Nicola Costantino, "Soccer Ball,"1999. Daros Latinamerica Collection, Zürich. Photo by Peter Schälchli, Zürich.
Hubertus Exhibitions Albisriederstrasse 199a 8047 Zurich Allemagne
Daros Latinamerica Collection as guest of Migros Museum for Contemporary Art with its first show NICOLA COSTANTINO
Nicola Costantino is one of Argentina's most intriguing and exciting artists, and the solo show, with some 25 objects, installations and photographs from the 1990s to the present day, offers a close look at her fascinating work.
Daros Latinamerica is delighted that it can continue to show work, if in a somewhat reduced capacity, as temporary guest of the Migros Museum for Contemporary Art at Hubertus Exhibitions, the new centre in use during renovation of the Löwenbräu-Areal in Zurich. The first of its two planned annual exhibitions, each to last ten weeks, is devoted to the work of Argentine artist Nicola Costantino (born 1964, lives and works in Buenos Aires).
The monographic show features alienated human and animal bodies as well as the artist's own photographic double.
Although Costantino's ominous, staged and highly artificial photographs seem at first glance to confirm celebrated psychoanalytic clichés, they simultaneously subvert and critique these same commonplaces. Filled with dramatic suspense and ambiguity, these pictures also frequently advert, albeit with an ironic wink of the eye, to images plundered from the abundant storehouse of art and film history.
Costantino's confrontation with the animal kingdom, meanwhile, is distinguished by both a sense of the grotesque and a fondness for her subjects, whose bodies she assembles anew to create absurdly hybrid sculptures marked by subtle irony and delicate subterfuge.
Finally, in models and accessories of her own confection Costantino transforms human skin into fashion and uses her play with artifice to ring the satirical changes on the world of haute couture – prêt à porter!
