Julião Sarmento, "Terra Incognita"

Works by art-historical heavyweights Degas and Duchamp serves as the lodestones for the Portugese artist's first show in the U.S. since 2011. Paintings and sculptures are on view, along with a centerpiece installation dominated by a monumental female nude in the pose of Degas's 1881 sculptural masterpiece, Little Dancer of Fourteen Years. Both it and a smaller version of the same object were created with a 3D printer. Also on view are Sarmento's various takes on Duchamp’s 1921 readymade, Why Not Sneeze Rose Sélavy?, a birdcage filled with lumps of marble carved to resemble sugar cubes—one of several works in the Duchamp canon related to the artist's female alter ego, Rose Sélavy. By channeling these two works, Sarmento aims to synthesize their respective erotic subtexts and obsessions with the female form.