Using paintings as a background, the Venezuelan artist Sol Calero creates complex site-specific installations composed of sculptures, textiles, and found objects. Like stage sets, her works often tend to envelop visitors, who can step into the scenography and play a part in disclosing the narrative of the work. By using clichés rooted in her Venezuelan cultural heritage, Calero ponders the ambiguity of cultural symbols and how their meaning may change over time. Using this as leverage, the artist examines stereotypes and cultural misunderstandings embedded in art, addressing these inequalities by directing focus at the underrepresentation and exoticism of Latin American artists.
Calero is known for making her installations meeting places, creating spaces for exchange and dialogue. She has shown a bus open to passengers at Tate Liverpool, had a shopping center at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, opened a Venezuelan currency exchange shop at the Art Basel, invited hairdressers and nail specialists to come and style exhibition visitors, and held communal eating events, concerts, and salsa classes in her works.
About Sol Calero
Sol Calero (b.1982) was born is Caracas, Venezuela, and now lives and works in Berlin. She has a bachelor in visual art from the Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, and a master in design from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.
Calero expresses herself in a variety of media, including painting and sculpture, found objects, textiles, video, sound, and site-specific installations. She frequently builds installations reminiscent of functional spaces. Among her earlier works are a school, a spa, and she has, on several occasions, explored the cultural codes of Latin American hairdresser shops, places exerting an important social function as a place for exchanging secrets and trading black market commodities.
Sol Calero has shown internationally and, most recently, at Tate Liverpool, the Brücke Museum, Berlin, ACCA The Australian Center of Contemporary Arts, Melbourne, Galerie Crèvecœur, Paris, Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Berlin, Kunsthaus Bregenz, and Studio Voltaire, London.
With her husband, the artist Christopher Kline, Sol Calero runs the project space Kinderhook & Caracas in Berlin where they curate shows featuring other artists. Furthermore, she is one of the five artists behind CONGLOMERATE, a video art project in the form of a TV channel.
Gallery name: Copenhagen Contemporary
Address: Refshalevej 173A, Copenhagen
Opening hours: Wed, Fri-Sun 11:00 - 18:00, Thu 11:00 - 21:00
Open: 28.06.2020 - 01.08.2021
