Praxis is pleased to present Localized Contagion, the site specific installation by Fernando do Campo (b. 1987, Mar del Plata, Argentina).
A reception to celebrate the opening will be held at 541 West 25th Street, on Thursday November 12th, 2015, from 6 to 8 pm.
This project utilizes an existing architectural threshold as a site for colour, pattern and figure-ground experimentation. The stairwell space, often a feature that lives ignored as a conduit or as a shifter between multiple spaces here becomes a container of propositions. The introduction of separate colours is followed by their potential co-inhabitation. As these forms and marks attempt to function in quarantine contagion is inescapable.
An ongoing interest in the construction of place-memory and notions of familiarity as respondent to the sites and locales that an artist inhabits drives the need to birdwatch, to archive information, to walk, to write, to paint. Practice highlights the difficulty in maintaining a register on influence and input – but also calls upon an attempt at mapping and auditing the cultural, spatial and phenomenological at play.
Across the paintings themselves a similar yet nuanced osmosis occurs. The relationships internal to one picture can enter every other painting in the room. In the way we read the space that they inhabit, in the way we see light fall, in all the strata that then offers a notion of place through the memory of a sighting.
Fernando do Campo
Fernando do Campo (b. Mar del Plata, Argentina, 1987) is an Argentinian and Australian artist, writer and curator currently based in New York City. He is a graduate of the University of Tasmania and the Australian National University. From 2009-2013 he was Director of Sawtooth ARI. During that time he taught sessionally at the Tasmanian College of the Arts and curated projects for Contemporary Arts Tasmania, Junction Arts Festival, and Carnegie Gallery, Hobart. He has exhibited in group exhibitions throughout Australia and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include; Figure behind a lake, Australian Consulate, New York City (2015), Come away closer, Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Darwin (2014), Two clouds passing behind stars, Mclemoi Gallery, Sydney (2013), Onomatopoeia, University of Tasmania (2013) Limiting my vocab, Tcb, Melbourne (2012) and Catching a mirage, Devonport Regional Gallery, Tasmania (2012). Fernando has received numerous awards, including individual grants from the Regional Arts Fund, Arts Tasmania, the Ian Potter Cultural Trust and the Australia Council for the Arts. Residencies include the Cite International des Arts, Paris (2012) and Schloss Laudon, Austrian Ministry of Culture, Vienna (2013). In 2013, he was named Young Tasmanian of the Year (Arts). In 2014 Fernando became the inaugural General Sir John Monash Cultural Scholar. He is currently an MFA candidate at Parsons The New School for Design, New York.
