Liliana Porter’s work playfully subverts convention, disrupts
time, and messes with reality. Using a wide range of media,
Porter mixes the absurd with the philosophical, creating
extraordinary situations that lure us unwittingly into the
realm of her idiosyncratic cast of characters.

Drawing from an eclectic collection of figurines, knickknacks,
toys, and souvenirs, Porter features these characters in
unexpected combinations and circumstances. The peculiar
situations she invents, where disparate events occur
simultaneously, or dissimilar protagonists interact, wittily
invite political, philosophical and existential interpretation.

Catastrophes proliferate in Porter’s new body of work. Thick
black or white liquids threaten, and sometimes engulf, her
tiny figures. Stoic in the face of daunting tasks -- recovery
or clean up -- the characters elicit empathy from occupants
of a similarly disaster-filled world.

Juxtaposed with this new body of paintings and photographs
will be a related collection of exceptional work from the early
1970s.

Liliana Porter was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and lives
in New York. In 1965 she founded the New York Graphic
Workshop with Luis Camnitzer and Jose Guillermo Castillo,
which is the subject of a current exhibition at the Blanton
Museum of Art in Austin, Texas. Her work is also currently on
view in “Here Is Every. Four Decades of Contemporary Art” at
the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Rehearsal will launch as part of the Dia Art Center’s web
project on November 6 and she will have a solo exhibition at
the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City opening on February 5,
2009.

Porter has shown extensively internationally, including recent
solo exhibitions at the Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos
Aires; the Museo Castagnino, Rosario, Argentina; Palacio
Aguirre, Cartagena, Spain; and the Phoenix Art Museum,
Arizona. Her work is in numerous public and private
collections in Latin America, Europe and the United States,
including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The
Metropolitan Museum, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de
Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; The Metropolitan Museum,
New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Smithsonian Museum
of American Art; Daros-Latinoamerica Collection, Zurich; and
Tate Modern, London.

Hosfelt Gallery will also be featuring the work of Liliana Porter
at the PINTA Art Fair November 14-16 at the Metropolitan
Pavilion, 125 W. 18th Street in New York.