Fergus McCaffrey is pleased to bring together the innovative and challenging biomorphic sculptures of Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo (1935–1990) with the psychosexual assemblages, paintings, and drawings of self-taught Italian artist Carol Rama (1918–2015).
Featuring a selection of twenty-five works spanning from 1962 to 2000, this exhibition explores the visionary insights offered in both artists’ practices; featuring prescient works that diagnose the most urgent interpersonal, societal, and ecological traumas of our time.
Juxtaposed, the affinities between Kudo’s and Rama’s radical sensibilities and subversive approaches to material are apparent; both artists used a wide array of found objects in uncanny combinations to explore the bodily and psychological, proposing possibilities for a post-human aesthetic. The concerns that occupied both Kudo and Rama throughout their careers remain relevant as among the most urgent issues facing contemporary society—materialism, sexuality, violence, and the effects of consumerism—however, neither artist made overtly political or moralizing artworks, instead they presented inventive and personal interpretations of what it meant to be alive. For this reason, both Kudo and Rama have proven influential for many contemporary artists, gathering cult followings and drawing renewed interest in recent years.
