Alexandre da Cunha: “These Days” at James Cohan, New York: Art Exhibition Review

In the art of Alexandre da Cunha on view as part of “These Days,” which is a new, ongoing exhibition at the art gallery James Cohan in New York City, everything — from concrete to shovel handles to objects geared for everyday and routine use like drinking straws — is steeped in a feeling of ornamentation.

Alexandre da Cunha at James Cohan

Da Cunha used those wide-ranging materials for his work, which starts out in the exhibition with what turns out to be a series of large, concrete sculptures. They’re abstract, though still expressive, formed of hulking, rounded forms in which da Cunha embedded rounded openings, which make each artwork feel surprisingly light, considering the associations and frequent experiences of concrete as a material.

Implausibly but striking in richness, each of these sculptures seems to lift (metaphorically) from the ground on which it rests: a massive assemblage of material clearly nodding to real-world, built environments like our present day’s ubiquitous, never-ending roads but something that simultaneously expresses what you might imagine as original intentions (in a best case scenario) behind the spread of the material.

The work takes flight, freshly envisioning connection with surrounding environments, particularly considering how the rounded openings inside the larger forms pointedly incorporate surrounding, empty space and a feeling of possibility into each artwork’s experience. You wonder, though, what comes next, and da Cunha leaves space for this contemplation. The industrially driven spread of concrete and its associations throughout our modern environment promise sweeping grandeur. But does it deliver?

And on an entirely personal level, the opportunities suggested by both the associations of the material and the manner in which da Cunha fashioned it — they’re not necessarily fulfilled. The sculptures evoke sky-scraping promise as something that’s waiting quietly in place.

Here and elsewhere in the exhibition, da Cunha feels like he’s animating both our personal and collective environments, setting up their visual, obvious surfaces as the faces of engaging characters, fueled by our human hopes.

Da Cunha’s Art: Richly Wide-Ranging

Da Cunha’s new exhibition also includes large, wall-hanging sculptures in which he assembled shovel handles and placed cloth of wide-ranging origin within each handle’s opening: a process of enveloping in simultaneity with one of obfuscation.

I picked up on a lightly stepping rhythm of experience that eventually gathered, in artwork after artwork, into a sweeping, existential flag. Considering the palpable, inward flow throughout the exhibition, the central through line felt like personal experience of the passage of time and the progression of ambition, but da Cunha’s envisioning set up that experienced march forward as something constructed, something sometimes entirely separate from the fueling, originating force.

Everywhere you looked, you got the sense, though, that someone made this, or was making this: an outline of personality merging into a symphony of ornamentation, reassuring in its directness and exemplifying consistency of desire.

Because even though da Cunha’s exhibition seemed to chart the structural as something made by but separate from us and perched precariously between opposing poles, you still felt the imprint of the personal and the individual in these grand, overarching forms that obviously were not strictly personal or individual. You could appreciate a certain gentility and serenity to the manner in which da Cunha’s concrete sculptures, shovel handle-assemblages, and more were meeting you, the visitor. The maker’s hand was here, outlined and amplified by the artist’s improbable, sculptural still lifes.

In smaller-scale artworks, da Cunha embedded everyday artifacts into concrete: the momentary and fleeting frozen into (maybe not literally, but still, a feeling of) infinity, the two persisting in tandem. And when you see such internally forceful assemblages evoking this kind of interchange, you feel a kind of inevitability, like we can’t help but put some of ourselves into the small-scale and large-scale constructions and lived spaces that surround us. The works collectively spotlight a necessary, urgent, relational dialogue fueling the very existence of structure, specifically a variety of structure that defines space: walls, roads, a closet and its contents.

We persist as part of this; the sculptural is responsive.

I also remain fascinated by how da Cunha’s art simultaneously insists on a facet of monumentally scaled reach for conceptual intersections with the very familiar, again both via the associations of these materials and how da Cunha’s artworks move aesthetically. It’s all lasting; the evoked intention here feels like it’s meant to move beyond us as individuals. It’s a celebration of the individual — and group — as constant craftspeople, creating, arranging, and rearranging in harmonious flux. Household items rise beyond themselves; everything is reaching, and rising.

Da Cunha envisions ornamentation — something that feels like it sits beyond us but in connection with us — as internally infused with expression. Though sometimes progressing from within itself, that expression feels externally dependent, enlivened only by what by default would be a human presence. In the smaller artworks, too, you feel like the artistic scenery is waiting — peaceful, and still.

Da Cunha proposes a merging of individualized expression into the sublimely lasting: something moving through everyday touchpoints but in its general lack of obviously functional form, progressing well beyond that. In conjunction with these moments, there is a narrative, a through line. The sculptural is speaking — quietly beckoning, and it’s a message we gave it.

Alexandre da Cunha: “These Days” continues through December 21 at James Cohan, New York.

Featured image: Installation view, Alexandre da Cunha, “These Days,” James Cohan, 48 Walker Street, New York, October 25 – December 21, 2024. Courtesy the artist and James Cohan, New York. Photo by Dan Bradica.