Carlos Bunga, Agora, 2012, Site-specific installation at Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Serralves, Porto, Cardboard, tape, latex paint and glue, Courtesy of the artist, Photo: Filipe Braga
Carlos Bunga, Photograph by Bruno Lopes, 2019. Courtesy of EDP Foundation.
Carlos Bunga. Photograph by Bruno Lopes, 2019.
Courtesy of EDP Foundation.
Carlos Bunga. Installation view of Agora at Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto, Portugal, 2012.
Cardboard, tape, latex paint and glue. Photograph by Filipe Braga. Courtesy of the artist.
Carlos Bunga. Installation view of Under The Skin at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Illinois, USA, 2015.
Cardboard, tape, latex paint and glue. Photograph by Steve Hall. Courtesy of the artist.
Carlos Bunga. Installation view of Psychological Spaces at Secession, Wien, 2021.
Cardboard, tape and glazings. Photography by Iris Ranzinger. Courtesy of Secession, Wien.
Carlos Bunga. Video stills from Lamp, 2002.
Single channel video, color, sound, loop (1 min 34 sec). Courtesy of the artist.
Carlos Bunga poses with some of his works in his studio in Mataró, 2020.
Photograph by Xavier Cervera. Courtesy of LA VANGUARDIA Magazine.
Carlos Bunga. Installation view of Home at CAM in Motion, Lisbon, 2022.
Cardboard, tape, glazings and container. Photography by Pedro Jafuno. Courtesy of Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian.
Previous
Next

Reassembling Spilt Light: An Immersive Installation
by Carlos Bunga

July 23 - October 29, 2023

Carlos Bunga is a multimedia artist internationally renowned for his imposing, site-responsive installations constructed with mundane, everyday materials, such as cardboard and masking tape. Originally trained as a painter, Bunga has developed a signature artistic language, “expanded painting,” which hybridizes and deconstructs the boundaries of painting, sculpture, architecture, and performance. Born into an Angolan refugee family in the Portuguese city of Porto, Bunga draws his inspiration from his makeshift childhood surroundings in deteriorating government housing. Employing a poetic approach across various mediums, he creates emotionally resonant and multivalent works. They not only invite the audience to question their position in the world around them, but also reflect on such timely topics as urban decay, migration, and displacement.

For this solo exhibition, Bunga will create a temporary cardboard structure in the 30-foot-high Koski Gallery located on the Museum’s third floor. Beginning and ending as a dialogue with the existing architecture, this installation will transform the gallery’s spatial configuration for the duration of the exhibition. By deploying light as his primary conceptual basis, just as James Turrell has done before him, Bunga explains that he will sculpt light, which cannot be touched, but only felt viscerally.

Accompanying Bunga’s site-responsive structure are selected photographs, videos, and paintings that further showcase the notion of light as a physical and phenomenological component, as well as a metaphor for reflection and hope in his own body of work. The exhibition will also include a set of drawings created after completing his onsite work. This post-installation phase of Bunga’s artistic practice allows him to reflect on the physical and spatial constraints that may hinder his creative process and conceptual scope. Bunga’s transformative installation and poetically resonant images invite visitors to consider how we shape and are shaped by our surroundings, to contemplate their ephemerality, and to attend to light in a time of darkness.

Bunga has had numerous solo and group exhibitions at notable art institutions worldwide, including Palacio de Cristal, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain (2022); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2020); Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (2020); and Secession, Vienna (2020), to name only a few. Bunga lives and works in Barcelona, Spain.
This exhibition is organized by Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design and curated by Rangsook Yoon, Ph.D., senior curator, Sarasota Art Museum.