Catalina Bauer “Two Lines Twining A Soul”
PROXYCO
This event has ended.
Y Gallery, Proxyco and CCU presents “Two lines twining a soul”, the first exhibition in New York of the Chilean artist Catalina Bauer. The exhibition is partially a result of her four months residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP), in Brooklyn, NY, which was awarded by the CCU Art Grant in Chile.
The exhibition includes different bodies of work, ranging from photography, mural drawing, monotype, animation and sculpture. Yet they connect formally and symbolically through the use of the spiral shape, the concentric circle and overall the notion of labyrinth. The work process is sometimes meditative, sometimes visceral and other times spontaneous. Lapso is a work that the artist has presented several times, in Chile and abroad, and one could say that it functions as a starting point, or entry, of this exhibition and this text. The piece consists of a large number of color-pencils that hang from one point to the wall, with the idea to transform the body into a compass instrument. The drawing is a performance where the body of the artist – or why not of the viewer too - projects itself onto the wall by the simple gesture of accumulation of concentric circles.
During her residency Catalina Bauer explored and navigated the city and incorporated this experience into her process. As an outsider she felt that New York bombarded her with an overwhelming amount of information, which took time to process and constantly affected the outcome of her work. An example of this, where the work, the city and the personal collide, Bauer invited her 2 teenage twin daughters to participate in the animation piece made from monotypes based on body positions the two participants took under their mother’s instructions. What was originally a family gesture – a strategy to involve and maintain them occupied - unfolded into a new way of exploring the same formal and symbolic aspects present in her work. Those who in turn were fed by the time that Catalina Bauer could share with the Chilean artist and poet, Cecilia Vicuña, with whom she held inspiring conversations.
Another example is Cesta/Basket, a series of sculptures made of paper, the supermarkets coupons or offer “newsprints”. Looking at the waist of the city Bauer started collecting these outdated catalogs without a specific idea or purpose behind this act of collecting. In time she decided to start rolling the paper sheets and weaved them into baskets. Both an ancient act of containment and the repetition of the spiral form as a gesture of creation. In the artist’s words this experience also became a way to search for an inner self in a context that was completely foreign.
Overall the exhibition contains works that are testimonies of this transitional experience in the City of New York. To adjust and to adapt to the new surroundings implies to be open to experiment, to try out new mediums and techniques, to observe what new is around us, and to try to understand in which way we can intersect our work – and personal lives - with this specific, new and ever-changing environment.
Media
Schedule
from April 11, 2018 to May 13, 2018
Opening Reception on 2018-04-11 from 18:00 to 21:00