presents
JOSÉ SIERRA
LA DEVORADORA
October 19 - 23, 2022
Booth 3.2A
The Lefebvre et Fils gallery is pleased to present the new ceramics by the artist José Sierra during the 2022 edition of Paris Internationale.
«My work is increasingly influenced by my experiences in, and memories of, the natural environments of my past and present. In particular, my past in the Andes mountains in my native Venezuela—a home that exists more in memory than in my daily reality. And my present in the southwestern deserts of the United States, where I currently reside and gather inspiration.
As a teenager and young adult, I often retreated to the Andes mountains, outside of my hometown of Mérida, a mile-high city tropical city surrounded by 16,000-foot glacial peaks. My journeys through the vibrant cloud forests of intense greens infuse my memories that increasingly inspire my work. The forest, whose flora can devour any object rapidly, is seemingly impenetrable, briefly allowing you to open a path, as it closes it quickly behind you. At higher altitudes, the dense forest gives way to high desert, with frigid nights and its other worldly frailejón plants, similar to agaves in shape, but with the texture of soft lamb’s ear. These images and memories emerge, often in comparative nostalgia, as I explore the southwestern deserts with their sharp geometric cacti, the blazing sun and the kaleidoscopic sunsets whose reds, pinks, purples and golds, all lend inspiration to my forms and palette.
La Devoradora reflects my past in the deep vivacious wild places of Venezuela that are constantly regenerating themselves and absorbing human traces. It also gestures Romulo Gallego’s Doña Barbara, recognizing the absurd struggle to survive in a lusciously rich but devastatingly corrupt environment. The biomorphic fluidity of this body reflects the surreal experiences of living in and travelling through these mystical spaces and capturing and transmuting the energy of life, growth, transformation and resistance.»
José Sierra, September 2022