Structurally Scrumptious

About

Structurally Scrumptious will be presented over both floors of the BAFA Contemporary New Bond Street gallery. Opening during Frieze weekend, the exhibition will continue until 5thNovember.

Laurence Jenkell and Rafael Barrios are two of the most important artists working in sculpture today. Laurence Jenkell is the top French artist sold in the United States (Artprice, May 2018). The exhibition will be the first time Raphael Barrios’s work has been given an exhibition in the United Kingdom.

Laurence Jenkell is a French contemporary artist born in the city of Bourges in 1965. A self- taught artist, Jenkell began creating sculptures in the mid-nineties, leading her to experiment with various techniques such as inclusion, dripping, firing and casting. After mastering the ability to work with Plexiglas - acrylic glass - Jenkell developed the ‘wrapping technique,’ which allows her to drape and twist the material into large-scale forms, most recognisable in her candy sculptures. Presently exhibited in more than twenty-five countries, Jenkell’s works have been inducted into many major private, public and institutional collections, and in 2013 she exhibited ‘Wrapping Candy “Nutcracker”’ at The New York Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). She currently lives and works in Vallauris.

Rafael Barrios is a Miami-based Venezuelan-American artist. Born in 1947, to a family of artists, inventors and engineers, Barrios went on to study fine art in Canada, America and Venezuela and received his first award, ‘National Youth Painting,’ in 1963. Recognised as one of the most important artists in Venezuela, Barrios is renowned for his large-scale sculptural works which are often comprised of an assemblage of brightly coloured materials. Monumental in scale and geometric in shape, Barrios’ work appears to defy gravity in its construction, manipulating the eye into perceiving depth. In his forty-year career, he has exhibited works in over one hundred exhibitions including the Venice Biennale, Park Avenue New York and the National Art Gallery in Caracas, as well as in the private collections of HRH Don Juan Carlos de Borbón, King of Spain, and the collection of HRH Gloria, Princess of Germany. This is the first time that Barrios has exhibited in the UK.