Biography
Ivana Brenner has exhibited individually at Galería Vasari, Buenos Aires (2015) and Alejandra Von Hartz Gallery, Miami (2011). She has participated in several international group and two- person gallery and museum shows in venues including Emma Scully Gallery, NYC (2023), Galería Vasari Buenos Aires (2023 and 2019), Julio Artist-Run Space, Paris (2017), The Franklin, Chicago (2016), Galerie 0fr, Paris (2016), and Fundación PROA, Buenos Aires (2014). She was part of NYFA’s 2020 Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program and is a 2024 mentor. In 2015, she participated in the Biennale Internationale du Lin de Portneuf, Québec. Brenner earned her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Brenner was a 2022 AIM fellow at The Bronx Museum.
Artist Statement
Ivana Brenner’s work was exhibited at The Bronx Museum in Part Two of Bronx Calling: The Sixth AIM Biennial, on view from April 12 – June 16, 2024. She also produced the public program, Collective Clay Vessel, as part of Experience Art! The Closing Event for The Sixth AIM Biennial (Part Two) on June 15, 2024.
Untitled, 2024
Paint skins, stoneware, gold luster
75 x 26 x 1 ½ inches
Untitled, 2023
Glazed stoneware, gold luster
12 x 9 x 9 inches
Untitled, 2021
Black earthenware, gold luster
8 ½ x 9 ½ x 9 ½ inches
Untitled, 2022
Blue porcelain, white porcelain, gold luster
7 ½ x 5 ½ x 6 inches
All works are courtesy of the artist
I make sculptures that are abstract yet bodily and sexual. My practice is intuitive and process-based, involving material research focused on clay and paint skins. I develop my own techniques to create what I conceive as non-human bodies that evoke fleshiness, body fluids, and fertility in an attempt to give anima to inert matter. I am fascinated by the transformational aspects of materials. I prepare paint patches to dry, and when they are still soft and flexible I extend them on cold stoneware bodies, or directly on the wall. In my ceramics, I create dissonance and flirt with the abject by contrasting precious materials like gold with masses of brute, humble, mud-appearing clay. For site-specific installations, I treat buildings as bodies that host an organism growing out of them, playing with the construction’s own accidents— and making sterile architecture feel alive.
Like life, love is generative: it creates something where nothing existed before. As a recent South American immigrant I find challenging cultural differences in the way we relate to our bodies and hearts. Through my work, I affirm the value of this connection almost as an act of resistance to cultural hegemony. Skins, fluids, and other sensual expressions present in my pieces reflect the tactile process of how they are made and reconnect us with pleasure and emotions.
