Leonor Antunes
Leonor Antunes is a Portuguese contemporary artist who creates sculptural installations. She lives and works in Berlin.
Early life and education
Leonor Antunes was born in Lisbon in 1972. After high school, she attended the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema, studying staging for a year. She then attended the University of Lisbon for a "broader form of visual art" and earned a degree in 1998 from the Faculty of Fine Art. She then lived in Karlsruhe and attended the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste. Her first major exhibition occurred in 1999 at the Bienal de Maia.Critical reception
Jenny Gheith wrote, "Leonor Antunes carries ghosts with her. Spirits of artists, designers, and architects she admires wander from exhibition to exhibition, object to object. Her sculptures capture glimpses of their histories, their lives, and their materials. Details are extracted, measurements are recalculated, and connections between artists resurface in ways that conflate physical, measurable experience with the effects of memory and time."Describing Antunes' sculptures at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Lydia Yee said they "conflate physical, measurable experience with the effects of memory and time. Layered with historical and material references, her installations extract details and components from work by artists, architects, and designers associated with modernism". Ceci Moss wrote, "Surrounding the visitor, Antunes' skillful maneuvering of space, material, light, and texture allow the voices of a feminist history largely unsung to resound and become anew."
Cal Revely-Calder, curator of Antunes' 2017 exhibit at Whitechapel Gallery in London described her work, "like an answer, a reaction to the historical and architectural context of the place where exposed".
Her design, "A Secluded and Pleasant Land in This Land I Wish to Dwell," reflects the works of textile artist Anni Albers and films of Maya Deren. Commenting on Antunes' intentional echoing of their works, New York Times critic Martha Schwendener wrote that the benefit is being able to compare their works with Antunes' works, and learn more about art history. However, Schwendener writes, by comparison, the contrast is lopsided, and "Ms. Antunes's work is elegant and accomplished but a little anemic."
Alexa Lawrence, reviewing Antune's exhibition, "I Stand Like a Mirror Before You" in New York's New Museum lobby gallery, said Antunes "investigates human negotiations with space and surface", and also observed, "Reflections in the gallery's glass wall multiply knots and lines into an illusory forest of unruly vertical forms. There is no clear start or finish here, no single path through—only space and its infinite possibilities."