Above: Exhibition view of Traces at Jack Geary Gallery

Cover:

Untitled (Basket with Watches), 2014

Basket, Polyurethane foam, concrete, fabric, faux fur, beads, watches, chains, beads, artificial moss, Swarovski crystals and flocking.

14 x 11 x 3 in

FOREWORD

We are privileged to present Lina Puerta: Traces

Puerta’s work engages in an ongoing, poetic exploration of natural systems. Fascinated by the tensions she observes between humans and the worlds they inhabit, especially urban environments, the artist creates hybrid anatomical and botanical forms that capture the fragility and interconnectedness of both nature and the body. In examining the complexity of these biomorphic sculptures, we initially experience an estrangement from our own supposedly familiar bodies as we view them in relation to her foreign forms. Yet such feelings subside as we gradually recognize our unique place, full of intimate similarities and evolving differences, in the natural order of things. Though Puerta recognizes the power and beauty of nature, her conception of it is certainly not Edenic. She relies upon an array of found objects and recycled materials, as diverse as tree bark, concrete, and rhinestones, the detritus of the contemporary age, to develop a fuller conception of the natural world.

Puerta's most recent work, exhibited here at Geary Gallery, focuses on processes of aging and decay in nature and in the many layers of growth created over time on surfaces. "Nature is so omnipresent and magical," says Puerta. "Nature is the body and vice versa. What we do to nature, we do to ourselves."

This show is an extension of Puerta’s recent exhibition at Materials for the Arts where she was the Artist-in-Residence during the Fall, 2014. We would like to express our appreciation to Materials for the Arts for their spirit of collaboration in organizing this exhibition.

Finally, we would like to thank Lina for the exceptional work in this exhibition.

-Jack Geary and Dolly Bross Geary

Previous Spread and Below:

Untitled (Tree and logs), 2014

Concrete, Polyurethane foam, glass mosaic, fabric, lace, trims artificial moss and branch, abaca paper, lenticular photos, beads, paint, flocking, swarovski crystals and table.

67 x 45 x 26 in

Lost treasures: Lina Puerta’s Art of Permanence

Maibritt Borgen

Lina Puerta interprets nature through artifacts. Her art engages the disjunction between the increasingly short cycles of production and consumption in hyper-capitalist society, and the cycles of life and death in nature. In two smaller works, Untitled (Basket with watches) (2014) and Untitled (Basket with shells) (2014), steel mesh baskets function as grids onto which she weaves, braids, and embeds materials. In Untitled (Basket with watches) she braids golden watch bands into the mesh, embeds them in concrete and covers them with lace and artificial moss. Entrapped, they look out on us; like lost treasures, buried in clay or sand, waiting to be rediscovered. The lace, as in all of Puerta’s works, evokes a feeling of mourning, of melancholia, and of manufacture. Countering this, rough bands of red and white drapery weave in and out of the metal grid. Their tattered appearance creates a ragged, industrial version of the strict optical grid Mondrian created in New York City 1 (1916). Puerta’s works also speak to the rhythm life in the city. But counter to Mondrian’s sublimely flat grid, her grid adds a magical realism and an almost surreal bent to the industrial object, as if she wants us to see the life lived below the concrete surface of the urban metropolis.

Rosalind Krauss has referred to the grid as “what art looks like when it turns its back on nature.”*1 Puerta’s art reminds us that the nature-culture divide is merely a manifestation of modernity’s (hu)man hubris. In the site-specific installation Cáscara (Peel) (2014), layers of fabric and lace burst out from the gaps in a wall of cheap, white plastic sheeting. The wall is smeared with paint in tones of green, brown and red. The smear gives the work an appearance of decay, emphasized by organic shapes of floral lace that spreads like brown and grey mildew from across the white grid and onto the ceiling. Her use of cheap, industrial materials mimics the continuous renovations undertaken in the New York rental market; labor that serves only to produce added value in the game of gentrification. The fabrics’ geometric or floral patterns evoke the spatial effects in Matisse’s interior scenes, where patterns on curtains, wallpaper, painting and floors simultaneously generate and collapse space and perspective. Cáscara is a sculpture, though. Like Eva Hesse’s sculptures, Cáscara echoes the programmatic quality of Minimalism but breaks out from the wall into a soft, collapsed grid.

Puerta’s post-industrial investigations remind us of the body’s impermanence in humans and other species alike. Untitled (Tree and logs), (2014) plays a game of mimicry with nature and representation. Logs and branches lay as individual objects on a coffee table, detached from their natural environment. This stillness mimics the symbolic language of 17th century vanitas still lives, where cut flowers, skulls and food symbolize the brevity of life. These baroque still lives push the realistic representation of ripeness and decay to the point where the depicted fruit and flowers seem more real, more ripe, and more delicate than the objects themselves. The fleshy colors of Puerta’s branches make them look like lifeless chunks of meat, or amputated limbs. At first glance moss covers the surface, as if nature left them in the bottom of the forest to rot and decay. But yet, upon looking closer, shiny glass mosaics cover the interior of the logs and replace the apparent decay with evident artificiality.

