Ivens Machado
Florianópolis, 1942 - Rio de Janeiro, 2015
Emerging in the 1970s Ivens Machado’s early career was set against the rise of Brazil’s military dictatorship. Often working with controversial themes of sexuality, violence, and repression, Machado aimed to articulate the social tensions of his time through film, photography, drawing, and his primary medium of sculpture. Untitled (2005) is brutalist in appearance: the sculpture incorporates raw construction materials such as iron, plaster, ropes, and wire, referencing architectural constructions and techniques while suggesting bodily forms through rounded edges and protrusions.
Machado exhibited extensively during his lifetime participating in a total of eight editions of the Bienal de São Paulo. In 2016, the Museu de Arte Moderna (Rio de Janeiro), and Pivô (São Paulo), mounted consecutive posthumous surveys. His work was also exhibited at MoMA (New York, 2014); Museo Del Barrio (New York, 1997); MoMA PS1 (New York, 1988); Musée d'art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (Paris, 1987). A survey exhibition on his work is currently on view at the Museu Oscar Niemeyer (Curitiba).
