Galleries in Paris

A solo show by Ana Jotta
September 7 to October 17, 2013

Level One is delighted to present the exhibition ENCORE !, the first solo show by the Portuguese artist Ana Jotta (Lisbon, 1946) in Paris.

Working with every possible media – over the last four decades, she has explored virtually every artistic field, from painting to sculpture, including installation, sound and photography, and use of techniques associated with ‘minor arts’ –  she is known for the diversity of her work, the complete absence of an authorial signature, in a constant challenge to any traditional notions of authorship. Jotta is a genuine artist-collector, who constantly appropriates other people’s objects, iconography, phrases and titles.

Ana Jotta invents new and unexpected forms of presentation for each of her exhibitions, compelling us to admit that there may be no distinction between the work and the way in which it is presented. She invents new ways of presenting her own works in each new exhibition. This means that when a museum, or a gallery, decides to exhibit her works, it may be surprised by the manner in which they are installed and that, ultimately, may render them almost unrecognizable.

This exhibition presents a series of Ana Jotta’s works spanning from the 80s till today, mirroring the joint use of theatre, décor, set design (Jotta is a former actress and set designer), decoration (the artist is a collector of patterns and a frequent visitor to decorative arts museums) and the ‘minor arts’ – such as sewing, embroidery and pottery. It also translates the importance of a premeditated amateurism. Ana Jotta once wrote: «An amateur should say: ‘I have no literary interest, but I’m made of literature, I’m nothing else and can be nothing else.’ There are also other amateur specialities, amateur collectors (bottles, shoes, matchboxes, misprints, typos, etc.), amateur curators, healers, andsôóne [and so on]».

Ana Jotta was born in Lisbon in 1946, where she works and lives. After studying at Lisbon’s Fine Arts School and Brussels’ Ecole d’Arts Visuels de l’Abbaye de la Cambre, she made a career as an actress (1969-1980).
From the 1980’s onwards, she focused her activity on the visual arts and since the early nineties has been a regular presence at major art fairs and biennales (ARCO, Brussels, Johannesburg, Barcelona, etc). In 2005, she had a retrospective exhibition at the Museu de Serralves.
Ana Jotta has build her work in a sequence of breakthroughs that embody some sort of erasement: of her own previous footsteps; of modernist ideology and post-modern mythologies; and of the notion of authorship – either by deconstructing it or rebuilding it, she has attempted to dismantle the idea of a coherent or univocal style. Through a bare economy of means, her works shows a great sense of intelligence and wit. With Ana Jotta, you can always expect the unexpected.