Lehmann Maupin Gallery
Often through deliberately artificial means, Teresita Fernandez evokes the elements; she has a strong interest in the immaterial, capturing the fleeting sensations that Monet pursued. Her sensitivity to light and the subtlety with which she handles her materials occasionally brings to mind the work of Robert Irwin as well as the artists associated with Group Zero.
Fire (2005), consists of one wide vertical cylinder of closely packed vertical silk threads, stretched between two rings suspended parallel to the floor and enclosed within a slightly wider cylinder of the same substance. The lower ring floats only centimeters above the ground, and the threads are dyed in a way suggesting flames shooting up towards the top ring, suspended a meter from the ceiling. This diaphanous and delicate double scrim is reminiscent of a monumental flickering hologram.
The flat Eruption (Large), 2005, which, thanks to a narrow, short base, hovers only centimeters from the floor, likewise has a floating and transparent quality. It consists of an aluminum plate, and the discrete walls rising along its curvaceous outer perimeter prevent hundreds and hundreds of small glass beads, which are spread on top of a sheet of dyed paper resting on top of the plate, from rolling off of it. The work, with its biomorphic contours and psychedelic color range, which evokes a painter's palette or a geography viewed as if from a great height, comes to life as one walks around it, as the beads - in certain places superimposed one above the other - scintillate with refracted light.
Sfumato (2005) is built up of small glass cubes affixed to the wall in such a way that they form an increasingly dense, almost circular cluster towards the center, evoking condensation. Small pieces of paper glued behind each cube become darker and darker towards the center of the configuration, giving rise to a Leonardesque smokiness or "sfumato," which is increased by the transparent shadows cast upon the wall.