Paul Kasmin Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by the Chilean artist Iván Navarro. Heaven or Las Vegas, featuring fluorescent light sculptures drawn from the floor plans of iconic skyscrapers, will be on view at 293 Tenth Avenue from March 3 to April 2, 2011.
For Heaven or Las Vegas, Navarro’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, the artist has created a series of fluorescent light wall sculptures based on the floor plans of twelve of the world’s most well known skyscrapers, including the Flatiron Building in New York, the Jumeirah Emirates Towers in Dubai and The Center in Hong Kong. These monumental buildings were chosen for the ambitious innovations in design and engineering that were required to construct them and for their importance to the historical spread of Western-style development across the globe. Through a positioned play of mirrors and lights, viewers have the experience of looking up into the interior elevation of each building, many of which tower more than 1,000 feet high in actuality. Within each work, Navarro has incorporated significant words or phrases like SURRENDER, RESIST, and YOU SAY YES, which echo like suggestions or commands through each structure’s illusory depth.
Iván Navarro was born in Santiago, Chile and is known internationally for his socio-politically charged sculptures of fluorescent and incandescent light. Recent solo exhibitions include Nowhere Man, Contemporary Art Center, Towner, UK (2009), Threshold, Chilean Pavilion, Aresnal, 53rd Venice Biennale (2009), Backstage, Speed of Light, and the Greenway Gallery-Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts, Australia (2008). His work is held in the public and private collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, DC), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond, VA), Fonds National d’Art Contemporain (Paris), LVMH Collection (Paris), Saatchi Collection (London), Martin Z. Margulies Warehouse (Miami, FL), and Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea (Santiago de Compostela, Spain). Iván Navarro currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
