Elizabeth Xi Bauer presents a duo exhibition of works by Marta Jakobovits and Anderson Borba, artists whose practices are rooted in exploring materiality. Their work focuses on experimentation: failing, reworking techniques, and creating a visual language using their chosen mediums, clay and wood, respectively.

“There is a powerful artistic dialogue between Anderson Borba and Marta Jakobovits’ practices, which have more in common than what may be visible at first glance. They are both strongly committed to using their own hands as the main instrument of their work.” – Maria do Carmo M. P. de Pontes, Exhibition Curator.

For the first time, these artists from Europe and South America, spanning different generations, will exhibit together, in a dialogue that allows similarities and differences to emerge between their practices. Jakobovits and Borba mould their chosen materials, clay and wood; fire their materials using a kiln and a blow torch; and build layers through glazes and collages, respectively. For both artists, there is a constant negotiation with the material within their process-orientated approach. Jakobovits and Borba have a deep understanding of various techniques and how their chosen materials respond to processes to create shape, feel, texture, and colour. They use natural elements, mimic nature, and initiate personal experiences, including wider societal and political concerns, through their work. Their practices are inherently linked to and part of proud and profound traditions while being within a contemporary context.

Marta Jakobovits’ practice is founded on researched and developed explorations of ceramic techniques. Jakobovits’ complex oeuvre encompasses casting, modelling, firing, and glazing. The artist works with shape, colour, and texture, building a vast, detailed personal library of how her use of chemicals informs the physical result.

In this exhibition, the artist’s installations will continue Jakobovits’ trope of borrowing and mimicking natural forms, presenting a unique visual dialogue, namely working with collected and newly found stones, leaves and tree bark. Her contact with the natural is a meditative practice, as the artist’s objects all carry and create memory anew. The artist’s works speak to the intrinsic connection between art and nature, capturing a tactile relationship that is central to her production. Ultimately, the artist’s chosen medium is derived from nature, clay. Jakobovits creates several groupings of similar objects and adds to them over time. The artist experiments with modes of display to create new narratives and installations tailored to the context of an exhibition. Through this action, Jakobovits instils new dialogues, memories and meanings.

The artist explains, “[My work is] a personal approach to trying to make the invisible of the conscious and subconscious psyche visible through [my chosen] materials. This is an ongoing process; it is very important to me. This is my life. Making shapes, families of shapes, putting them in a relationship with natural materials, such as sand, pebbles, leaves, different plants, barks and shells, or even bringing them back as a reverence for nature. [It is] an intuitive dialogue between me and what is outside of me.”

Sculptor Anderson Borba’s practice involves carving, collaging, painting, cutting up, reassembling and burning found materials, particularly industrial-grade wood, as well as cardboard, fabric, magazine pages, and textiles. The artist’s works retain a readymade quality. Borba uses these materials as a starting point to carve and mould his initial shapes and forms in his process-guided approach to making. The artist spends half the year in his East London studio and the other half in his native Brazil, in his studio in Barra Funda in São Paulo. Both places alter the artist’s work, namely the types of materials he finds and works within each location.

Torso II 2024
Anderson Borba, Torso II, 2024. Wood, 125 x 33 x 40 cm.

Photograph: Eduardo Ortega.Courtesy of the Artist and Elizabeth Bauer Gallery, London.

Borba’s works explore the possibilities of wood, primarily his free-standing totem-like structures and wall reliefs. The artist’s practice involves using oils and varnishes to add colour to his works and coating them in collages consisting of various images, some found, others rendered by the artist. He finds his colour palette through the myriads of images he accesses from contemporary culture. Before becoming a visual artist, Borba worked in the fashion industry as an accessories designer, and this lens still inspires how he creates his works.

Borba’s practice involves carving a multitude of grooves to create undulating textures. Here, the artist mixes contemporary making and a ritualistic approach with a traditional craft, often inspired by inner Brazil’s self-educated craftspeople. Like a medium of paint or ink, Borba burns certain works with a blow torch, creating rich contrast to the exposed wood underneath through subsequent carving.

Embracing the use of found materials, in his works, Borba frequently simulates nature, for example shells and rocks, even presenting those encrusted with plastic as a commentary on humankind’s impact on the natural world. The artist’s fragmented assemblages, and his exploration of surfaces, create thought-provoking works that engage with Brazil’s societal and political affairs. His works carry the weight of this exploitation of natural resources as they incorporate the look and smell of endless burnt forests as well as the plastic that dominates the earth’s ecosystems.

The works in this exhibition will showcase Borba’s intensified techniques. The artist will display reliefs with a tactile quality, which are embellished with photographic images transferred onto the wood using colour stains. These pieces evoke ancient tablets fused with the faded remnants of paintings. Anthropomorphic totem works will dissect the exhibition space; their installation appears to defy gravity as their almost inconceivable shapes stand without toppling over. These works challenge traditional coherence and unity by assembling fragmented figures using rough materials with visible joints. Also featured are sculptures with untreated surfaces. Borba’s process creates haptic works that shift and change as the viewer moves around them, at once abstract, detailed, playful, seductive, and daring.