NEW YORK, NY.- David Zwirner announced the global representation of the Romanian-born, New York–based artist Andra Ursuţa. Over the past decade, Ursuţa has gained recognition for her inventive sculptural work that mines the darker undercurrents of contemporary society. Drawing from memory, nostalgia, art history, and popular culture and employing a variety of media, the artist merges traditional sculptural processes and new technologies to transform commonplace objects and materials into viscerally evocative sculptures and installations that give new, redemptive forms to subjective experience.
As Ali Subotnick has written, “Memory, death, the human condition, and the absurdity and irony of life are all inspirations for the artist. Her work is ripe with emotion and contradictions—pathos and humor, melancholy and hope, raw and refined, hard and soft, aggressive and tender. It’s at times vulgar and political, poignant and wry, exotic and familiar.”1
A solo exhibition of Ursuţa’s work is scheduled for spring 2021 at David Zwirner’s Paris location.
David Zwirner states, “I was struck by Andra Ursuţa’s powerful presentation in last year’s Venice Biennale, which stayed with me. Later that fall I was encouraged by artists of the gallery to see Andra’s show at Ramiken. I went to Bushwick, and I can’t say it any other way: I was blown away. Thanks to Mike [Egan, of Ramiken] who invited me spontaneously to visit Andra in her studio right there and then. Not only is she a true artist’s artist, but her visionary work resonates in many ways and pushes the boundaries of sculpture into new and salient formal and narrative territories. We’re excited that Andra has joined the gallery and we’re looking forward to our first show together, which is scheduled for the spring of 2021 at our Paris gallery at 108, rue Vieille du Temple.”
Andra Ursuţa was born in 1979 in Salonta, Romania, a small town on the Romanian Hungarian border, and left for the United States in 1997. She moved to New York in 1999, and received a BA in art history and visual arts in 2002 from Columbia University, New York.
In 2018–2019, a solo exhibition of the artist’s work, Andra Ursuţa: Vanilla Isis , was presented at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy. Andra Ursuţa: Alps , which was on view in 2016 at the New Museum, New York, marked the artist’s first museum show in New York. Ursuţa’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at prominent venues internationally, including the Kunsthalle Basel (2015); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2014–2015); Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles (2014); Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany (2014); and the Peep-Hole Art Center, Milan (2014). Ramiken Crucible, New York, presented the artist’s first solo exhibition, Andra Ursuţa: The Management of Barbarism , in 2010.
Her work has also been included in important group exhibitions, such as the 58th Venice Biennale (2019); T he Warmth of Other Suns: Stories of Global Displacement, The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC (2019); T he Trick Brain, Aïshti Foundation, Beirut (2017–2018); 15th Istanbul Biennial (2017); High Anxiety: New Acquisitions, Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2016–2017); 13th Lyon Biennale (2015–2016); Artists and Poets , Secession, Vienna (2015); Busted , The High Line, New York (2013–2014); 55th Venice Biennale (2013); Expo 1: New York , MoMA PS1, New York (2013); and Ostalgia, New Museum, New York (2011).
The artist’s work is held in public collections worldwide, including the Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; and the Rubell Museum, Miami. Ursuţa lives and works in New York.
1 Ali Subotnick, “Essay” for Hammer Projects: Andra Ursuta (Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles, 2014). https://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibition /2014/hammer-projects-andra-ursuta.
