Liliana Porter
Bio
LILIANA PORTER (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1941) studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires and, from 1958 to 1961, at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. In 1964 she traveled to New York, where she currently lives and works. In 1965 she co-founded The New Graphic Workshop with Luis Camnitzer and José Guillermo Castillo. She has obtained, among others, the Guggenheim Grant in 1980 and the New York Foundation for Arts Grant in 1985. In 1973 she exhibited individually at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York (Projects room). Since then she has exhibited in important museums and institutions in different countries and her work is represented in the collections of some of the most prominent museums in the world – Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum, New York; Brooklyn Art Museum, New York; Museum of Latin American Art (MALBA), Buenos Aires; Museum of Contemporary Art, Monterrey; Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art, Mexico City; the Bronx Museum of Arts, New York; University Art Museum, Austin; Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon; Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Caracas; The Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires; Museum of Modern Art, Bogotá; Museo del Barrio, New York; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montreal; Wilfredo Lam Institute, Havana; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum, Madrid; Daros Latin American, Zurich; ATT Corporation, New York; Philip Morris Collection, New York; CIFO Cisneros Fontanals Foundation, Miami; IBM Corporation, New York; The Chase Manhattan Bank, New York; PAAM, Pérez Art Museum Miami...Her latest exhibitions include her participation in the 57th edition of the Venice Biennale, Museo del Barrio New York or ARTIUM in Vitoria, as well as Les Abattoirs in Toulouse and DIA Bridgehampton Foundation, New York.
Statement
In the last years, parallel to photography and video, she has been making works on canvas, prints, drawings, collages, and small installations. Many of these pieces depict a cast of characters that are inanimate objects, toys and figurines that she finds in flea markets, antique stores, and other odd places. The objects have a double existence. On the one hand they are mere appearance, insubstantial ornaments, but, at the same time, have a gaze that can be animated by the viewer, who, through it, can project the inclination to endow things with an interiority and identity. These "theatrical vignettes" are constructed as visual comments that speak of the human condition. I am interested in the simultaneity of humor and distress, banality and the possibility of meaning.
Additional information
Magritte was for Liliana Porter the perfect example of an illusionist artist.
Because how each image changes its name, representing something different.
These Liliana’s works dialogue with Magritte’s works, modifying some elements, and creating a new art work.
However, the issue remains the same, the distance between the object and its
representation, between the object and the word that designates it. That is the personal part
in her work, it is a concept she wonders about and then try to make the artwork as a vehicle
for reflection.
2.5 x 4m / 98.4 x 157 in
