Ana Bidart: 2 bed / 1 bath, nice view

Josée Bienvenu Gallery is pleased to present Ana Bidart’s first solo presentation at the gallery. Bidart operates in the realm of "Neo-Povera," in which the banal, administrative aspects of domestic life are transformed and reenacted as art.

For this exhibition, Bidart presents a series of new oil paintings that appear to have just arrived, waiting to be hung, or about to depart the room. Here Bidart plays with the idea of an archetypical artist studio through the recreation of gestures and personal artifacts within her own studio. She includes materials such as dust sheets, paint traces, tools, packing material, clothing. Not to be construed as scenography, but rather to connote the feeling of a suspended atmosphere between fiction and reality.

The title refers, in good humor, to my experience over recent months. I’ve been looking for a new apartment and studio to live and work, which involves copious amounts of paperwork. As a continuation of the Pasaportes series, these new paintings record fragments of contracts, excel sheets, forms and QR codes comprising special systems of grids and patterns, of which are interwoven with organic and playful gestures such as doodles, brushstrokes and fingerprints.

• Ana Bidart

Born in 1985 in Montevideo-Uruguay, Ana Bidart lives and works in Mexico City. This is her second solo presentation with Josée Bienvenu Gallery, including "Desechos," a solo project at NADA New York with Josée Bienvenu Gallery in 2014. In 2015, Bidart was an artist in residence at CASA/Espacio en obra, Rosario, Argentina and was included in the SOMA Project Room in Mexico City. Other recent projects include two group shows: "When I say stop, continue" and "Ontology and enunciation," at FIFI Projects in Monterrey, Mexico City, 2015. Other exhibitions include "Provisionals," at Josée Bienvenu Gallery in 2014; "Demasiado futuro" at SOMA-CCEMEX Spanish Cultural Center in Mexico, 2013; "Neo Povera" at L&M Arts, Los Angeles, 2013; SOMA Open Studio, Mexico City, 2012; Open Studio, Antonio Gala Foundation, Córdoba, Spain, 2011; Salón Nacional, National Museum of Visual Arts, Montevideo 2009; and a solo presentation at the Goethe Institut Montevideo in 2009. Bidart has studied at SOMA, Mexico City, Mexico; the Fundación de Arte Contemporáneo and the Escuela Universitaria Centro de Diseño, Montevideo, Uruguay.