charged with reality. This exhibition brings together nearly seventy works produced after his return to Peru in 2003, including drawing, collage, photography, sculpture, video and installation.

Curator Miguel A. López writes: "Although many details in his sculptures function as anchors to specific social spaces, the geometric forms propose a conversation that connects diverse historical spaces and times: from modernist Bauhaus architecture to the art and symbols of pre-Columbian cultures (Inca design, the Chakana or Wari textiles), from Russian constructivism to the production of Peruvian sculptors such as Emilio Rodríguez Larraín and Lika Mutal whose work in stone intersects the aesthetic and the ritual. Although the heart of his poetics has been dedicated to the investigation of constructive processes and their social implications, there is also an intimate and personal search that emerges in the representations and materials he chooses to use. His works delve into the relationship between exteriority and interiority, exposure and intimacy, between the collective body and the individual body. They seek to understand how every physical structure has an impact on the ways we move, relate affectively, communicate with others, inhabit and dream the world. That is, how our deepest and simplest experiences of everyday life depend on form and functionality."

Ishmael Randall Weeks (Cusco, 1976) lives and works between New York and Peru. He received his BFA from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York in 2000 and then studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2007.

His work has been exhibited in several galleries and museums both in Peru and internationally, including the Institute of Modern Art, Middlesbrough, England, UK; MoMA P.S.1, New York, USA; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Lima, Peru; Spanish Culture Center of Buenos Aires (CCBBA), Buenos Aires, Argentina; The Drawing Center, New York, USA; Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), Lima, Peru; Macro Museum | Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Roma, Rome, Italy; Museo de la Nación, Lima, Peru; The Museum of Arts and Design, New York, United States; Museo del Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia; The Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena, Bologna, Italy; The Drawing Room, London, United Kingdom; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, United States; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, United States.