Bosco Sodi: Beyond Wilderness: He Art Museum

November 10, 2024 – February 28, 2025

The He Art Museum (HEM) presents Bosco Sodi's largest solo exhibition in Asia. Co-curated by the artist and HEM, the exhibition spans three floors of the museum, presenting over 100 works from the artist's career including paintings, sculptures and site-specific installations.

Bosco Sodi (b. 1970, Mexico City) reveals the emotive power embodied in the essential simplicity of raw material. The artist is known for his richly textured, vividly colored large-scale sawdust paintings and sculptures made from clay and volcanic rocks. Greatly influenced by the aesthetic philosophy of Wabi Sabi, Sodi focuses on material exploration, the creative gesture, and the spiritual connection between the artist and his work. His stylistic influences range from Art Informel, looking to artists such as Antoni Tàpies and Jean Dubuffet, to master colorists such as Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko, and the bright hues of Mexico.

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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.
Spiraling staircase at the He Art Museum, designed by Tadao Ando.

The exhibition also features a site-specific installation made by thousands of bricks created entirely by Foshan’s ancient Dragon Kiln Nanfeng (Southerly Wind), named for its dragon-like form as it sprawls along the hillside in the city center. With over 500 years of history, it is one of the oldest kilns still in use worldwide. Making pottery with Dragon Kiln requires meticulous temperature controlled by local artisans, and together with the unpredictable effects of wood ash glaze, each brick is imbued with unique crates, textures and colors. This harmonious yet capricious interplay between human craftsmanship and natural materials develops Sodi’s use of traditional brick kilns in his studios in Oaxaca and Mexico City, perfectly embodying his creative philosophy of process and experimentation. The use of clay bricks also echoes major international installations by the artist including Muro (New York, 2017) and Atlantes (Oaxaca, 2019).

Sodi’s creations are in dialogue with the minimalist architectural space of He Art Museum designed by Tadao Ando. As the constantly changing natural light casts upon his works, the museum will resemble a temple that celebrates thousands of years of intertwined relationships between humans and the earth.
About the Artist

Portrait by Spencer Wells.

Bosco Sodi

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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