↳ Exhibitions

Nora Maité Nieves & Yoan Sorin at Embajada

December 8, 2021

Artists: Nora Maité Nieves & Yoan Sorin

Exhibition title: Cuerpo, Espacio y Todo lo que Rodea (Body, Space and Everything that Surrounds)

Venue: Embajada, San Juan, Puerto Rico

Date: November 13 – December 31, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Embajada, San Juan

Embajada is delighted to present a two person exhibition with artists Nora Maité Nieves and Yoan Sorin entitled, Cuerpo, Espacio y Todo lo que Rodea (Body, Space and Everything that Surrounds). For this exhibition the artists explore ideas of physicality, ritual and the personal through new bodies of work that incorporate painting, drawing, sculpture and performative elements. Nieves’ brightly colored towering totemic sculptures command presence and power, defining an architectural style while suggesting a spiritual realm. Ornamental elements and motifs become vessels that carry personal meanings. Sorin’s compositions made of excavated and painted paper bags placed on the wall and floor are arranged with select found and made objects affixed to the surfaces call to mind a shrine-like presentation. Sorin’s painted and fragmented body parts pepper the exhibition; a head greets visitors at the entrance of the gallery while limbs and a torso appear throughout the exhibition suggesting personal narratives.

Nieves’ practice stems from urban architecture, inspired by her native caribbean landscape. A modernist decorative concrete block commonly seen in Puerto Rico is a recurring motif that emotes personal memories. In this new body of work, Nieves’ takes inspiration from daily walks in the city, evoking the cacophony of architectural forms, designs and textures that make up an urbanscape. The stacked verticality of the works instigate new meaning, suggesting personal narratives while becoming an archive of Nieves’s painterly language. Their totemic presence proposes a spiritual emblem while also relating to the figure. These painted and textured sculptural bodies include Nieves architectural rubbings of various surfaces to form unique patterns that speak to the artist’s action and physical presence within the work.

Yoan Sorin utilizes unique and primitive materials, exploring the limits of creative possibilities through an intimate process of art-making. Performance is typically an essential element in his practice in order to physically experience the nature of the objects created. For Cuerpo, Espacio y Todo lo que Rodea, Sorin has developed a series of sculptures, both organic and fetishistic, that are charged with his presence though he is physically absent. Dissected paper bags serve as canvases channeling the artist’s hand, making tangible his action. Furthermore, their forms resemble figures on which Sorin activates by arranging objects to create compositions which he refers to as “ofrendas”. These compositions become altars, shrines dedicated to the personal, heightened by the accompanying fragmented body parts.

Cuerpo, Espacio y Todo lo que Rodea (Body, Space and Everything that Surrounds) fuses two artists’ practices to present an experience of presence and absence. The body is suggested but not rendered, fragmented but not whole. The viewer is invited to experience a personal and psychological architecture resulting from a shared spiritual journey by the artists that brings awareness of one’s presence in relation to the exhibition’s surroundings.

Nora Maité Nieves (b. 1980 San Juan, Puerto Rico) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010, and her BFA from La Escuela de Artes Plásticas, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 2004. Recent solo exhibitions include: Deep Blue Day, Pink Bright Night, Embajada Foyer, Brooklyn, NY (2021); Full Room in the Sun Room, Fresh Window Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2019); Paisaje Lunar, Flyweight Projects, Brooklyn, NY (2019); and Tangible at Hidrante, San Juan, PR (2018). Recent Two Person exhibitions: Cuerpo, Espacio y Todo lo que Rodea, Nora Maité Nieves and Yoan Sorin, Embajada, San Juan, PR (2021); Electric Hue, Proxyco Gallery, NewYork, NY (2021). Recent group exhibitions include: Surfacing at Ruiz-Healy Art, New York, NY curated by Carlos Rosales-Silva (2021); Contact Light at Survey Survey, New York, NY (2021); […]ENTREFORMAS, at El Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR, curated by Abdiel Segarra (2021); Rubus Armeniacus (Himalayan Blackberry) at Jessica’s Apartment Gallery, New York, NY curated by Jessica Kwok (2019); Nada Tropical, Miscelanea Gallery, Barcelona, Spain, curated by Ricardo Cabret and Maximilian Juliá (2019); Small Objects at La Salita, New York, NY curated by Paz Monge (2019); Repatriation at El Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR, curated by Bianca Ortiz (2019); and EDDYS Room at Galleri Thomassen, Gothenburg, Sweden, curated by Austin Eddy (2018). Nieves lives and works in New York.

