For Immediate Release

Tunga
January 26 – March 2, 2002
Performance: Saturday January 26, 3-5 pm

Luhring Augustine is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by the Brazilian artist Tunga from January 26 – March 2, 2002. The exhibition will include three sculptural works and a performance. Tunga's work is a manifestation of his complex and unquiet correlation between life and work, material and concept. On a formal level, this multi-media work fuses the language of performance, installation, and sculpture. On a theoretic level, the work references and recombines aspects of cultural practice, literature, philosophy, Freudian psychoanalysis, science, and theology.

On Saturday, January 26, from 3-5 pm, the artist and American performers will appear in a rare New York performance. The performance links Tunga's vision of the muse with the spontaneity of the creative process. Meant to humanize the pieces, and impart soul and sensuality, the performance will immerse the audience in the magic of the work.

Tunga's was featured as a contemporary artist this season in "Brazil: Body and Soul," at the Guggenheim Museum, NY. Abroad, his work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris. The catalogue is available at the gallery.

Based in Rio de Janerio, Tunga has exhibited in Europe and Latin America since the 1970s. His 1997 survey, "Tunga 1977–1997," was curated by critic and poet Carlos Basualdo, and showed at the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies Museum, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, the MCA, Miami and the Museo Alejandro Otero, Venezuela. His work was shown in the museum shows: "Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century," MoMA, NY and in solo exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, the MCA, Chicago, and MARCO, Monterrey, Mexico. Tunga has participated the Venice Biennale, the Havanna Biennial, Documenta X and four Sao Paulo Biennials with major installations.


For further information please contact Haan Chau at (212) 206 9100