Mother and Child
Isabelle Albuquerque
MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique is pleased to present Mother and Child, Isabelle Albuquerque's first solo exhibition with the gallery.
Mother and Child is the inaugural work in Isabelle Albuquerque’s latest series, the Meadow, in which she envisions a landscape of hybrid human-floral forms tracing the parallels between cultural and ecological evolution. The sculpture, a stainless steel human-orchid figure, features an intricate root system that probes themes of generational knowledge, symbiosis, empathy, and the chemical exchanges between generations.
Originally
conceived for an exhibition placing Albuquerque’s practice in dialogue with
Louise Bourgeois, the work re-contextualizes the art historical theme of mother
and child through new forms possessing organic, render-like precision that
collapse the hierarchies between the human and non-human, the organic and the
artificial, and reality and science fiction.
In her mother and
child, Albuquerque was especially interested in the expression of
microchimerism and women as chimeras that hold the genetic material from both
their parents and children - a kind of simultaneous state - that reaches both
into the past and future.
The materiality
of the sculpture further reifies this pluralism. Advancing her
"multitudinal" material logic, Albuquerque treats stainless steel to
contain the luminosity and shifting aesthetics of glazed ceramic while
retaining the industrial strength and durability of the metal. These
uprooted, seemingly ephemeral blooms are, paradoxically, forged in time with
the permanence of steel.
For its
presentation at Piece Unique, Mother
and Child grows out of a mound of fresh earth, continuing to bridge the
rendered and the natural world. A single pearl blossoming from each orchid
deepens these metamorphic forms as potent signifiers of desire and further
enacts an allegorical process, eternalizing expressions of exchange,
regeneration and renewal across multiple species and temporal registers.
The Artist
Isabelle
Albuquerque’s formally powerful and psychologically charged sculpture invites
multiple, simultaneous readings and perspectives. With a background in
performance, Albuquerque uses her own body to investigate the protean nature of
identity and to create a trans-temporal conversation that centers the
experiences of women and their own connection to desire, sexuality and
embodiment.
Albuquerque (b.
1981) studied architecture and theater at Barnard College and lives and works
in her native Los Angeles. Exhibitions include Alien Spring, Nicodim, New York
(2025, solo);Isabelle Albuquerque and Louise Bourgeois: The Wandering Womb,
lumber room, Portland (2025); Witchcraft,
Magic, and Occult Knowledge, Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University,
Palo Alto (2025); It Smells
Like Girl, Jeffery Deitch and Company Gallery, Los Angeles (2025); The Amber of this Moment,
Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2025); Portals
to Unwritten Time, Perrotin, Paris (2025); The Neverending Story: The Dream,
Vito Schnabel Gallery, St. Moritz (2024); Isabelle
Albuquerque X Robert Therrien, The Studio of Robert Therrien, Los Angeles
(2024); Post Human,
Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (2024);Orgy for Ten People in One Body,
Jeffrey Deitch, New York (2022, solo); BodyLand, curated by
Lauren Taschen, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin (2022) The Emerald Tablet, curated by Ariana Papademetropolous,
Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (2021); Nuestrxs
Putxs, Human Resources, Los Angeles (2021); and Sextet, Nicodim, Los Angeles
(2020, solo). Albuquerque’s work has appeared in numerous publications
including The New York Times, Artforum, L’officiel, and Flash Art. Her most
recent publication Orgy for
Ten People in One Body (Jeffrey Deitch, Nicodim, Pacific, 2023), is a
450 page monograph about the sculptural series that includes conversations with
the artists Miranda July and Arthur Jafa.