Ivana Larrosa – solo exhibition
February 18-21, 2016
Reception : Thursday, Feb. 18, 6-9pm
Vermouth With The Artist : Friday, Feb. 19, 12-4pm
On View : Friday-Saturday, Feb. 19-20, 12-7pm / Sunday, Feb. 21, 12-5pm
ICP-Bard MFA studios : 24-20 Jackson Ave. Long Island City, NY 11101
Much of Ivana Larrosa’s work is an exploration and expression of the strangely subjective perception that she inherited as a result of a traumatic car accident years ago, which left her with permanent double vision. Stuck in an overturned car for more than an hour, Larrosa brushed up against death and came out with a new desire for self-discovery. After a long period of physical therapy she began a series of solitary travels around the globe and focused all her energies on art making. In New York she has been using her body as material in documented performance; developing an acutely stylized approach that blends a playful womb-world with a hauntingly inescapable strange loop.
In one of my favorite video pieces, Gravity (4:31), the shot from above holds steady on a brown leather couch. The artist crawls around it, contorting her body and grabbing on as if for her life. It reminds me of a childhood playing on couches where the wood tiles were lava, not to be stepped-on or fallen-into. The stagnant camera disorients the viewer as the piece endures, becoming a ghostly view of the out-of-body experience.
Months ago I watched as Larrosa brought a variety of candy colored plastic toys into the studio. There were little 3D figures reminiscent of the flashing LED people in the crosswalk light, but some of them were running and some had their fists raised like superheroes flying through space. She brought in old broken mechanical devices: tape players, TVs, and typewriters, then proceeded to color them with spray paint. She installed them laying on the floor in elaborate compositions with confetti and curlicues every which way – it was sensory overdrive. Looking at this work and it’s installation revealed moments of hilarity mixed with a hallucinogenic heaviness. Her little walk/run/fly figures cascaded down a color gradient banner toward the hardwood floor.
“Like in Star Wars, ‘I am your father,’ but it’s ‘I am not your mother’… that’s really how it came. I think in the end you need to use humor, I think in the end life is not that serious…. Like you are not going to get rejected at the gates of heaven if you don’t have enough pictures!”
