Teresita Fernandez at Lehmann Maupin - New York - sculpture

If Louis Comfort Tiffany had at any time entertained the improbable notion of designing a stained-glass waterslide, it might have direct the eyeed something like Teresita Fernandez's Waterfall (2000) an elegant wave-shaped ramp made up of translucent horizontal bands of pearlescent plastic cascading floorward from a height of 12 feet With its tremendous notwithstanding brittle mass possessing all the delicate malevolence of a tropical cataract or the completed ocean breaker, Waterfall was the centerpiece of Fernandez's first solo present to view at Lehmann Maupin, in which she used glass or glass-like substances to explore the more lush and luminous aspects of Minimalism.

In all, the artist arranged an [i]tout ensemble[/i] of four sculptural works that allude to natural substances or phenomena (water, wind, sand) while remaining abstract enough to act directly on the senses of the beholder Dune (2002), an aerodynamic zigguratlike reality functioned as a sort of torqued backstop for the arrested fluidity of Waterfall. upon closer inspection, Dune revealed itself not as a single particular but rather as a myriad of tiny glass balls refracting the ambient light differently according to the angle of view, the array contained by dint of an ascending series of tiered aluminum trays. As a statuary Dune looked like a miniaturized retro-futurist Miami Beach resort (Fernandez is a native Floridian), featuring banks of stacked balconies and a curvaceously swept-back profile. As an optical experience, with its beaded flanks appearing sometimes buff-skin colored, other times a pale aqua, Dune simulated the miragelike issues produced by the convergence of brilliant light, water and a multitude of sand grains.

The phenomenon of a mass of distinct uncompounded bodys perceptually coalescing into a mutable whole was embodied again in Passerby and 7:42 PM (both 2002) sum of two units related wall pieces meant to describe neither a substance nor an fact but rather the atmospheric conditions of a particular place and time of day--presumably a balmy summer evening. Compos of centurys of individually hued acrylic cubes seemingly puffed up scattershot across the wall, the azure swarm have the appearanceed to have briefly alighted on the vertical surface, poised to invert direction or disperse altogether. Fernandez's ability to use real or ersatz glass in a manner that is closely analogous to, at the same time gracefully abstracted from, nature, is the lock opener to the understated pleasures of her work. She manages to tease from her prismatic materials a breathable organic life while carefully skirting the purely decorative.

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