François Ghebaly

Press Release

François Ghebaly New York is proud to present Thinking Hands, a two-person exhibition of new work by Anderson Borba and Gokula Stoffel.

From carved hardwoods and salvaged textiles to newsprint, gifted objects, and oil painting, Brazilian artists Anderson Borba and Gokula Stoffel employ a diverse array of materials in their multimedia practices, which both explore themes of time, chance, craft, and the body. In their upcoming two-person exhibition, Thinking Hands, the artists consider ideas of intelligence that emphasize movement and tactile sense as independent centers of knowledge beyond the brain. Through repetition and systems of sculpting, weaving, or painting, as well as close attention paid to the unique material identities of their respective media, each artist isolates in their work a poetics of intuition and somatic sense that underscores the fundamental physical relationships linking art and artist, body and environment.

Anderson Borba (b. 1972, Santos, Brazil) creates sinuous, distinctive sculptures using locally-sourced woods and materials such as cardboard, textile, plaster, and found images from books, magazines, and other photography.  These serve as starting points as he transforms his artworks through a ritualistic repetition of carving, scorching, collage, and painting into bodily forms that are both rugged and seductive. Influenced as much by historical and academic canons of sculpture as by the self-taught carvers of inner Brazil, Borba works in his practice to deconstruct ideas of the physical body in sophisticated interplays between concept, experience, and abstraction. Select solo and group exhibitions include Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brazil; Carpintaria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Kupfer Gallery, London, UK; and Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel + kurimanzutto, Comporta, Portugal.

Gokula Stoffel's (b. 1988, Port Alegre, Brazil) artworks emerge from a dialogue with her environment and materials that centers ideas of sentimentality, memory, subconscious, and exchange through the creative act. Her brightly colored compositions, which combine found materials, cold porcelain sculpture, textile, painting, and woven fiber, are executed freely and intuitively in a flexible approach to art-making that embraces spontaneity, and that allows latent forms and unplanned images to surface in careful layers of figurative and abstract gesture. Select solo and group exhibitions include Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brazil; Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo, Brazil; Elizabeth Xi Bauer, London, UK; Galeria Index, Brasília, Brazil; and Mendes Wood DM, Brussels, Belgium.

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