September 6–October 5, 2012
James W. and Lois I. Richmond
Center for Visual Arts
Gwen Frostic School of Art
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, MI
“Nayda Collazo-Llorens is not content to patiently tally the encyclopedic data of destruction. She intervenes imaginatively into life to compute an alternative that reaches the fringes of chaos but is never completely random. Accumulating a sequence of daily drawings to chart her relation to touch, sight, and sound, she conducts a practice of everyday life that includes discipline without precluding chance. Transmissions like sonar across space and into the depths of oceans gather the detritus of communication—leftover signs, headlines, notices, and emblems of authoritative pronouncements as well as gestures between lovers—bits and pieces of code reconstituted into a topographical mapping of our psyches: desires we dare to dream, fears we strive to ride, and conflicts we mark with the resonance of existence.”
–Kathleen MacQueen, excerpt from Nayda Collazo-Llorens: The Consistency of Chaos
An Exercise in Numbness and Other Tales evidences and furthers the artist’s ongoing inquiry on human perception and mental processes. The volume and visual complexity of the James W. and Lois I. Richmond Center for Visual Arts’ Albertine Monroe-Brown Gallery sets the framework for the artist’s largest and most complex exhibition to date. Encompassing multiple references and conceptual strategies, the exhibition consists of three works functioning as a series of networks or an interconnected system taking over the architectural space. Comfortably Numb is an ongoing archive consisting mostly of collected printed matter and text. Over 1,500 framed images comprise this amalgam of sampled visual information functioning as detritus and bits of data, which confront, as much as invite navigation. ESCaperucita & Little Flying Hood, consisting of 26 prints on aluminum, is a text-based work depicting the characters’ journey through an area of turbulence in the form of textual noise. What begins with a coded signal, factual data and a lovers’ dialogue, evolves into a stream of consciousness rambling, exploring the creative potential inherent in electronic forms of communication as a hybrid language that is able to intermix and transcend both digital and analog spaces. Unfolding the Triangle: Lake Michigan is an expansive installation exploring location as a geographic, imaginary and psychological territory. A series of connections and multiple narratives are interwoven in this large-scale spatial configuration combining mapped anamorphic lines, found text and images, drawings, objects, a central room with a four-channel video installation, mirrors, and a large scale drawing on the room’s top surface (only viewable from the building’s second floor). This is the third and most elaborate installment of the Unfolding the Triangle series, which started in 2009 at The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh.
According to the artist, “the exhibition requires different types of interpretation, as the work ranges from the retinal to the conceptual, from the literal to the symbolic, and from the tangible to the elusive. An Exercise in Numbness and Other Tales reflects on the intricacies of our mind and the way we try to cope with a complex world that is as much about data overload and hyperconnectivity as it is about distancing and dissociation.”
Nayda Collazo-Llorens, born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, is a visual artist working in various media. She received an MFA from New York University and a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art. She is a 2012 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellow. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art Net, Art US, Art Nexus and Art News, among others. Her work is represented by LMAKprojects, New York.
This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of the Gwen Frostic School of Art, The Richmond Matching Gift Award, and the Kalamazoo Artistic Development Initiative through the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo.
