Opening January 29th – April 2, 2026
PROXYCO Gallery, 88 Eldridge Street, New York, NY 10002
Adrian S. Bara
Architecture of Defeat
PROXYCO is pleased to present Architecture of Defeat a solo show by Adrian S. Bara. The exhibition takes a poetic approach to mirror the City of New York where he has been living for the past 10 years. Bara has assembled a selection of works from the last decade that engages with the concepts of structures, alienation, consumption and architecture as a metaphor of the current state of the world.
The use of appropriated images from newspapers and magazines are recurrent in Bara’s practice to evoke a subtle awareness of how media influences our understanding of what we call reality. Organic matter such as real oranges makes us aware of the passage of time and our own vulnerability towards a complex society that seems to be losing the capacity to understand our position in history and in the world at large.
Gypsum-panels, repurposed discarded every day and industrial materials function as storytellers for Bara to “examine the emotional dimensions of accelerated change and its effects on the shifting inner and outer landscapes we inhabit.” -Fabian Flückiger, artist statement
Adrián S. Bará (b.1982, Mexico City) lives and works in New York. His practice, at its core, explores the body and its relation to space, architecture and structures that define everyday life. His work occupies an intermediary position between abstraction, figuration and site-specific sculpture, a practice in which a concern for materiality, space and the human body constitutes a central force. The artist’s training as a filmmaker drives his narrative— pulling in from daily materials and positions to construct ‘sculpted situations’ that are meant to be activated by viewers as they project their own accounts into the objects that invite them to do so. Bará’s artwork often functions as archival traces of events—as stories that are meant to be intervened, challenged and transformed through act of looking.
Bará has exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions at venues such as The National Academy of design, The Sugar Hill Childrens Museum of Art & Storytelling in New York, The Bass Museum of Art and ArtCenter / South Florida in Miami Florida, Museo de Arte de Zapopan in Gadalajara, Mexico, Kasmin Gallery in New York, Casey Kaplan Gallery in New York, Travesía Cuatro Gallery in Guadalajara and PEANA Gallery in Mexico City. In film, he was director of photography for the documentary The Solitude of Memory, which was included in the Cannes Film Festival in 2015. Bará has completed residencies at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York, PIVÓ in Sao Paulo, Brazil Casa Wabi in Oxaca, Mexico, Casa Nano in Japanan and Fondazione Macc in Sardinia Italy. His works are part of private and public collections such as: Isabel and Agustín Coppel Collection, Diéresis Collection, Gaia Collection, Luciano Benetton Imago Mundi Collection, Sayago & Pardon Collection and Suro Collection.