Fernando Casasempere: Ruins is on view at Fred Levine, Bruton
November 15, 2025 – January 10, 2026
Fred Levine is excited to present Ruins, a solo exhibition with London based, Chilean artist, Fernando Casasempere. The exhibition brings together new ceramic sculptures and paintings that continue Casasempere’s long-standing exploration of time, decay, and humanity’s imprint on the natural and built environment in particular Ruins and their architectural fragments.
In Ruins, Casasempere examines the architectural fragment as both a physical and psychological relic, a trace of what once was and a catalyst for imagination. His sculptural works evoke remnants of ancient structures, using a technique that builds his sculpture from blocks or bricks that reference the continuity of human construction and the erosion of civilization over time. Alongside these, a series of Salares paintings investigates the marks, or scars that nature leaves through its own processes of transformation and regeneration.
Casasempere describes his enduring fascination with ruins as something that exists “in my own collective unconscious.” From early encounters with the monumental cities and temples of his youth, it was not the perfection of architecture that endured in his memory, but the incompleteness of what remained and abandoned fragments are what inspire him to reconstruct personal histories of place and time.
Through this exhibition, Casasempere brings these impressions into physical form, working within ceramics’ full expressive potential, from raw material to refined structure, from permanence to fragility. His practice invites reflection on what persists and what fades, and how human and natural forces intertwine to shape the landscapes we inhabit.
About Fernando Casasempere
Casasempere has exhibited extensively in the UK, Chile, North America, Japan and Europe and is renowned for monumental installations including the critically acclaimed Out of Sync at Somerset House, London (2012) – which inspired Paul Cummins’s and Tom Piper’s WWI commemorative centenary installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at Tower of London (2014) – and Back to the Earth at New Art Centre, Salisbury (2005). Forthcoming commissions (2021) include permanent works near London’s Tottenham Court Road Station (Derwent) and at Henrietta House (CBRE).
Forthcoming and selected solo exhibitions include: New Art Centre, Reino Unido (2024); Francis Gallery, Los Ángeles (2024); Galería Artespacio, Chile (2024) Galería Helene Aziza, París (2024). Bloomberg Space, London ( 2022 )the San Diego Museum of Art (2022), Casa América, Madrid (2020), Ivorypress Gallery, Madrid (2019), Parafin Gallery, London (2018), Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo (2017), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile (2016), Parafin, London (2015), Somerset House, London (2012), and Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago de Chile (2012).
Selected group exhibitions include: Museum of Royal Worcester, Worcester (2018), Frieze Sculpture Park, London (2016), Sculpture in the City, London (2016), Sotheby’s Beyond Limits Exhibitions, London (2008), New Art Centre, Salisbury (2008), Jerwood Foundation, Alcester (2007). Selected collections include: Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Harvard Museum, Cambridge; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Contemporary Art Museum, Osaka; International Museum of Ceramics, Faenza; San Diego Museum of Art.
Fernando Casasempere was born in Santiago de Chile in 1958 and trained at Scola Forma and Escuela de Arte y Oficios, Barcelona. He moved to London in 1997, where he currently lives and works.
About Fred Levine
Fred Levine is a contemporary art gallery based in Bruton, Somerset in the UK. The gallery was founded in 2019 under its former name Informality in Oxfordshire and had occupied a permanent premise until 2022, further extending its programme in London at Cromwell Place until 2024. Fred Levine hosts a diverse exhibition programme both nationally and internationally and has exhibited works by some of the most celebrated contemporary artists including, Kapwani Kiwanga, Martine Poppe, Hannah Brown, Fernando Casasempere and Francesca Mollett.
Contact
info@fredlevine.co.uk
Fred Levine
The Old Silk Barn, Quaperlake Street
Bruton, BA10 0HB
United Kingdom
Photos courtesy of Fred Levine. © Fernando Casasempere. Photography by Tom Mannion
