|
Press Release Checklist Thomas Glassford and Claudia Ferņandez CONSTRUCCIĶN December 5, 2003 - January 17, 2004 The Julie Saul Gallery is pleased to announce a two-person exhibition of new work by Mexico City-based artists Claudia Ferņandez and Thomas Glassford. The show, curated by James Oles, includes photographs and sculptures inspired by the vernacular design and architectural forms of a mega-city whose size and complexity has led to a boom in artistic practice over the past decade. Though much attention has been drawn recently to the traumas and disasters of living in a city of 20 million, in their own ways Ferņandez and Glassford each peel away the chaos to discover the elegance and humor beneath. Claudia Ferņandez (b. Mexico City, 1965) works in a variety of media, including painting and video, but is primarily known as a photographer. Over the past several years, she has been captivated by architectural details discovered while driving through Mexico City's endless middle and upper class neighborhoods, where single-family houses sit behind an almost unbroken line of gates, garden walls and curtained facades. Her photographs highlight patterns and colors that testify to the collision between local forms and atomic age or op art design. But Ferņandez's images are about more than decoration, for they comment on issues of security, class, and privacy central to contemporary life in Mexico City. The work is presented both as single images and in larger montaged grids. Ferņandez has exhibited widely in Mexico and abroad, and is represented in Mexico City by the Nina Menocal Gallery. Thomas Glassford (b. Laredo, Texas, 1963) earned his BFA at the University of Texas before moving to Mexico in 1990. Glassford's early sculptures were based on local and natural materials (dried gourds, leather, chicharrĘn), but he has increasingly turned to more industrial and urban materials. Some of these are found, like embossed vinyl or plastic tableware, while others are modified, like the anodized aluminum siding used architectonically for gates and doorways that he special orders in a range of colors and patterns, and uses to create rhythmic wall reliefs that refer to the city while partaking in a dialogue with the vocabulary of minimalist painting and modernist architecture. The show presents new free-standing sculptures using melamine plates of the type used in school cafeterias and Mexican loncherįas, assembled with precision and wit to form towers that can be read as futuristic utopian models, mission architecture, or even stupas. Glassford's work has also been shown internationally; he is represented by the Galerįa OMR in Mexico City. James Oles is an art historian and curator who specializes in twentieth-century Mexican art. Based primarily in Mexico City, he is also teaches in the art history department at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and is adjunct curator of Latin American art at the college's Davis Museum and Cultural Center. His publications include South of the Border: Mexico in the American Imagination, 1914-1947 (1993) and Helen Levitt: Mexico City (1997). In 2002 he curated "Colored Surfaces," an exhibition of contemporary Mexican color photography by four women artists (including Ferņandez) that is currently traveling in Europe. Images: in order of check list below THOMAS GLASSFORD and CLAUDIA FERNÂNDEZ: CONSTRUCCIĶN December 5 - January 17, 2004 ENTRANCE: Thomas Glassford Partitura/Sherbert 2003 anodized aluminum 39 5/8 x 58 7/8 inches Left of Front Desk: Claudia Ferņandez Omnibus 2003 52 3/8 x 39 1/4 laminated chromogenic print mounted on Trovicel edition 1/3 $3000 On Desk: Thomas Glassford Untitled (red) 2003 Melamine dinnerware Edition of 6 MAIN GALLERY Counterclockwise from Entrance: Thomas Glassford Stupa (1) 2003 40 inches high, variable width Melamine dinnerware with metal fittings Claudia Ferņandez Olas/Waves 2003 twelve chromogenic prints mounted on Trovicel 13 5/8 x 20 inches each edition 1/3 Claudia Ferņandez Cascada/Waterfall 2003 twelve chromogenic prints mounted on Trovicel 13 5/8 x 20 inches each edition 1/3 Thomas Glassford Tower (1) 2003 40 x 10 1/4 x 9 1/2 inches Melamine dinnerware with metal fittings Thomas Glassford Stupa (2) 2003 43 1/4 x 9 1/2 inches Melamine dinnerware with metal fittings Claudia Ferņandez Espiral/Spiral 2003 twelve chromogenic prints mounted on Trovicel 62 7/8 x 47 1/4 inches edition 1/3 Thomas Glassford Pink, 7 Slat Mirror 2003 59 1/2 x 87 inches Mirrored plexiglass and aluminum Thomas Glassford Tower (2) 2003 35 3/8 x 11 3/4 x 8 1/2 inches Melamine dinnerware with metal fittings Claudia Ferņandez Puertas/Doors 2003 twenty chromogenic prints mounted on Trovicel 13 5/8 x 20 inches each Edition of 3 (works sold as a group and individually) top For additional information contact the gallery back |
  
   
    
  |