Angels of Power, Angels of Beauty: Ileana Magoda

Opening: November 15, 2024 | 6 - 8 pm

Bernheim is thrilled to announce the opening of Ileana Magoda’s first solo exhibition in Europe at our Zurich gallery, Angels of Power, Angels of Beauty. Based in Queretaro, Mexico, Magoda’s multidisciplinary practice encompasses both painting and drawing as well as poetry and music; creating an entire world around herself. Informed by her experience with Occult Spinal Dysraphism, her work transmutes personal struggle into universal themes of resilience and transformation.

Composed of an entire new body of work, the show invites viewers into an imaginary world where the physical and spiritual converge by exploring themes of duality, transcendence and transformation through vibrant and gestural paintings. Ileana Magoda’s work is first and foremost a diary into personal transformation; an oeuvre that aims to transcend the limitations of the body through self-discovery. Her paintings also aim to present a universal path, one of resilience, where agonies and resistance cross; a path that we have all walked. Drawing inspiration from Irina Tweedie’s writings, Magoda’s work resonates with the book’s exploration of self-discovery and the equilibrium between universal forces. This particular connection is fundamental given the artist’s personal condition that profoundly shapes her understanding of physical limitations and spiritual liberation.

Each canvas pulses with the tension between fragility and strength, the mundane and the divine, as well as drawing upon folklore and traditional Mexican mythologies. Inscribing herself in the lineage of artists such Frida Kahlo, she places emphasis on the uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form, thus entertaining an intellectual relationship with Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. In her admiration of nature and its powers, her palette is akin to O’Keefe’s thinly depicted flowers. In a time where the sublime is at the center of our artistic reconsideration, Ileana Magoda’s work brings together these influences to create her unique language, inviting the viewer to look beyond the physical and recognise the spiritual energy that underlies our existence as well as highlighting the beauty emerging from life’s challenges.

« In the coming and going of my pains
I find myself
 There is nothing before, nothing will come »

Ileana Magoda (b.1985, Mexico City), lives and works in Queretaro, Mexico. She has recently exhibited at Whitewall Projects, Paris, France; EDJI Gallery, Brussels, Belgium; The Black Piglet, Mexico City, Mexico. She holds a BA in Graphic Design from National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico (2008).