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Teresita Fernández

New York

Oct 24–Nov 30, 2002

Sculpture by Teresita Fernández

540 W 26th St

New York, NY 10001

Lehmann Maupin would like to announce a solo exhibition by Teresita Fernández. The exhibition will consist of three large-scale works. This is Fernández's first solo exhibition at Lehmann Maupin.

For this exhibition, Fernández presents a sculptural environment consisting of abstracted representations of natural phenomena: a sweeping waterfall, a parabolic sand dune, and the quality of light at a precise moment of day. The overt architectural references in much of Fernández's previous work, such as the pool installations or formal garden "rooms," are more subtle here, where she utilizes the innate architecture of natural forms. These organic forms are broken down into thousands or hundreds of thousands of individual elements. Acrylic bands of blue and white curving out from the wall represent water in motion; glass beads covering a dune-shaped form create the shimmering effect of light on sand; hundreds of acrylic cubes in varying hues of violet are points of color that capture the light or atmospheric condition of a particular moment. The effect caused by the bombardment of this multitude of tiny points creates an optically complex experience for the viewer.

Installation view of Teresita Fernández at Lehmann Maupin New York
Installation Views: 1 of 2
Portrait of Teresita Fernández

Teresita Fernández's work is characterized by an expansive rethinking of what constitutes landscape: from the subterranean to the cosmic, from national borders to the more elusive psychic landscapes we carry within. Fernández unravels the intimacies between matter, human beings, and locations. Her luminous, sculptural works poetically challenge ideas about land and landscape by amplifying the powerful, emotional connection in how we imagine place, and, by extension, one another. Fernández exposes the complex narratives that stem from distorted, colonial histories, elaborating on these themes in subtle ways that insist on intertwining beauty, the socio-political, the intimate, and the immense. Imagining the landscape with reciprocal sentience, Fernández has said “You look at the landscape, but the landscape also looks back at you."

Fernández is a 2005 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and the recipient of numerous awards, including a Creative Capital Award; Guggenheim Fellowship; the Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award; an American Academy of Rome Fellowship (AFAAR); and a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist’s Grant in Visual Arts, among others. Her works have been exhibited and collected both nationally and internationally including: The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Menil Collection; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Pérez Art Museum Miami; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; SITE Santa Fe; The Smithsonian Museum of American Art; MASS MoCA; and Castello di Rivoli, Italy, among others. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York

Learn about the artist