carlos bunga

Carlos Bunga creates process-oriented works in various formats: sculptures, paintings, drawings, performances, video, and above all in situ installations, that refer to and intervene in their immediate architectural surroundings.

While often using ordinary, unassuming materials such as packing cardboard and adhesive tape, Bunga’s work involves a highly developed degree of aesthetic care and delicacy, as well as a conceptual complexity derived from the inter-relationship between doing and undoing, between unmaking and remaking, between the micro and the macro, between investigation and conclusion. Straddling the divide between sculpture and painting, Bunga’s deceptively delicate works are characterized by an intense study of the combination of color and materiality, while at the same time emphasize the performative aspect of the creative act.

Bunga’s works on paper, which are closely related to his sculptures and installations, often involve overlays, whether of compositional elements in the paintings or sheets of translucent paper in the drawings. The analytic/descriptive result, like a photographic double-exposure, mimics the dual experience of memory and imagination underlying the sculpture.

Carlos Bunga (b. 1976 Porto) attended the Escola Superior de Arte e Design in Caldas da Rainha, in Portugal. He currently lives and works near Barcelona and has been presenting solo exhibitions since 2002, such as: Reassembling Split Light: An immersive installation (Sarasota Art Museum, Sarasota, USA, 2023); Something Necessary and Useful (Whitechapel, London, UK, 2020); Carlos Bunga: Architecture of life (MAAT, Lisbon, Portugal, 2019) and Capella (MACBA, Barcelona, Spain, 2015). He has also participated in group shows such as: 35 Bienal de São Paulo - Coreografias do Impossível (São Paulo, Brazil, 2023); Meia Noite - Bienal de Coimbra (Coimbra, Portugal, 2021) and Quote/Unquote: entre apropriação e diálogo (MAAT, Lisbon, Portugal, 2017). He is also part of important institutional collections, such as MoMA (New York, USA); Perez Art Museum (Miami, USA); Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona - MACBA (Barcelona, Spain) and Museu Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon, Portugal).