Regina Silveira
Since the 1980s, Regina Silveira has used installations, sculptures, prints, and photography to challenge the relationship between an object and its shadow, something impossible in the real world. When faced with her signature black vinyl on gallery walls, viewers are enticed to first perceive the shadows as almost three dimensional, since they are initially experienced mainly with the body because of their larger-than-life scale and unsettling distortions. The graphic shadows provide an off-balance physical experience before they are perceived with the mind. With this back and forth between object and shadow, presence and absence, Silveira attempts to "construct and deconstruct images and spatialities." Her disproportionate (and impossible) shadows are similar to those portrayed by Giorgio de Chirico in his canvases, explains art historian Jennie Hirsh, who argues that Silveira brings to the present his propensity for uncanny shadows, which produce enigmatic and metaphysical atmospheres that are destabilizing and unsettling.
Silveira has had solo exhibitions at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, the Køge Museum of Art in Public Spaces in Denmark, the Ibere Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Museo Amparo in Puebla, Mexico, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT, Museo de Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia, Museo de Arte …
Since the 1980s, Regina Silveira has used installations, sculptures, prints, and photography to challenge the relationship between an object and its shadow, something impossible in the real world. When faced with her signature black vinyl on gallery walls, viewers are enticed to first perceive the shadows as almost three dimensional, since they are initially experienced mainly with the body because of their larger-than-life scale and unsettling distortions. The graphic shadows provide an off-balance physical experience before they are perceived with the mind. With this back and forth between object and shadow, presence and absence, Silveira attempts to "construct and deconstruct images and spatialities." Her disproportionate (and impossible) shadows are similar to those portrayed by Giorgio de Chirico in his canvases, explains art historian Jennie Hirsh, who argues that Silveira brings to the present his propensity for uncanny shadows, which produce enigmatic and metaphysical atmospheres that are destabilizing and unsettling.
Silveira has had solo exhibitions at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, the Køge Museum of Art in Public Spaces in Denmark, the Ibere Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Museo Amparo in Puebla, Mexico, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT, Museo de Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia, Museo de Arte del Banco de la República in Bogotá, Colombia, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, and Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo. Silveira received Prêmio Governador do Estado de São Paulo and the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand Award for Career. The Brazilian Art Critics Association awarded her the Award for Life and Work.
Courtesy of The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL
San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan
Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil
Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil
Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Alexander Gray Associates, New York, NY
