黑料不打烊

Luisa Strina is pleased to present 鈥淔riction鈥�, the second solo show of Bernardo Ortiz at the gallery.

The (re)productive game of projecting that which does not yet exist depends on the ability to induce a visualization. And the success of that visualization depends, in turn, on certain generalized conventions about how we see what is yet to exist. These conventions are largely conditioned by the tools used to project (pencil, charcoal, paper, rulers, setsquares, paintbrushes, computer programs, for example). However, it is paradoxical that even if a projection is determined by a tool, in order for it to be a projection we can鈥檛 see any trace of that tool. We can鈥檛 see the etching lines, only the image, we can鈥檛 see the pixels, only the simulation.

Bernardo Ortiz鈥檚 practice is defined by the careful interweaving of drawing, philosophy, design and writing in works whose support 鈥� albeit decisive 鈥� acts as a space of both convergence and tension. Infinite layers of oil or enamel, repeated decontextualized words carefully placed on a paper recalling a constellation of stars, hundreds of subtle lines made in graphite, diminutive marks in Chinese ink or gouache, or a succession of methodical and random folds, are just but a few of the formal strategies employed by the artist; besides emphasizing the two-dimensionality of the support, these strategies lay stress on the significance of the act of doing. Completed by way of long accumulation processes that suggest the passing of time, the works on view seek to highlight the notion of surface as a catalyst territory where the pictorial, the literary and the printed come together in a visual and conceptual game based on the vocabulary of modern painting. Free of frames and always 鈥榚xposed鈥� so as to manifest their vulnerable nature and apprehend their materiality, Ortiz鈥檚 drawings are not only subtle commentaries about painting, but also reproductions on a support that articulate the complex relation between image and text.