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Epic 2
Artist
Teresita Fernández
(American, born 1968)
Date2009
MediumGraphite and magnets
DimensionsOverall: 149 1/2 × 354 1/2 × 1 in. (379.73 × 900.43 × 2.54 cm)
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Gift of the Director’s Council and Museum purchase, by exchange, 2017
Object number2017.8
Status
Not on viewCopyright© Teresita Fernández
Category
Label TextTeresita Fernández’s sculptural installations immerse us in ethereal landscapes that waver between the abstract and the recognizable, suggesting gathering clouds, the surface of the ocean, and distant galaxies. While sculpture is often associated with clearly defined objects, Fernández sparingly uses a range of materials that produce shifting impressions of matter, space, and light.
Fernández’s artistic lineage can be traced to such American sculptors from the 1960s and 1970s as Robert Smithson, who combined the language of Minimalism with an exploration of materials, incorporating physicality and integrating actual land and earth into his works. She has acknowledged Smithson’s temporal earthworks as a source of inspiration, especially in regard to her use of natural resources (such as stones, onyx, wood, and graphite) and industrial materials (such as aluminum, stainless steel, glass, and acrylic) to create a dialogue with the landscape.
In Epic 2, from Fernández’s Sfumato series, hundreds of small, irregular chunks of graphite are affixed to the wall and arranged in a loose formation. Beneath each lump, the artist drags a graphite-laden fingerprint directly down the wall. Up close, the viewer perceives the shiny, mineral quality of each nugget; at a distance, the pieces converge into a dark nebula that seems to move across the wall like a gathering storm cloud. Fernández transforms a raw material mined from the depths of the earth—graphite—into a seemingly weightless vision. The word sfumato—derived from the Italian fumo (“smoke”)—refers to a traditional painting technique, famously used by Leonardo da Vinci, that entails fine shading through subtle gradations of pigment to soften hard edges. Evoking graphite’s conventional artistic use as a medium of drawing through its fingerprints, Fernández’s Sfumato series uses graphite to “shade” architectural environments.
Fernández’s artistic lineage can be traced to such American sculptors from the 1960s and 1970s as Robert Smithson, who combined the language of Minimalism with an exploration of materials, incorporating physicality and integrating actual land and earth into his works. She has acknowledged Smithson’s temporal earthworks as a source of inspiration, especially in regard to her use of natural resources (such as stones, onyx, wood, and graphite) and industrial materials (such as aluminum, stainless steel, glass, and acrylic) to create a dialogue with the landscape.
In Epic 2, from Fernández’s Sfumato series, hundreds of small, irregular chunks of graphite are affixed to the wall and arranged in a loose formation. Beneath each lump, the artist drags a graphite-laden fingerprint directly down the wall. Up close, the viewer perceives the shiny, mineral quality of each nugget; at a distance, the pieces converge into a dark nebula that seems to move across the wall like a gathering storm cloud. Fernández transforms a raw material mined from the depths of the earth—graphite—into a seemingly weightless vision. The word sfumato—derived from the Italian fumo (“smoke”)—refers to a traditional painting technique, famously used by Leonardo da Vinci, that entails fine shading through subtle gradations of pigment to soften hard edges. Evoking graphite’s conventional artistic use as a medium of drawing through its fingerprints, Fernández’s Sfumato series uses graphite to “shade” architectural environments.
