Booth 7A06

ARCO

February 27 – March 3, 2019

Dialogues – Booth 7A06

 P.P.O.W is pleased to present a two-person booth of works by David Wojnarowicz (1954 – 1992) and Carlos Motta (b. 1978), artists who embrace queer identities as a means of social and political critique. Featuring photography, painting, sculpture, and video, our booth will present works from 1978 to 2018 that explore complimentary strains in both artists’ practices, specifically self-portraiture and investigations of American aggression in Latin America. Marrying themes of mortality, performed identity and sexual alterity to discussions of Western imperialism, our booth seeks to draw parallels between two important voices in contemporary art. For ARCO Madrid 2019, Carlos Motta curated his work in conjunction with Wojnarowicz’s and has created a new series of self-portraits.

Carlos Motta was born in Bogotá, Colombia and lives and works in New York City. He received his MFA from Bard College (2003) and completed the Whitney Independent Study Program (2006). His work was the subject of survey exhibitions including Carlos Motta: Formas de libertad at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Colombia (2017) and Matucana 100, Santiago, Chile (2018), and Carlos Motta: For Democracy There Must Be Love, Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden (2015). His work was recently acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Barcelona; and Museo de Arte de Banco de la República, Bogotá, among others. Motta has been awarded the Vilcek Foundation’s Prize for Creative Promise (2017); the PinchukArtCentre’s Future Generation Art Prize (2014); and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2008). Motta’s second solo exhibition with P.P.O.W will open in April 2019.

David Wojnarowicz was born in Red Bank, NJ and died in New York City. His work has been included in solo and group exhibitions around the world, at institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The American Center, Paris, France; The Busan Museum of Modern Art, Korea; Centro Galego de Art Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; The Barbican Art Gallery, London; and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. His work is in the permanent collections of major museums nationally and internationally and his life and work have been the subject of significant scholarly studies. Wojnarowicz has had retrospectives at the galleries of the Illinois State University (1990) and at the New Museum, New York (1999). A third retrospective, David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night, co-curated by David Kiehl and David Breslin, opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in July 2018 and will travel to the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid in May 2019, and the Musee d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg City in November 2019. A concurrent exhibition of Wojnarowicz’s films and photographs will open at the Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin in February 2019.