Adriana Varejão (Brazilian, born )

Adriana Varejao (Brazilian, b.1964) is an artist who works in a variety of media, including painting, photography, sculpture, and installation projects. She lives in Rio de Janeiro and is considered to be one of Brazil's most notable contemporary artists. She uses the pain and pleasure found in her country's colonial past, in conjunction with art history and architecture, as inspiration to create beautiful and thought-provoking art.

This contemporary artist came into prominence in the late 1990s with her provocative work in large-scale paintings featuring Portuguese ceramic tiles; however, she then moved on to include other mediums within her work. Her tile work features coldly beautiful spa settings that seem to invoke the feel of cracks beneath the beautiful surface. She uses color and shadow to create visually beautiful pieces that hint at hidden mysteries, and this is especially prominent in several of her 2004 tile pieces. The dramatic titles of these works—A Diva (The Diva), O Sedutor (The Seducer), O Obsceno (The Obscene), and O Obsessivo (The Obsessive) —are in stark contrast to the seemingly Minimalist nature of her paintings. The result is that viewers want to know more about each work to discover how the titles relate to the pieces.

Varejao's work was prominently featured in the Brazil - Body & Soul exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. She has had solo exhibits in museums worldwide, including the Victoria Miro Gallery in London, the Lehmann Maupin Gallery in New York, Soledad Lorenzo in Madrid, and the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. Several museums have included her work in their long-term and permanent collections, including the Tate Museum in London, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego. In 2008, Centro de Arte Contemporaneo Inhotim in Brazil created a permanent pavilion to display Varejao's artwork.

Timeline

1964
Nasceu no [ Born in ] Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, 1964
Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro

Exhibitions

2005
Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo (solo)
2005
Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisboa, Portugal (solo)
2005
Fondation Cartier Pour L´art Contemporain, Paris, França (solo)
2005
inSite_05: Farsites: Urban crisis and domestic symptoms in recent contemporary art, curadoria de Adriano Pedrosa, San Diego, Califórnia, EUA
2005
5ª Bienal de Arte do Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brasil
2005
Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits, San Diego Museum of Art, California, Bass Museum of Art, Miami, The National Portrait Smithsonian International Gallery at the S. Dillon Ripley Center, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C, San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas, USA
2004
Latin Visions - a collector's insight, Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn Harbor, Long Island, New York
2004
Extended Painting, Victoria Miro Gallery, Londres, Reino Unido
2004
Novas aquisições 2003 - Coleção Gilberto Chateaubriand, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
2004
Panorama da Arte Brasileira, MAMAM, Recife, Brasil
2004
We come in peace... Histories of the Americas - Musée d'Art
2004
Contemporain de Montreal, Montreal, Canadá
2004
Yanomami, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
2003
Sauna Paintings, Victoria Miro Gallery, Londres (solo)
2003
Lehmann Maupin, Nova York, EUA (solo)
2002
Galeria Soledad Lorenzo, Madri, Espanha (solo)
2002
Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo, Brasil (solo)
2002
Victoria Miro Gallery, Londres, Inglaterra (solo)
2001
Galeria Pedro Oliveira, Porto, Portugal (solo)
2001
Azulejões, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil (solo)