Yoan Sorin (b. 1982 in Cholet, France) is a graduate of the School of Fine Arts in Nantes and the universities of Montreal and Cuenca. His drawings, paintings, videos, and performances break down the distinctions between popular culture and art. His work has been featured at La Friche Belle de Mai (Marseille, 2015), Frac des Pays de la Loire (Nantes, 2016), A-Frame (La Courneuve, 2017), MNAC (Bucharest, 2016), Nadalokal (Vienna, 2018), Hunter East Harlem Gallery (New York, 2018) and Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2019). In 2020 he participated in Manifesta13, Marseille, France. He joined the company nadaproductions as a dancer and designer in 2017, and collaborates with 14N61W Gallery in Fort-de-France (Martinique) since 2018 where he has a solo show currently on view. Sorin lives and works in Marseille, France.

Nora Maité Nieves and Yoan Sorin, Cuerpo, Espacio y Todo lo que Rodea (installation view), 2021

Nora Maité Nieves, Ciclo Lunar, 2021, Acrylic, Flashe, coarse pumice modeling paste, fiber paste, gold & silver leaf, resin, and pigments on MDF, 74 x 17 x .75 in

Nora Maité Nieves and Yoan Sorin, Cuerpo, Espacio y Todo lo que Rodea (installation view), 2021

Yoan Sorin, Crown Head (from the dismembered series), 2021, Acrylic on wood, Variable dimensions

Yoan Sorin, Attraction’s heat 1, 2021, Spray paint on metal and foam, 23.5 x 23.5 inches

Yoan Sorin, Attraction’s heat 2, 2021, Spray paint on metal and foam, 23.5 x 23.5 inches

Nora Maité Nieves and Yoan Sorin, Cuerpo, Espacio y Todo lo que Rodea (installation view), 2021

Yoan Sorin, Boxing arm, Hat Head, Member, Leg sock (from the dismembered series), 2021, All acrylic on wood, variable dimensions

Yoan Sorin, Untitled from the Carpet series, 2021, painted shopping bag with found and made objects, 61 x 22.5 x 5.5 inches

Nora Maité Nieves and Yoan Sorin, Cuerpo, Espacio y Todo lo que Rodea (installation view), 2021

Nora Maité Nieves, Blue Moon, 2021, Acrylic, Flashe, coarse pumice modeling paste, fiber paste, resin, and pigments on MDF, 94 x 17 x 1 inches

Nora Maité Nieves, Clouds Over Red Field, 2021, Acrylic, Flashe, coarse pumice modeling paste, fiber paste, gold & silver leaf, resin, and pigments on sintra panels, 34.5 x 56 x 2 inches

Nora Maité Nieves, Eclipse Lunar, 2021, Acrylic, Flashe, coarse pumice modeling paste, fiber paste, gold & silver leaf, resin, and pigments on MDF, 94.25 x 15 x 1 inches

Nora Maité Nieves and Yoan Sorin, Cuerpo, Espacio y Todo lo que Rodea (installation view), 2021

Yoan Sorin, T-shirt (from the dismembered series), 2021, Acrylic on wood, variable dimensions

Nora Maité Nieves and Yoan Sorin, Cuerpo, Espacio y Todo lo que Rodea (installation view), 2021

Nora Maité Nieves, Cúpula, 2021, Acrylic, Flashe, coarse modeling paste, metallic silver paint, and woodless color pencil rubbing/frottage on canvas, 25 x 22 x 1.5 inches