ARTCO Gallery: Summer Program And Further Exhibitions

After a summer break, we are looking forward to our participation at ENTER Art Fair in Copenhagen at the end of August. From September 11th, just in time for ART WEEK, we will be back in Berlin with an extensive solo exhibition by René Tavares (1983, São Tomé and Príncipe). In the meantime, we would like to draw your attention to further exhibitions by our artists. These include an opening today in Berlin and two ongoing presentations of Marcelo Brodsky and his fight against historical oblivion. Have fun!

Header Image: © René Tavares via ARTCO Gallery

Enter Art Fair

As part of our presentation at this year’s ENTER art fair, Laura Sachs will engage in a painterly conversation with Tom Solty and Gemma Solà Sotos. Whilst Sachs is interested in multi-perspective objects that have both painterly features and sculptural elements, Tom Solty invests equal accuracy into hyperrealistic depiction of highways, car interiors or a landing approach from an airplane window.

In the midst of these ‚non-places‘, plants, animals, or insects appear as mediators between nature and the Anthropocene. For Gemma Solà Sotos, painting becomes a medium to convey what is perceived from both physical and virtual reality. The pictorial elements become emotional triggers of memories from both of these worlds.

As a fourth artist Patrick Tagoe-Turkson dedicates his life long practice to art as an educational tool: By collecting and re-assembling flip-flops on the beaches of Ghana, his vibrant tapestries not just reflect an urgent planetarian problem, but become a medium to reclaim, transform, and repair. more…

Next in Berlin: René Tavares

In cooperation with THIS IS NOT A WHITE CUBE (Angola/Portugal), ARTCO Gallery is excited to present the first solo exhibition of São Toméan artist René Tavares in Berlin. The show will be on view from September 11 through Nov 02. Tavares’ practice is an homage to the Austral and Atlantic Africa, which was constantly developing in exchange with the Americas.

Islands like São Tomé and Príncipe were used as logistical centers, test laboratories and production sites and thus became a marketplace for ideas and identities in the “Black Atlantic”. With this understanding, Tavares is inline with Paul Gilroy’s thesis that the cultural history of the Diaspora is not simply African, American or European, but was created through the brutally enforced trade between these spaces across the Atlantic.In his diverse works, the artist re-navigates these old routes and creates narratives that re-evaluate the historical significance of the African continent.

“My aesthetics strive for a timeless universe in which African art can be located in certain historical periods, but is not limited to them.”

René Tavares

In contrast to Western epistemologies, he takes into account its many cultures and identities. He reveals experiences, emotions and associations and invites the viewer to participate in this process of collective knowledge production.