"Ana Teresa Fernández's 'Coatl' slithers around a corner of Romer Young Gallery in Dogpatch, bridging two walls with a hypnotic flash of angular gold metal glyphs, laser-inscribed into oaky wood, its ends jutting out in two ominous neon yellow plexiglass "fangs." Viewers of a certain generation will immediately be put in mind of the once ubiquitous Rubik's Snake, adding a level of nostalgic humor to the piece, while viewers of the generation before that might recall modular architecture and the retro-future blueprints of Buckminster Fuller."
""Abstraction can free Latinx artists from the burden of performing their identities for the market or a specific audience," curator Erik Barrios-Recendez told me on a recent gallery visit. "But it can also give them space to touch on big and pressing topics that concern Latinx identity-immigration, spiritualism, colonialism, and the constructed realities of identity itself. Abstraction can tap into our futurity:"
Ana Teresa Fernández's Coatl occupies and blurs a gallery corner with angular gold metal glyphs laser-inscribed into wood and neon-yellow plexiglass fangs. The work evokes diverse references, from a Rubik's Snake and Buckminster Fuller to program code and Aztec codices. Coatl references Quetzalcoatl, suggesting a union of earth and sky while questioning architectural and bordered space. Curator Erik Barrios-Recendez emphasizes that abstraction can free Latinx artists from performing identity while enabling engagement with migration, spiritualism, colonialism, and constructed realities of identity. The piece appears in the small but focused show Rebel Forms, highlighting recent Latine abstraction.
Read at 48 hills
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]