Erika Verzutti engages above all with the shifting relations between media and image. Highly literate in the art historical canon, Verzutti consumes and introduces disparate historical and contemporary motifs in line with the principle of anthropophagy advocated by the Brazilian poet and novelist Oswald de Andrade. Verzutti creates humorous, playful objects forged from bronze, concrete, clay and papier-mâché, and finished with a variety of paint media including oil, pigmented wax and watercolour.
She draws on the intrinsic qualities of her media while simultaneously responding to her contemporary visual culture. Through a negation of material hierarchy, and the introduction of recognisable motifs in surprising and organic ways, Verzutti’s is an ever- evolving artistic practice.
Verzutti was born in 1971 in Sao Paulo. Verzutti’s work is held in collection by museums across the US, Latin America and Europe, including Tate, London; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Centre Pompidou, France, and the Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo, Brazil. Recent solo exhibitions of Verzutti’s work include those held at the Centre Pompidou, France; MASP, Sao Paulo, and, forthcoming, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Milan. Verzutti lives and works in Brussels.
