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    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Ricardo Brey, Unsettling, 2019-2020
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Ricardo Brey, Unsettling, 2019-2020
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Ricardo Brey, Unsettling, 2019-2020
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Ricardo Brey, Unsettling, 2019-2020
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Ricardo Brey, Unsettling, 2019-2020
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Ricardo Brey, Unsettling, 2019-2020
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Ricardo Brey, Unsettling, 2019-2020
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Ricardo Brey, Unsettling, 2019-2020
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Ricardo Brey, Unsettling, 2019-2020 Alexander Gray Associates, Frieze Seoul 2022, Installation view
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Ricardo Brey, Unsettling, 2019-2020 Alexander Gray Associates, Frieze Seoul 2022, Installation view
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Ricardo Brey, Unsettling, 2019-2020 Alexander Gray Associates, Frieze Seoul 2022, Installation view
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Ricardo Brey, Unsettling, 2019-2020 Alexander Gray Associates, Frieze Seoul 2022, Installation view

    Ricardo Brey

    Unsettling, 2019-2020
    Mixed media
    Dimensions variable
    RBR187

    Further images

    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 1 ) Ricardo Brey, Just Right, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 2 ) Ricardo Brey, Just Right, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 3 ) Ricardo Brey, Just Right, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 4 ) Ricardo Brey, Just Right, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 5 ) Ricardo Brey, Just Right, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 6 ) Ricardo Brey, Just Right, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 7 ) Ricardo Brey, Just Right, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 8 ) Ricardo Brey, Just Right, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 9 ) Ricardo Brey, Just Right, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 10 ) Ricardo Brey, Just Right, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 11 ) Ricardo Brey, Just Right, 2020
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 12 ) Ricardo Brey, Just Right, 2020
    Unsettling (2019–2020) is one of Ricardo Brey’s sculptural assemblages housed inside unfolding archival boxes. Once opened, these boxes reveal intricate collections of artifacts like found objects and sculptural miniatures. Unsettling...
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    Unsettling (2019–2020) is one of Ricardo Brey’s sculptural assemblages housed inside unfolding archival boxes. Once opened, these boxes reveal intricate collections of artifacts like found objects and sculptural miniatures. Unsettling brings together a small, ornate metal bicycle wheel mounted atop a large raw piece of stone that sits on two leporello books.


    Unsettling is exemplary of an ideological framework that underlies much of Brey’s work: art as a form of alchemy. Brey elaborated on this topic in an interview, discussing his belief “that if art doesn’t produce alchemy, it’s meaningless. . . . Alchemy is the transformation of reality. Good art enables you to see the artist’s struggle with raw material to transform the way we see the world.”


    Art writer Evan Moffitt has pointed to dualities common in Brey’s art as manifestations of the principle of art as alchemy, visible in the way he combines “elements that are very rough and very smooth, or dark and light, sacred and profane. Such combinations have a transformative, almost alchemical effect on their constituent materials.” In Unsettling, this can be seen in the way Brey incorporates the worked metal wheel and the raw piece of rock crystal, juxtaposing their artificial and natural qualities while simultaneously transforming them into something wholly new and distinct.
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    Exhibitions

    2022: Elsewhere(s), ANOTHER SPACE, New York

    2021: Blue Shore, Alexander Gray Associates, New York, NY

    2019: Ricardo Brey: Adrift, Gerhard-Marcks-Haus, Bremen, Germany

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