ART CITIES:N.York-Teresita Fernández
Teresita Fernández is a sculptor who integrates architecture and the optical effects of color and light to produce exquisitely constructed, contemplative spaces. In her sculptural environments, Fernández alters space to create illusions, subtly modifying the physical sensations of the viewer and dramatizing the role architecture plays in shaping our lives and perceptions.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Lehmann Maupin Gallery Archive
With lyrical and immaculately executed indoor and outdoor works, Fernández is pushing the boundaries of sculpture and installation art into the fields of architecture and landscape architecture. She inspires viewers to see a new relationship between built environments and the natural world. In “Fire (America)” her solo exhibition at Lehmann Maupin Gallery in New york, Teresita Fernández presents a 243.8 x 487.7 glazed ceramic wall panel depicting a nocturnal landscape engulfed in flames, a new series of abstract landscapes made from burned paper, and “Charred Landscape (America)” an immersive, 3.05 m panoramic drawing on site comprised of built-up, dimensional layers of solid charcoal applied directly to the gallery’s walls. In the series “Fire (America)”, Fernández uses images of fire to refer to contemporary American violence, as well as the technique of slash and burn used by indigenous people throughout the Americas to shape and cultivate the land. Contrary to the common fictitious narrative that the New World was a wilderness at the time of European contact, the technique of slash and burn evidences the sophisticated, deliberate ways that indigenous people had altered the land to their benefit for thousands of years. In “Charred Landscape (America)”, pieces of raw, sculptural charcoal are affixed to the gallery walls to create the illusion of a 360-degree horizon. A dramatic charcoal drawing emerges from the horizon line and travels across the walls of the gallery to suggest an abstracted landscape scene shrouded in smoke. In both of these new works, Fernández continues to carefully merge the material and the conceptual. The clay (earth) is baked at a high temperature (fire) to create the image of the earth ablaze in vitreous saturated colors set against a black night, extremes of darkness and light that become physical, material, and tactile, as well as metaphorical and poetic. Just as fire is used as a material component during the firing of the ceramic panel, charcoal becomes a self-referential material from which the landscape drawing is rendered. This beautiful and seamless unity of materiality and narrative is essential for Fernández, whose practice is based in an understanding and reinterpretation of the relationships between nature, identity, history, and economy.
Info: Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 201 Chrystie Street, New York, Duration: 17/3-20/5/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.lehmannmaupin.com