Delcy Morelos, a Colombian sculptor who was a star of last year’s Venice Biennale, has gotten representation with Marian Goodman Gallery, which will mount a solo show of her work this month in Paris.
Morelos is also currently preparing to open at the Dia Art Foundation in Chelsea, where she will exhibit two new installations that, like her Biennale work, are composed of earth.
Her Biennale installation featured large blocks of soil that were arranged to form a maze-like structure that viewers could enter. With its sizable chunks of clay and more brought into an art space, the piece invoked Land art while also alluding to Andean and Amazonian Amerindian cosmologies.
Despite being well-known in Colombia, where Morelos was born and is currently based, she had not had gallery representation before Marian Goodman took her on.
Marian Goodman Gallery, which also has spaces in New York and Los Angeles, has a decorated roster that includes artists such as Maurizio Cattelan, Julie Mehretu, Nairy Baghramian, Steve McQueen, and Lawrence Weiner. But unlike many other blue-chip operations, the 46-year-old gallery has generally added artists at a slower pace. Philipp Kaiser, president and partner of Marian Goodman Gallery, said the decision to add Morelos did not come lightly.
“At Marian Goodman Gallery, we try to very precise with who we pick up,” Kaiser told ARTnews. “We do not add artists left and right. We felt that her practice is comparable to some of the artists we focus on.”
Kaiser mentioned that Morelos’s art is deeply rooted in Tierralta, the Colombian town where the artist was born, and said that she often uses her sculptures, paintings, and works in other mediums to consider histories of violence in her country and to emphasize the relationship between bodies, life, and death. “It’s highly analytical,” Kaiser said, “but it’s also highly cosmological.”
Morelos has gained gallery representation at a crucial moment in her career when her work is receiving much greater recognition abroad. In addition to her New York and Paris shows, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis will give Morelos a solo show next year.