Alumnus Carlos Sandoval de León '08 in Solo Exhibit in Miami

This spring at the ICA Miami, alumnus Carlos Sandoval de León '08 has a solo exhibit featuring his installation and sculptural work.

According to the ICA website, “In these works, Sandoval de León deconstructs, repurposes, manipulates, and hybridizes raw, industrial materials with found objects, incorporating bricks, earth, discarded clothes, volcanic pearls, industrial soap, bullet-proof plexiglass, pizza boxes, armadillo shells, and souvenirs, among other materials.”

Some of these materials come from Sandoval de León’s neighborhood in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, as well as from his travels throughout the United States and Mexico. “Exploring the poetics of material culture, the artist draws out the concealed labor and socioeconomic dimensions of care embedded in these everyday objects,” according to ICA’s website.

The works at ICA include I 95 (2019), a collection of ten plexiglass containers filled with differently colored soil specimens encased in an oversize leather book bag. Other pieces included in the installation are made of the distinct-smelling pink industrial soap often used to clean floors in public buildings. Most of his works are incorporated into a large wooden sculpture he constructed himself.

In a comment to ICA, Sandoval de León said, “The product-driven culture we are surrounded by or marketed to creates a distance between the actual producer and the user. I am compelled by this distance as a rich space to work from.” His solo exhibit runs through April 19.

Carlos Sandoval de León (b. 1975, Sabinas Hidalgo, Nuevo León, Mexico) has participated in numerous group exhibitions in the United States, including Project Row Houses, Houston (2015); El Museo Bienal: The (S) Files, El Museo del Barrio, New York (2011–12); and Salad Days, Artists Space, New York (2008). Recent solo exhibitions have been presented at Central Fine, Miami Beach (2018); and Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (2015).

As of March 14 ICA Miami’s Ground Floor Galleries and Sculpture Garden, including Sandoval de León’s gallery, are temporarily closed due to concerns over COVID-19.