Bio
Pepe López works in a variety of mediums, including painting, sculpture, tapestry, collage, photography, video, and performance. López’s practice is deeply rooted in the foundations of Latin American abstraction. He interrogates aspects of contemporary life such as violence, terrorism, consumerism, and identity politics. In his latest series of works, López has worked with artisans from the Wayuus people of the Guajira Peninsula in Venezuela and carpet weavers from Uttar Pradesh in India, as well as artisans from Petare, a high-density urban area in Caracas. Together they have woven traditional colourful tapestries and carpets based on images of cities by López, inspired by technological mapping systems. In another recent series, the artist has painted and woven fashion logos on traditional indigenous baskets to make a ‘cartography of consumerism,’transforming everyday objects into allegorical representations of complaint.
Pepe López (b. 1966, Caracas) has worked on major multidisciplinary projects at institutions such as the Puffin Foundation, New York City; Sala Mendoza, Caracas and Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas. He became renown after “La sexualidad contaminada” (1991) his first major installation. He co-edited, for 2 years with Leopoldo Iribarren, the literary magazine Criterion. He also showed his work at MACRO (Rosario, Argentina) and at Galeria H2O (Barcelona, España).
