Señales de Humo (Smoke Signals)

Lucy Lacoste Gallery is pleased to announce Señales de Humo (Smoke Signals) - A duo show of sculptures and paintings presented by Renata Cassiano Alvarez and Daniel Berman, long-time colleagues.

In Señales de Humo (Smoke Signals) both Cassiano Alvarez and Berman present works which draw on inspiration from their hometown of Coatepec, Veracruz in México. This small yet extramundane place is where both artists have deep roots connecting them to their respective studios and families.

The work, paintings from Berman and ceramic sculpture from Cassiano Alvarez, draws conceptual references to the act of play, Mexican craft traditions, pre-Hispanic artifacts, and their home landscape in the lush temperate forests of Veracruz. A vivid and emotional sense of color use is ever-present in the works of both artists. Collaborating with one another, but also with their chosen materials, Berman and Cassiano Alvarez both approach their work with curiosity and a wish to establish an intimate relationship with the material which leaves space for the process to speak in its own voice.

Mexican-Italian artist Renata Cassiano Alvarez earned her MFA at University of Mexico. She has been the long-time assistant of two renowned international artists:  Nina Hole of Denmark and Gustavo Perez from Mexico.  Currently she is an Artist in Residence and teaching at the University of Arkansas. Cassiano Alvarez works predominantly in the medium of clay, in a search for developing an intimate collaborative relationship with material and material language. Influenced by archeology and history, she is interested in the power of the object as survival - objects with a sense of permanence and timelessness, and language as transformation; specially how adopting a different language can affect the physicality of the human body, and how this translates into material. Renata’s work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in public and private collections in Mexico, Estonia, Italy, Taiwan, Germany, Denmark, Latvia, China, United States and Slovenia. She works between her studio in Veracruz, Mexico and Springdale, Arkansas.

Born in Veracruz, México, Daniel Berman finished his Printmaking studies from the Univerisdad Veracruzana. Since 2008 he has been involved in projects and workshops related to drawing, printmaking, editing and painting. His work seeks to trigger reflections on the arts and communications while exploring ways of creating narratives with images, and the symbolic potentiality of visual language. Berman exhibited in Norway in 2019. The show which consolidated Berman’s search to expand his visual repertoire integrating tools and solutions from techniques that have been enriching his latest work in interesting ways. Within Berman lies a fixation on anthropomorphic figures as a receptacle to express the full range of emotions of the modern subject. In his work, the cast of characters represented is highly varied, but there are certain beings that reappear throughout his work and adapt to different supports and scales. Though he appropriates contemporary pop figures, his work is underlyingly atavistic and primitive. Berman’s work work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in collections in New York, Mexico City, Tokyo, San Francisco, and London.

Both Berman and Cassiano Alvarez undertake a creative course that adapts through cultural tradition, archeological artifacts, anthropological topics, and a personal desire for creating new symbols of modernity.