Lygia Clark: The I and the You
Whitechapel Gallery, London
2 October 2024 – 12 January 2025
Lygia Clark, Óculos (Goggles), 1968 © O Mundo de Lygia Clark-Associação Cultural, Rio de Janeiro. Alison Jacques. AJG-LyC-00981
Whitechapel Gallery, London, announces a solo exhibition dedicated to the work of pioneering and influential Brazilian artist Lygia Clark (b. 1920, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; d. 1988, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). Lygia Clark: The I and the You marks the artist’s first major UK public gallery survey.
The exhibition focuses on Clark’s artistic journey from the mid-1950s to early 1970s, a particularly volatile period in Brazil’s history in which radical modes of artistic practice also emerged. Clark was a central figure in the Brazilian Neo-concrete movement (1959 – 1961), which also included artists such as Amilcar de Castro, Ferreira Gullar, Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Pape. Frustrated by what they felt to be the limitations of ‘Concrete art’, with its emphasis on non-figurative geometric abstraction, Neo-concrete artists began to push for greater experimentation, expression, colour and poetic sensibility in their practices – as well as proposing a shift in how audiences might participate in artworks.
Encompassing paintings, works on paper, a selection of Clark’s renowned ‘Bichos’, as well as other groundbreaking participatory works, The I and the You shows how Clark’s early formal experimentations and growing interest in the philosophy of experience and therapeutic potential of art led to a gradual closure of the gap between the work and the viewer. The exhibition is co-curated by Anglo-Brazilian art scholar Michael Asbury, artist Sonia Boyce and Whitechapel Gallery Director Gilane Tawadros.
An integrated programme of public talks, walks, and other participatory events will further contextualise Lygia Clark’s work and practice.