Teresita Fernández
Night Writing
12 September – 20 October 2012
201 Chrystie Street
In her fifth solo exhibition at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, Teresita Fernández creates works that evoke the dramatic and universal experience of looking at the night sky. The exhibition consists of a single, large-scale installation built on site in the soaring double-height space of the Chrystie Street gallery. Made up of thousands of translucent, colored layers of polycarbonate, the hovering form becomes like sculptural painting, filtering the natural light in the space to create a color field reminiscent of the aurora borealis.
Fernández will also present a related series of unique prints. Created while in residency at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute, each unique hand-made pulp work in this series is perforated with braille-like patterns that recall constellations. The title of the series, Night Writing, is a reference to “Ecriture Nocturne,” a secret code written in the early 19th century to enable Napoleon’s soldiers to communicate at night, silently and without light.
Mr.
Metamorphosis: Give Me Your Wings
13 September – 20 October 2012
Opening: Thursday, 13 September, 6-8 PM
540 West 26th Street
The centerpiece of Mr.‘s exhibition is a massive installation to be constructed in the middle of the main gallery and interspersed with a series of new paintings. This sprawling installation, the first of it’s kind by the artist outside of Japan, embodies the post-disaster angst and frustration of the Japanese people since the catastrophic events of March 11, 2011. According to the artist, the Japanese people rose in a unified effort to recover from the devastation of the loss of World War II. But along with the recent economic stagnation, the earthquakes in Eastern Japan, and the after effects of the nuclear disaster, a collective depression from an inability to vent their frustrations continues to accumulate within their society.
Mr. has envisioned a complex, chaotic installation that serves as immersive sculpture by forcing viewers to interact with the work and places them in a scenario that is psychologically unsettling. His new body of work aspires to blur the distinction between the interior and exterior through the construction of structures and atmospheres inhabited by familiar objects that are conversely used to communicate the unfamiliar: in this instance, an experience most people have not lived. Viewers are given insight to the psychological state of Japan all the while remaining alien to the experience. Composed of garbage and everyday objects from Japanese life, this installation stands as a reminder of the debris that blanketed Tohoku in the aftermath of March 11.
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