Bosco Sodi

b. 1970, Mexico City
Lives and works primarily between New York City, Mexico City and Oaxaca

Bosco Sodi is a Mexican contemporary artist whose practice is grounded in the exploration of material, colour, texture and process. Working with raw substances such as pigment, clay, sawdust, wood pulp, natural fibres and earth, Sodi allows the surfaces of his artworks to evolve naturally as they dry, crack and transform.

Central to Sodi’s practice is a direct and intuitive engagement with his materials. Rather than imposing a predetermined image or concept, he embraces the unpredictability of the creative process, allowing chance, texture and the physical properties of each substance to shape the final work. The resulting paintings possess a powerful sense of presence, their heavily worked surfaces existing somewhere between painting, object and relic.

Sodi frequently leaves his works untitled, resisting associations that might influence the viewer’s initial encounter with the work. The work itself becomes symbolic of the artist’s conversation with the raw material that brought the painting into creation.

His practice draws on a broad range of influences, from the material experimentation of Art Informel and artists including Antoni Tàpies and Jean Dubuffet, to the expressive colour fields of Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko.

Sodi’s work is held in major public and private institutions around the globe, including 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Ishikawa, Japan; Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, Belgium; New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana, USA; Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig, Germany; The Scottish National Gallery of Art, Edinburgh, Scotland; The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia.