Paula Burleigh on Tania Pérez Córdova
It’s uncommon that the white dice does something aside from what it was supposed to do: disappear. However “Precipitation,” Tania Pérez Córdova’s second solo present with Tina Kim Gallery, defamiliarized the area, turning it into an uncanny vacuum. Now not a impartial web site for show, the gallery’s “clean” backdrop, because of Pérez Córdova, produced a lingering sensation—as if one had been witness to fragments of occasions now not totally seen.
Synthetic crops, rendered with exacting realism, appeared to emerge from the partitions in exact arcs. Combining the literal and the conceptual, the guidelines indicated that “patterns of leaf harm”—alongside epoxy clay, iron, acrylic, plastic, and gold-plated brass chains—made up the entire plant sculptures. The press launch defined that the sample of holes and tears within the leaves had been meant to evoke “insect infestations, or botanic infections.” The fragile steel strands had been tautly suspended from the ceiling and threaded via choose ruptures within the foliage, suggesting rainfall; this affiliation was bolstered by subtitles cataloguing numerous climate forecasts. Pérez Córdova’s faux flora function on a knife’s edge between the magical and the sinister. The resolutely nonetheless, barely seen brass hyperlinks created a type of dreamlike temporal suspension, whereas the crops’ floor abrasions underlined the consequences of actual forces, corresponding to decay and illness.
Una reja en una reja 5 (A Fence right into a Fence 5) (all works 2022) was a fraction of an aluminum chain-link barrier, melted down after which recast into its unique form. Suspended at eye degree and disconnected from the encompassing structure of the gallery, the sculpture misplaced any purposeful delineation between inside and out of doors. Two compact tangles of hen feathers are embedded within the object, calling to thoughts mild woodland creatures which are both quick asleep or useless. Breaks within the latticework echoed the close by patterns of leaf infestation. A way of destruction and loss brought on by mysterious forces haunted a lot of the exhibition.
Breathe out 1–3 and Breathe in 1–3 had been stylized sculptural heads manufactured from pumice stone. Break up in half, they flank clear glass vessels stuffed with human breath (because the press launch explains). The works had been impressed by the several types of respiratory that induce numerous psychic states. However they’re additionally research of matter because it shifts between being gaseous, stable, or liquid. Like different igneous rocks, pumice is shaped by molten lava, in its case, quickly cooled, the results of a technique of transmutation from one state to a different. Pérez Córdova’s alternative of fabric could nod to her curiosity in melting and recasting objects. Likewise, glass should be liquefied by warmth to imagine its everlasting kind. Certainly, many artworks within the present gestured towards a relational set of identifications—with invisible or absent actors, and with previous and future phases of existence. Precipitation itself is a metamorphic course of: Vapor condenses into rain or snow, which both evaporates or turns into groundwater.
As a complete, the exhibition pointed towards the advanced entanglements between flora, fauna, us, and the setting, be it pure or architectural. Whereas the degraded leaves recommended incursions that will don’t have any direct human trigger, the presence of attenuated steel “rain” reminded us that drawing distinctions between pure and man-made worlds is pointless—we’re all imbricated in a set of extremely contingent relations. Happily, not one of the artist’s work got here throughout as pedantic critique. As an alternative, Pérez Córdova supplied imaginative glimpses of our variegated panorama, full with fraught energy dynamics and fragile magnificence.
