Gallery Nosco
UNTITLED 2015

Yara Pina was born in Goiânia, in central-west Brazil, where she currently lives and works.
A graduate of Universidade Federal de Goiás, Pina has participated in various group exhibitions, art salons, drawing and performance exhibitions. In 2012, she was awarded the Salão Abril de Fortaleza Prize, Ceará and earlier this year, she was selected to join the “Open Sessions”, a public program at the Drawing Center, New York which resulted in the exhibition “Act + Object + Exchange.”

In her work, Yara explores different materials in processes that optimize their use, properties and forms of inserting and inscribing the actions of the body. Her work often results in interventions of the physical space and installations that permeate the boundaries of drawing, performance, object, sculpture and painting. Prevalent in her practice are gestures in their performative dimension, the use of charcoal as matter, drawing as inscription and the violence employed in her creative process.

Through her multi-disciplinary work, Yara re-invents the use of objects by re-contextualising them, pushing both her body and the strength of the materials used to the maximum. Yara also alters the physical structure of materials themselves, either by the action of her gesture, or by the burning or charring, and creates drawings inscribing them onto surfaces, prioritizing the rhythm and repetition of gestures such as digging, scratching, penetrating, making grooves, hitting, perforating, sketching, etc. By throwing charred chairs against a paper or canvas covered wall, for instance, or by piercing and slashing canvases filled with kilograms worth of charcoal powder, the artist uses traditional elements of art and tests the boundaries of their limitations.

In more recent works, the artist resorts to strength and violence within the acts of throwing, drawing and destroying objects. By using weapons and charred objects to attack, destroy and leave incisions and inscriptions, the artist evidences violent acts as a means of expression. The aggressive way of acting is recurrent in Yara's actions and also present in the dialogue and raw confrontation between the different materials she uses.

Yara’s work is informed and influenced by the likes of Trisha Brown, Cy Twombly, Marcelo Sola, Richard Serra, Joseph Beuys and Lucio Fontana. Her practice has also been closely linked to that of Jackson Pollock and it is this repetitive mark-making process that we wish to concentrate on in our solo presentation for Untitled Miami Beach.

We propose a series of black and white “chair paintings” and installations, which will be specifically created in the booth during the artist’s performances, resulting in previously unseen works which will give the public the opportunity of experiencing Yara’s creative practice live. The performance will be accompanied by a series of black and white photographs illustrating different stages of the creative process.