PinchukArtCentre

Teresa Solar

Teresa Solar is a Spanish-Egyptian sculptor based in Madrid. In recent years, Solar has developed large-format installations in which families of sister sculptures vary in shape and size, creating complex ecosystems of thought. The reflection about the great stories of progress in contemporary society are opposed to micro-narratives that have to do with her own body; in this sense, Solar approaches her sculptures and installations as corporeal functions that relate to the industrial world, where hybrid forms of existence are constantly produced; her objects, then, constitutea crossbreed between the manmade, the natural and the mythical. Recent exhibitions include Liverpool Biennial (2021), Index Foundation, Stockholm (2019); Galería Travesía Cuatro Ciudad de México, México (2019); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2018); and Der Tank, Basel (2018).
Teresa Solar is a Spanish-Egyptian sculptor based in Madrid. In recent years, Solar has developed large-format installations in which families of sister sculptures vary in shape and size, creating complex ecosystems of thought. The reflection about the great stories of progress in contemporary society are opposed to micro-narratives that have to do with her own body; in this sense, Solar approaches her sculptures and installations as corporeal functions that relate to the industrial world, where hybrid forms of existence are constantly produced; her objects, then, constitutea crossbreed between the manmade, the natural and the mythical. Recent exhibitions include Liverpool Biennial (2021), Index Foundation, Stockholm (2019); Galería Travesía Cuatro Ciudad de México, México (2019); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2018); and Der Tank, Basel (2018).

In recent years, Teresa Solar has developed large-format installations in which families of sister sculptures vary in shape and size, creating complex ecosystems of thought. She explores concepts such as insulation and immunity and develops them through a multidisciplinary production mainly focused on sculpture and drawing. Throat, pore, hatch, tongue, pipe — her pieces are populated with connotations of connectivity and flow and based on the creation of multi-layered narratives.

In Amplified wind pattern the artist draws a parallel between bones — as hollowed structures, carriers of tissues, veins and cell communities, message pathways — and kayaks and flutes. The first ones being primitive vehicles of migration, and the second ones connectors of bodies and knowledge. Both of them hollowed and traversed by the wind, both of them emitting an air signal that evokes body fragility over the sea while simultaneously celebrating the human capacity for transition and transformation.

The artist works with pieces that vary in size and materiality: clay, found objects and human symbols coexist in her work. Teresa Solar approaches these relationships from an organic sensibility, as if they were bodily functions, but she also accentuates the complex system of relationships in the industrial world, where hybrid forms of existence that combine organic and synthetic properties are constantly being produced. In Hermaphrodite Solar evokes a not yet fully developed reproductive organ that has been unearthed from the ground and exposed to the public. In contrast to the raw organic exteriors, the interiors are delicately finished and clad in bright colors reminiscent of miners’ overalls or sprays used to mark new tunnels in the underground darkness.