Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel is pleased to present Adição [Addiction], Jac Leirner’s most recent exhibition. The show displays sculptures made of rolling paper packages, an installation with pot cigarette butts and a photographic series assembled on wood. Compulsion and consumption, hoarding and reorganization are recurrent themes in Jac Leirner’s work. She employs daily use materials, mostly disposable or valueless. Therefore, if the artist has used cigarettes, business cards, museum bags, utensils and airplane blankets in the past, she now uses materials associated with the consumption of cocaine and pot.

The images show tiny rocks off cocaine surrounded by personal objects such as coins, tweezers and souvenirs. Jac took the photographs in 2010 and edited them 6 years later, composing kinematic narratives enclosed in independent episodes. The tiny pictured sculptures transform into cone, head, wheel, sphere and heart until they disappear. The horizontal assemblage of the works overlaid in five lines along the gallery emphasizes this literary vocation, at the same time it highlights formal aspects of color and composition. Some objects used in the pictures retake materials previously used by the artist while others reveal an aspect of absolute intimacy, at a maximum degree of juxtaposition of life and work. About Men and Animals, for example, creates a story with miniature objects, while Macbeth directly refers to literature. Oh Yes Yes and Round Ones gather images with coins and paper money. Landscape, on the other hand, set up an almost abstract scene.

The sculptures are interspersed to the photograph series and, analogously deal with the residue matter of smoking. Freezing Flame, Sugar Baby, Statement, among others, are created with rolling paper packages assembled on wood. These pieces gain body from the irregular shape of the wrappers when unassembled, and are organized according to chromatic compositions. The artist also inserts spirit levels within the supports, revealing the sense of balance that is so essential to these pieces.

Notions of consumption and accumulation of materials gain architectural outlines in the piece High ‘n’ Low. Occupying the second floor of the gallery, wire ropes support pot cigarette butts. The sculpture is defined by lines that tighten the space, reaching the minimum degree of matter, which is synthesized to its tinier element.

In the occasion of the exhibition opening, the publication Three White Nights will be released in Brazil. The artist book, made in partnership with Dutch designer Irma Boom, gathers all the images from the photo series that are part of the exhibition.

Jac Leirner was born in São Paulo, where she lives and works. Among her most recent solo exhibitions, stand-out: Institutional Ghost, IMMA (Dublin, 2017); Add it up, The Fruitmarket Gallery (Edinburgh, 2017); Borders are drawn by hand, MoCA Shanghai (Shanghai, 2016); Funciones de una variable, Museo Tamayo (Mexico City, 2014); Pesos y Medidas, CAAM (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, 2014), Hardware Silk, Yale School of Art (New Haven, 2012); Jac Leirner, Estação Pinacoteca (São Paulo, 2011). Her extensive resume also includes participations at: Sharjah Biennial (2015), Istanbul Biennial (2011), Venice Biennial (1997 e 1990), Kassel’s Documenta (1992), São Paulo Biennial (1989 e 1983). Her work is part of many important collections around the world, such as: Tate Modern (London), MoMA (New York), Guggenheim (New York), MOCA (Los Angeles), Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, EUA), MAM (São Paulo), Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo), Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid), among others.