Mia Fonssagrives Solow Pop-Up: 10 West 58th Street

NEW YORK, NY– Leila Heller Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition Mia Fonssagrives Solow, opening October 21, 2020. A dynamic retrospective of sculpture by Fonssagrives Solow, the eponymous show will survey the artists iconic works, from seminal abstract forms cast in bronze or carved from wood to her most recent bronze and aluminum aliens and monumental fiberglass forms. 

On one side of Fonssagrives Solow’s work is her uplifting Forms series, examining the simplicity of scale and movement, form and color. The curving surfaces of each piece draw the eye from one exquisite line to the next, as everyday objects, such as a sail or an apple, are refined to simply the clean, essential lines of their form. What begins as a small lucite or wood maquette evolves to a monumental fiberglass sculpture towering up to 16ft-high. For Fonssagrives Solow, the negative space at the center of each work echoes her upbringing in front of and behind the lens of a camera. These empty spaces not only define the sculptures themselves, but also re-frame the world beyond. 

Fonssagrives Solow's other most influential body of work, Aliens, is comprised of figurative sculptures made of polished bronze and aluminum, which explore the nature of artificial intelligence. Hearkening back to Early African art, the works in this series stand as powerful symbols of femininity, masculinity and otherness in a new age. Fonssagrives Solow's metallic creatures offer a humorous commentary on the collision of technology and history, melding the pervasive role technology plays in the modern formation of the self with ancient totemic archetypes. Imbued with a name, a story, and a personality, each of these sculptures is equal parts human, alien and machine. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST 

Mia Fonssagrives Solow is an American contemporary artist based in New York and Paris. She is internationally renowned for her refined and whimsical aesthetic in both figurative and abstract forms in a range of mediums, from polished bronze to gilded wood to sleek enamel over fiberglass. Fonssagrives Solow has been exhibited in galleries and museums in New York, London, Palm Beach, Paris, and Shanghai. Her work graces the pages of lauded publications such as FT’s How to Spend It, Vanity Fair, Whitewall, artnetNews, The New York Times, Harper's Bazaar and Vogue.