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MoMA presents ‘Bodys Isek Kingelez: City Dreams’

Bodys Isek Kingelez, Kinshasa la Belle (detail)

Bodys Isek Kingelez, Kinshasa la Belle (detail), 1991.

MoMA presents ‘Bodys Isek Kingelez: City Dreams’ ‘Bodys Isek Kingelez: City Dreams’. Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) presents the works of visionary artist Bodys Isek Kingelez (1948–2015). May 26, 2018–January 01, 2019]]>

Source: MoMA

Based in then-Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), following its independence from Belgium, Kingelez made sculptures of imagined buildings and cities that reflected dreams for his country, his continent, and the world. Kingelez’s “extreme maquettes” offer fantastic, utopian models for a more harmonious society of the future. An optimistic alternative to his own experience of urban life in his home city of Kinshasa, which grew exponentially and organically with urban planning and infrastructure often unable to keep step, his work explores urgent questions around how communities and societies function, urban growth, economic inequity, and the rehabilitative power of architecture—issues that resonate profoundly today.

Kingelez’s vibrant, ambitious sculptures are created from an incredible range of everyday materials and found objects—colored paper, commercial packaging, plastic, soda cans, and bottle caps—all meticulously repurposed and arranged. While he didn’t travel outside of Zaire until 1989, he was highly attuned to world events and deeply concerned with social issues.

The first US retrospective of Kingelez’s work, the exhibition spans his full career, from early single-building sculptures, to spectacular sprawling cities, to futuristic late works, which incorporate increasingly unorthodox materials. These rarely shown works are a call for us all to imagine, in the artist’s words, a “better, more peaceful world.”.

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MoMA presents ‘Bodys Isek Kingelez: City Dreams’