Opening: Wednesday, May 27, 6 to 8 pm

Rotwand is delighted to present the first solo exhibition in Zürich of the Peruvian artist Sandra Gamarra (Lima, *1972).

The exhibition, “The Guest”, is based on a short story (see attachment) of Ximena Briceño inspired by photographs of public and professional spaces as well as books from art museums that the artist acquired during a recent visit to Zurich. This exhibition looks at and builds upon the relation between the stage and its audience. How do visitors identify with what they contemplate? “The Guest” juxtaposes behind-the-scene pictures with exhibitive spaces. This combination underlines that visitors relate to places made for a certain effect where hosts decide what to show. Throughout the exhibition, the artist becomes the invited host of a space which functions as an incomplete puzzle filled by the foreign and familiar interpretations of its guests.
The Guest.pdf

Sandra Gamarra investigates museums as spaces for reflection on memory, classification, selection and emptiness. In 2002 she created the LiMac, Lima Contemporary Art Museum, whose collection is partly made up of appropriations of works from her contemporaries as painting, a formula which she uses to make ¨real¨ and ¨original¨ objects out of copied catalogues and art magazines. Due to the lack of a real museum, Sandra Gamarra creates fictitious museums that she turns into spaces for reflection on the problematic of memory and unarticulated history.

Museums can be analyzed as new places for peregrination and understanding that opened up as public spaces. Such situations can have a reversed effect when spectators wait for something to happen, such as a revelation or a miracle, without their interaction. Miracles is the title of a recent exhibition where Sandra Gamarra used the art gallery as a church where her works turned into icons of a culture where the spectator is part of the spectacle.

In such a way, the museum is a construction of memory in which we keep and forget things. Painting is a medium that shows how the story behind the appropriated images can be unified through the artist’s work.

Some recent exhibitions are:
“53rd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale” (2009), “Trópicos”, National Gallery, Cape Town, (2009), ¨La Ilusión del uso”, Galería Lucía de la Puente, Lima (2009), “Milagros”, Galeria Leme, São Paulo (2008), “Pipe, Glass, Bottle of Rum: The Art of Appropriation”, MoMA, New York (2008); “Relíquias e Ruínas”, SescSP, São Paulo (2008); “Located Work Project”, coordinated by Joseph Kosuth, La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2008); “Existências – Colección MUSAC”, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León (2007); “Urbe y Arte”, Museo de la Nación, Lima (2006).
Her works are in several private and public collections such as MoMA NY, Tate Modern, Musac, Caja Madrid and Mali.