In nature, mimicry is a survival game. Insects mimic more dangerous species to deter predators. A range of newer works on paper, the Galaxies series (2015), incorporate wings of butterflies and other insects that Puerta has found in and around her family’s house in Colombia. The wings are stunningly colored and tragically beautiful, objects caught in a still state far removed from flight. While Untitled (Tree and logs) imitates nature by artificially mimicking a process of decay, the arrested motions in the Galaxies works encapsulate the fragility and impermanence of the human body. Like human hair and nails––the only parts of our bodies that constantly shed and renew themselves––butterfly wings are composed of the protein chitin. But unlike the cyclical renewal of human hair and nails, butterflies go through a single, complete state of metamorphosis in their short lives. They develop their beautiful wings at their final, adult reproductive state, as a short culmination of beauty before they wither away and die. Puerta counters this essence of life as a short burst of energy using subdued colors of gouache that render images of far away galaxies.

In Untitled (tree and frame) (2014) the deep roots of an old and dead tree guard the entrance to a magical subterranean landscape. Jewels weave in and out, as if a treasure is hidden underneath. Some of these roots are covered in feathers, as if an old dragon is secretively guarding this treasure. The window—a golden, wooden frame— slowly collapses into a bottomless void. Like the looking glass of Alice in Wonderland, or the magical mirror of Narnia, the

Next Page Spread:

Cáscara (Peel), 2014

Fabric, lace, wood, formed plastic sheeting, trims and beads.

12 x 20 FT x 2 in

(Adjustable)

frame represents a threshold between our world and another. Claude Levi-Strauss said in 1955 that myths explain the past and the present as well as the future.* 2 Through the frame we glimpse a mythical time where past, present, and future collapses into one, single moment.

Puerta’s layers of nature and culture make us face our own, corporeal existence. In Untitled (rose + drip) a small mirror catches our eye in the act of looking. The reflection of our own gaze poses the question of whether our existence in effect exceeds the material residues we leave behind. Maybe—in a distant future—someone will dig these material residues out of the sand and look at them as traces of past time. One thing is certain; nature will prevail long after we are gone.

Maibritt Borgen writes and researches on modern and contemporary art. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the department of History of Art at Yale University.

*1. Rosalind Krauss “Grids”, October, Vol. 9, (Summer, 1979), pp. 50-64

*2. Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth”, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 68, No. 270, Myth: A Symposium (Oct. - Dec.,1955), pp. 428-444

Untitled (Basket and shells), 2014

Basket, Polyurethane foam, concrete, fabric, leather, faux fur, beads, shells, chains, beads, acrylic sheeting, artificial moss, swarovski crystals and flocking.

14 x 11 x 3 in

Untitled

(Triptych), 2014

Concrete, Polyurethane foam, fabric, lace, acrylic sheeting, artificial moss, swarovski crystals, flocking and frame.

10 x 16 x 0.5 in

Untitled (Tree and Frame), 2014

Concrete, Polyurethane foam, reed mesh, wire, paint, fabric, lace, leather,

faux fur, artificial moss and plant, frame, chains, broken jewelry,

feathers, flocking, swarovski crystals and beads.

57 x 38 x 5 in

Untitled (Basket and Watches), 2014

Basket, Polyurethane foam, concrete, fabric, faux fur, beads, watches, chains, beads, artificial moss, swarovski crystals and flocking.

14 x 11 x 3 in

Untitled (Purple), 2014

Concrete, Polyurethane foam, wood, reed mesh, fabric, lace,

acrylic sheeting, artificial moss, swarovski crystals and

flocking.

40 x 40 x 2 in

Untitled (Rose), 2014

Wood, Polyurethane, concrete, wire, acrylic sheeting, paint, fabric, lace, artificial moss, beads, trims, swarovski crystals and flock.

21.5 x 19 x 1.25 in

Galaxies Series, 2015

Clockwise: Galaxy 6, 4, 2 and 5

Lace, found insect’ wings and gouache on paper

9 x 12 in. Each

Galaxy Series, 2015

From top to Bottom: Galaxy 7, 3, 8 and 9

Right: Galaxy 1

Lace, found insect’ wings and gouache on paper

9 x 12 in. Each

All photography, except for Galaxies Series, by Bill Orcutt.

All Rights Reserved 2015 Jack Geary Contemporary