Lisa Alvarado “Spinning Echo”

Lisa Alvarado “Spinning Echo”

Bridget Donahue

This event has ended.

In Spinning Echo, organic symmetries relate to the cycles we live within, where opposites coexist and complement each other in a motion that spins life into material.
The exhibition consists of an alignment of free-hanging painting, sand and sound. The Spinning Echo series considers resonance as a form of poetics. The compositional movement of the works relates to the exchange of opposite elements: day to night, inhalation and exhalation. Each piece shares a sense of gravity that spirals out from the center. They are vibration equations and poems of movement.

The series comes from an abstraction that encompasses multiple mediums and histories not limited to the European painting cannon. Malinalli, a concept of movement from ancient Mexico, was a source of inspiration for the set of works. Malinalli is the motion of spinning, twisting, and braiding that transforms materiality: such as spinning raw fiber into thread, twisting twine into a rope, and braiding grass into a roof. Transforming a material that does not have function into a useful conduit that connects to the rituals of life.

The works in Spinning Echo are a part of an ongoing series of free-hanging paintings that accompany musical performance as moveable stage sets. They function as part of the performance setup for the band Natural Information Society, giving the works repeated experience within musical contexts.
- Lisa Alvarado

Lisa Alvarado (b. 1982) is an artist and harmoniumist based in Chicago. Previous solo exhibitions include Matrix 192, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT (2023); Pulse Meridian Foliation, REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Scab Diagram, The Modern Institute, Glasgow, Scotland (2021); Thalweg, Bridget Donahue, New York, NY (2020); Polyphonic Shadow Cloth, LC Queisser, Tbilisi, Georgia (2018); Sound Talisman, Bridget Donahue, New York (2017) and Traditional Object, Soccer Club Club, Chicago (2013). Recent group exhibitions include The 2022 Whitney Biennial: Quiet As It’s Kept (2022); Calling, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2023); Contemporary Cartographies, MOCA Jacksonville, Jacksonville (2023); Re-Materialized: The Stuff That Matters, kaufmann repetto, Milan (2023); Under Erasure, Martos Gallery, New York (2022); File Under Freedom, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen (2022); Psychedelic Healing Center, Essex Flowers, New York (2019); Out of Easy Reach, Gallery 400, Chicago (2018); Alan Shields Project, Van Doren Waxter, New York (2018); The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2017) and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2016) and Material Issue, KMAC Museum, Louisville (2016), among others. Alvarado plays harmonium in the psych-minimalist band Natural Information Society. They have performed in numerous venues including Pitchfork, Chicago (2018); Rewire, Netherlands (2018); Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2017) and Serralves Museum, Portugal (2016). In addition to releasing albums on Eremite Records & Drag City Records, she has also performed with Theaster Gates’s Black Monks at Palais De Tokyo (2019) and Documenta 13 (2012); and in Simon Starling’s play At Twilight, Common Guild, Glasgow (2016) and Japan Society, New York (2017).

Media

• Painting
• Installation

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