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Teresita Fernández
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PRESS
The Brooklyn Rail
May 1, 2017
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The Art Newspaper
March 4, 2017
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News
The future of the arts is Latinx: Q&A with artist Teresita Fernandez
October 5 2016
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Art21
September 24, 2016
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Discovering the World From Nature's Many Perspectives Hyperallergic
December 31 2015
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Women in Art: Teresita Fernández
November 30 2015
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At Grace Farms, Encountering Art at Every Bend New York Times
November 28 2015
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Interview with Sculptor Teresita Fernández Aesthetica Magazine
November 24 2015
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Sculpting the Public: Teresita Fernández Wants You In Her Work Modern Painters
October 31 2015
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Grace Farms Draws Praise Stamford Advocate
October 19 2015
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The Spiritual and Spectacular Meet at an Ultramodern Community Center in Connecticut New York Times
October 16 2015
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Poetry Under Fata Morgana Organized by Teresita Fernández and Emanuel Xavier
September 17 2015
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ArtNexus Teresita Fernández. Fata Morgana.
August 11, 2015
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Arte al Dia International
June 2015
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Cultured Magazine
April 18, 2015
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WSJ Artist Teresita Fernández Transforms New York’s Madison Square Park
March 31, 2015
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Departures Magazine Artist of the Moment: Teresita Fernández
January 9, 2015
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Gothamist Massive 500-Foot-Long Canopy Coming To Madison Square Park
November 11, 2014
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New York Times
November 6, 2014
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Modern Art Notes Podcast
August 18, 2014
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W Magazine
July 17, 2014
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The Brooklyn Rail
July/August 2014
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Sculpture
November 2013
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Art Bahrain
Fall 2013 - Winter 2014
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Architectural Digest
October 2013
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Modern Painters
October 2013
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South China Morning Post
September 26, 2013
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Whitewall
February 1, 2013
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W Magazine
October 2012
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The Wall Street Journal
September 14, 2012
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Artinfo
September 12, 2012
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Bloomberg
September 5, 2012
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Whitewall
November 30, 2011
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W Magazine
November 30, 2011
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The New York Observer
September 19, 2011
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White House Appoints Artist Teresita Fernandez to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts
September 2011
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Art in Asia
August 31, 2011
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Artdaily
May 26, 2011
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artdaily
January 31, 2011
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Artinfo
November 16, 2010
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Financial Times
April 9, 2010
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Bob Magazine Issue 67
February 28, 2010
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Artforum
February 28, 2010
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Art Lies
February 28, 2010
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Monocle
October 31, 2009
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Anne Stringfield Interview
October 31, 2009
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David Norr Essay
October 31, 2009
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Dave Hickey Essay
October 31, 2009
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Annette DiMeo Carlozzi Essay
October 31, 2009
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The Business Times
September 19, 2009
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Artforum
August 31, 2009
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St. Petersburg Times
August 23, 2009
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Dallas Morning News
August 8, 2009
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...might be good
February 6, 2009
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Blackbird
August 31, 2008
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Vogue
April 1, 2007
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Tema Celeste
October 22, 2005
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USA Today
September 20, 2005
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ArtNexus
June 1, 2005
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ArtReview
April 1, 2005
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Art + Auction
March 1, 2005
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Art in America
November 1, 2003
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Art in America
March 1, 2003
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Art in America
December 1, 2001
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ARTnews
September 1, 2001
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New York Times
March 21, 1999
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Bob Magazine
Issue 67
Bob Magazine
Issue 67, 2010
Art & Space: Teresita Fernández
By Liz Kwon
Teresita Fernández was born in 1968 in Miami. She received her BFA from Florida International University, Miami and her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond. She is known for her architectural installations that have involved everything from rooms of colored light and false ceilings to empty swimming pools and 17th century garden design. Fernández has exhibited throughout the United States with solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; SITE, Santa Fe; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami. She lives and works in New York.
Liz Kwon: You've explored graphite as a medium of your work. Please tell me how you became interested in this material; and how your choice and application of it show an evolution of materials in your work.
Teresita Fernández: The work I'm doing uses graphite in many ways – from the drawn line to precision-machined slabs, to its natural state. I became interested in the history of the drawn landscape. My reference is to a specific site: the valley of Borrowdale, in the Lake District in Cumbria, England where graphite was first discovered in the 1500s. I became fascinated with the idea of the actual landscape as physical drawing, the whole of Borrowdale sitting on a solid bed of graphite. I was looking at it as a kind of land art, and enormous drawing in the landscape.
Liz Kwon: For the Epic installation, how did you begin developing your forms? Your piece reminded me of the artists whose works are inspired by traditional East-Asian black ink paintings.
Teresita Fernández: Epic looks like a cloud formation or meteor shower: the image literally materializes itself. I construct an image by dissolving these many points of reference, like I'm spreading it or stretching it out in order to see it in a new way. It's a distortion with a kind of Mannerist sensibility, the image of a natural phenomenon is disfigured, diffused, evaporated.
Liz Kwon: Are you inspired by certain architecture or landscape? What does quality of it influence your studio processes?
Teresita Fernández: I've always been inspired by architecture in the sense that it is the ultimate form of immersive, constructed experience. My earlier work especially is directly informed by this sense of moving through rooms and between these thresholds of interior and landscape. But the most important parallel for me between landscape, architecture and sculpture has less to do with what something looks like or its sheer size and more to do with an ambulatory viewer. The work is always understood by a viewer on the move.
Liz Kwon: I'm wondering about the process of commission work, like Stacked Waters (2009) and Hot house (2008). What are the pros and cons of working with design I construction team for your installation?
Teresita Fernández: I often do large-scale commissions, where I collaborate with architects, fabricators, technicians and lighting designers to complete a work. I am especially interested in how these works are viewed and used by people once they enter the public realm, often outside of a traditional museum setting.
Liz Kwon: You've been dealing with the notion of 'space' and 'physical experience' in your installation. How are they evolved throughout your artistic career? How do they relate to your techniques and theoretical aspects?
Teresita Fernández: My ideas hinge on the physical and psychological presence of the viewer. In many ways, it becomes about the event of looking and a consciousness of placing oneself in a figurative, constructed and utterly subjective 'landscape'. The conceptual framing of my work is understood sensorially, as an extension of one's body. Vision by its very definition implies distance, but I'm more interested in 'the act of looking' as imposing, deliberate, and not passive.