Art & Design Cover Story
Art & Design Cover Story It was only after abandoning his studies in chemical engineering and moving to Paris that he considered art as a full-time career Clockwise from top left: a piece from Sodi’s Seven Suns (2020) series, created at Casa Wabi on a burlap sack; the moonscape-like Untitled (2018); Sodi at work in his studio at Casa Wabi, on the Oaxacan coast career, when a fellow customer at a frame shop offered to buy the watercolour paintings he had created in his little apartment studio. Making a go of it, he and his wife set up shop in a house in Barcelona, which happened to be owned by opera singer José Carreras. Taken with Sodi’s work, Carreras introduced him to prominent local gallerists. “After that, things began to develop in an organic way,” he says. Today, Sodi is back in New York after several months at Casa Wabi, on Mexico’s Oaxacan coast, where he and his family retreated as the pandemic began. The sunny waterfront complex, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando, plays host to a unique artist-in-residence programme: participants are fully funded and free to pursue their creative endeavours, but are also asked to interact with the local children and the community at large – many of whom have never had any real contact with the art world. His approach to making art there was very much a continuation of his trademark improvisational style. “One day while shopping at the local market, I saw these beautiful sacks, made for carrying chilli. They were old and full of stains, but I bought them all, and began working on them with some oil paints I found at Casa Wabi,” he says. The result was a collection he’s dubbed the Seven Suns, which, like all his works, is a compelling combination of sculpture and painting – and a reminder of how much beauty chance can bring. • PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: UWE WALTER, COURTESY BOSCO SODI, ALEX KROTKOV 50 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
