THE INNER REALM OF MATTER: TERESITA FERNANDEZ IN NEW YORK

In Soil Horizon, the artist turns inward, to the elusive and numinous landscapes we carry within. Returning repeatedly to the question “Where am I?” as an emotive and conceptual point of origin, Fernández unravels the intimacies between matter, human beings, and places. The artist’s subtle conceptual practice and material processes have positioned her at the forefront of contemporary art, cementing her place in the canon and contextualizing her work within art historical discourse on art and land.

In Soil Horizon Fernández debuts several bodies of work, including two large-scale sculptural pieces, a series of copper relief panels, and notably, her first film. Where previous exhibitions have focused more explicitly on the historical, socio-political, or elemental aspects of place, in Soil Horizon Fernández turns her attention to the inner realm, contemplating her coordinates through geological, cosmological, and existential lenses. The exhibition takes its title from a geology term used to describe the horizontal layers that make up what we consider earth, from the matrix of bedrock to the topmost layer of fertile soil. Each layer, or “horizon,” has its own unique material characteristics, and, like a portrait of a place, each demarcates the chronology, or life, of the land whose soil profile it constitutes. Here, the term “soil horizon” is used metaphorically to imagine what is buried, in transition, or yet to emerge. In this exhibition Fernández contemplates the ground, asserting that living landscapes are conceptually “stacked” —embodying not only what we see around us, but also the many subtle and accumulated layers of time, events, and matter that are always above and below, obscured beyond the limits of our immediate primary perception.

Featured prominently in the exhibition is the titular body of work—a series of copper panels with a luminous, immersive horizon as their throughline. The bottom of each Soil Horizon panel is sculpted from dimensional charcoal fragments, densely packed to create a solid ground. Crystalline layers of black volcanic sand and red iron-rich sand, sourced from two separate continents, merge in each composition, their interspersed, horizontal striations slowly dissolving into ascending color shifts. Above, Fernández creates an intricate stippled effect that alternately obscures and reveals the warm glow of the copper beneath, creating atmospheric skyscapes in which viewers catch glimpses of their blurred reflections. In these works, the artist envisions numinous landscapes that propose a more expansive idea of place—from the ancient, historical, and subterranean, to the futuristic and celestial.

Soil Horizon. Exhibition by Teresita Fernández.

Until June 1^st, 2024.

Lehmann Maupin. 501 West 24^th Street, New York, NY 10011, United States.