Imperfect, impermanent and incomplete: these are the guiding principles of the Japanese aesthetic wabi-sabi, and they guide the unique creations of Mexican artist Bosco Sodi, whose latest installations have taken up shop at two New York City galleries.

More than twenty hulking balls and cubes built from ruddy Oaxacan clay decorate the gallery floors of Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works. The creation, Sodi’s latest installation Perfect Bodies (until 20 December), is a curious synthetises between minimalism and the contemporary “Land art” movement that highlights the artistic purity and rawness of dirt from the artist’s home studio Casa Wabi in Oaxaca. In the words of the artist himself, it speaks to “silence, contemplation and the passing of time – small things in life and our relationship with earth”.

Perfect Bodies, Photo by Sergio Alejandro Lopez Jimenez

While Perfect Bodies celebrates the natural surroundings of Sodi’s Mexican home, at Kasmin Gallery, the installation Vers l’Espagne (until 12 November) examines Sodi’s influences – Eduardo Chillida, Manolo Millares, Joan Miró, among others – from his time in Spain. Consisting of five large-scale paintings along with some freestanding clay sculptures, the exhibition demonstrates the powerful simplicity of elemental materials conceived through Sodi’s open-minded, almost therapeutic approach. In one series Peinture sur fond blanc pour la cellule d'un solitaire, the artist specifically recalls the experience of seeing Miró’s works in Barcelona, which he describes as “a feeling of warmth, calmness and repose”. And it’s a feeling he hopes to evoke within his own paintings.

Vers l'Espagne, Photo by Diego Flores

“I want people to really look at the painting – like they’re walking through the forest of watching a sunset,” says Sodi about his own work in an interview with Centurion Magazine, which showcases one of the artist’s paintings on the cover of its upcoming edition. “I want everyone to take their own trip through the painting, I want to give a feeling of organicness, of non-human intervention. My paintings really come alive when someone takes a look and makes their own conclusions.”

Our full cover story on Bosco Sodi appears in the Winter 2020 issue of Centurion Magazine under the headline “Master of Mayhem.”