Praxis is pleased to present Skin Buffet, a solo exhibition by artist Josefina Concha E.

The show will be open from Thursday, April 13 to Friday, June 2, 2023. The opening reception will be on Thursday, April 13, from 5 to 8 pm.

We are open Tuesday to Saturday, 9am to 5pm, at 501 W 20th Street, New York, NY, 10011.

Situated around a dining table, Skin Buffet is a gathering, a textile meeting, of “special guests”: sewn fabrics, small drawings and paintings that are each inspired by strange objects, family members of the artist, or other artist’s work. They are portals and barriers between the outside and an inner world, giving access to emotions that cannot be sundered from the deep, interior layers in which they reside. In particular, the fabrics are like skin that warm and protect the flesh of the canvas on which they are woven, expelling vibrations and embodying the slow and natural movements from the environment.

Josefina Concha E. uses colorful thread and the narrow zigzag stitch of a sewing machine to create irregular weaves through which she appropriates and reimagines the material form and pictorial content of painting, craft designs, and sculptural tapestries. Although she is a textile artist who is immersed in the “traditional” labor of women, Josefina identifies as a painter and a daydreamer. Whether from her studio in Santiago, or in a forest in the south of Chile, she crafts her works from an amalgamation of dense fabric, instinct, drawings, Polaroids, memories and spinning.

Skin Buffet refers to a lexical-semantic game that alludes to those moments of relaxation, pleasure, and tension when disparate bodies gather around a table. Bodies that are dissimilar to each other, and yet, in their abundant skin, are interdependent to be served and shared when the table is ready.

– Soledad García Saavedra, curator