The phantasmagorical works created by the Brazilian-born installation artist Eli Sudbrack, who goes by the acronym AVAF (for Assume Vivid Astro Focus), are dense with connections: sexual, geographic, macroeconomic, social and political.
That his widely exhibited work — created in partnership with the Paris artist Christophe Hamaide-Pierson — is giddily colorful, slick and allusive, goes a long way toward explaining its attraction to museum curators and collectors, as well as his creative collaborators like Lady Gaga and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons.
That it is also unabashedly political (Mr. Sudbrack favors ideological terms like “contamination” and “insemination,” and his artistic avatar is a Cyclopean transsexual) offers insight into why the AVAF collaborators are less broadly known thantheir contemporaries here and abroad.
Days before the spring art season kicked into high gear, the 46-year-old Mr. Sudbrack, a native of São Paulo, Brazil, with a wiry mane of graying hair and a grin as broad as a cowcatcher, spoke about his latest subversions, which debut at the Suzanne Geiss Company in SoHo on Thursday.
