Alejandro Cesarco: 2020 Spring Audain Visual Artist in Residence

The SFU School for the Contemporary Arts is pleased to welcome Alejandro Cesarco as the SCA’s 2020 Spring Audain Visual Artist in Residence.

Through different formats and strategies, his expanded practice—which includes producing artwork, publishing books, and curating exhibitions—reflects his recurrent interests in repetition, narrative, and the practices of reading and translating. Drawing from the legacies and genealogies of conceptual art, Cesarco finds moments of affect to explore “the way meaning is felt.” His recently completed doctoral dissertation, “Under the Sign of Regret,” which reads artistic forms through the lens of regret, positions regret as an aesthetic mode and methodological tool with which to address the relationships between imagery, language, and meaning.

During his time in Vancouver, Cesarco will present a free public lecture on his work. In conjunction with SCA faculty member Kathy Slade, Cesarco will also work closely with third-year visual art students towards conceptualizing and creating work for the BFA Project, an annual student exhibition in the Audain Gallery. Recursion, this year’s BFA Project, explores the relationship between contemporary artistic practices and histories of artistic influence. The work presented in Recursion takes up notions of originality, the use of references, and practices of translation and citation. The exhibition includes painting, sculpture, photography, video, drawing, textiles, and a collaborative artist book edited by Cesarco and Slade. Entitled With Thanks, the book is composed of letters that directly address a significant influence that has prompted or guided each of the exhibiting artists’ practices.

Alejandro Cesarco was born in Montevideo, Uruguay and currently lives in New York. His most recent solo exhibitions include: A Solo Exhibition, Witte de With, Rotterdam, (2019); These Days, Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin, (2019); Tactics & Technics, CAC, Vilnius (2019); Song, The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2017); The Measure of Memory, Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan (2017); Public Process, Sculpture Center, New York (2017); Prescribe the Symptom, Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (2015); Loyalties and Betrayals, Murray Guy, New York (2015); Secondary Revision, Frac Île-de-France/Le Plateau, Paris (2013); A Portrait, a Story, and an Ending, Kunsthalle Zürich (2013); Alejandro Cesarco, mumok, Vienna (2012); A Common Ground, Uruguayan Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennial (2011); One without the Other, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City (2011); and Present Memory, Tate Modern, London (2010). His recent group exhibitions include: Question the Wall Itself, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2016); Under the Same Sun, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2014); Tell It to My Heart: Collected by Julie Ault, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2013); and The Imminence of Poetics, 30th Bienal de São Paulo (2012).

Cesarco has curated exhibitions in the US, Uruguay, Argentina, and most recently, sections of the 33 Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (2018) and ARCO, Madrid (2020). He is director of the non-profit arts organization, Art Resources Transfer.

Presented by the School for the Contemporary Arts at SFU in collaboration with SFU Galleries.

The Audain Visual Artist in Residence program brings artists and practitioners to Vancouver who have contributed significantly to the field of contemporary art and whose work resonates with local and international visual art discourses. The visiting artists interact with the students and faculty of the School for the Contemporary Arts as well as the broader visual arts and cultural communities and the community at large. In keeping with the experimental nature of the School for the Contemporary Arts, the terms of engagement are open and change from artist to artist. The program is generously funded by the Audain Foundation Endowment Fund.

Events

Artist talk
March 12, 6pm
Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema

BFA Project 2020: Recursion
March 26–April 4, 2020
Opening: March 25, 6–8pm
Audain Gallery
Gallery hours: Tuesday–Wednesday & Saturday 12–5pm, Thursday–Friday 12–8pm