Issue # 19 Sofía Quirno
Curated By: Carla Lucini
An homage to paper, boundless and resourceful.
Moments in between, when life happens, are captured by Sofia Quirno on her notebooks. Almost as reflex effects, her notebook drawings respond to what she watches, reads, and listens every day.
Sofía Quirno’s body of work presents a common pattern: to be portable, almost as if it was produced on the run, always keeping an element of chance, of freedom. Leaving an open corner, a last element that could change the whole arche of the work. Her notebooks are part of this “en-valise” aspect. Always handy to record daily thoughts, index of different realities and fictions that she witnesses every day.
Quirno’s works communicate between each other, featuring unique and crystalized signs and symbols embodying her creative impulses. From a tv series to a politician’s speech, everything is spontaneously scrutinized. Notebooks appear to serve as the artist’s living archive, in constant dialog with her works, whether these are finalized or in process. Opening these notebooks is a way to opening up to Quirno’s cosmology, an orchestra of codes, images and gestures of the artist’s psyche.
In Sofía Quirno’s words. Extracts from a recent interview:
“Emotional memories of what I saw, of a particular moment. Mental maps. It’s also a way of associating the work with the world, the universe of others with the art of others.
The methodology of doing this daily and in notebooks started when I was invited by Santiago Bengolea to participate in an exhibition about artists notebooks at the Argentine Consulate in New York. I started to include everything I was previously drafting and taking notes anywhere I could. Typically, I worked on these notebooks at night, after work, while watching tv, and so all this began to take shape.
Drawing while watching television allowed me not to tie myself to images or words -when I was on the move I couldn't copy or remember the exact phrases-. Then the drawings in those notebooks became a record of the visual or emotional memory of the words I heard, and what shape or color evoked from the scene that I "witnessed." When I look at these later, most of the time I realize that despite being universal the content relates to me, in a very particular way. The unconscious always comes out.”
Photos by Jessie English
Sofía Quirno (b. in Buenos Aires, 1978) has a degree in International Studies from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, and MFA in Visual Arts from Parsons, The New School. She is currently a fellow at Shandaken Projects, Paint School a discourse-based program for painters in NY. She obtained the Deans Merit Scholarship Award to attend Parsons, and the Sterling Clark Fellowship to attend Vermont Studio Center. She was also an artist in residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and Triangle Arts Workshop.
She has been exhibiting her work since 2006. Her most recent exhibitions: A su lado, Galería Vasari, Buenos Aires (2019); Heads and Tails, Praxis Art NY (2019); Importa un pepino, Galería Hache, Buenos Aires (2017); After-noon, M E N Gallery, NY (2017); For Starters, Emily Harvey Foundation NY (2017); Calendar Day, Praxis Art NY (2016); Sunny Side Up, Sleep Center, NY (2015)
She lives and works in New York.
Carla Lucini is an art historian from Buenos Aires, Argentina, currently based in New York. Recently, she was Head of Public Programs department of El Museo del Barrio. In the past few years she was involved in different exhibitions in institutions and independent spaces, including The Illusive Eye at El Museo del Barrio, Vertical Horizons by Nicole Franchy at The Chimney NYC, and Invention by Carmelo Arden Quin at Leon Tovar Gallery. Carla also collaborated with publications such as Vitamin T and Vitamin D3 (Phaidon). Carla holds a Master in Contemporary Art from Sotheby's Institute of Art.