Bosco Sodi: Beyond Wilderness: He Art Museum

Rendered in powerful, saturated hues, Sodi’s paintings blend raw pigment with sawdust, wood, pulp, natural fibers, and glue to create their dense surfaces. As the layers of material dry, structures form without the guidance or intervention of the artist. These fissured “landscapes” are both products of the artist’s careful balance of control and chaos, collaborating with the unpredictable forces of our natural world. 

Using bare hands and centuries-old techniques, Sodi’s gestures transform the banality of material into the transcendental. His gold and ceramic glazed rock sculptures emanate a powerful physicality and symbolically signify holiness and revelation in the timeless lineage of the ancient Mayan and Aztec stelae. As they are fired, the volcanic rocks metamorphose into sculptural objects that unite geological processes with traditional and contemporary art-making techniques. Sodi’s works are memorials and relics, incarnating his exploration and conversation with materials that come directly from the earth. 

Bosco Sodi has exhibited his work internationally and throughout the United States. Additional solo institutional exhibitions include: Origen, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA (2023); What Goes Around Comes Around, organized by the Fondazione dell’Alberto d’Oro, Palazzo Vendramin Grimani in Venice, Italy (2022); Básico, University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL (2022); La fuerza del destino, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX (2021); ergo sum, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain (2020); Por los siglos de los siglos, Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City (2017); and Pangea, The Bronx Museum, New York (2010). His work is in significant public and private collections worldwide including the JUMEX Collection, Mexico; the Contemporary Art Foundation, Japan; Harvard Art Museums, Massachusetts; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Nasher Sculpture Center, Texas; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Walker Art Center, Minnesota; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Connecticut; the New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, among others.

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