Press Release: Teresita Fernandez

New Works: 98.4
11.15.98

THE INTERNATIONAL ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM

New Works: 98.4

Teresita Fern‡ndez, NEW YORK, NY

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, CHIANG MAI, THAILAND

Angel Rodr’guez-D’az, SAN ANTONIO, TX

Exhibition: December 11, 1998 ?nuary 17, 1999

Opening: Thursday, December 10, 1998, 6:30-8:30 PM

Artist Dialogue: Friday, December 11, 1998 at 6:30 PM

ArtPace, A Foundation for Contemporary Art | San Antonio presents New Works:
98.4, a series of installations by the current participants of our International Artist-in-
Residence Program. Teresita Fern‡ndez, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook and Angel
Rodr’guez-D’az were selected by the March 1996 IAIR Program Panel consisting of
Elizabeth Armstrong, David Avalos, Dana Friis-Hansen, Thelma Golden and Maaretta
Jaukkuri. An opening celebration will take place on Thursday, December 10 at 6:30 PM,
and the following evening, Hamza Walker, Director of Education at The Renaissance
Society at The University of Chicago, will moderate an artist dialogue.

Teresita Fernandez

Based in New York, Teresita Fern‡ndez was born in Miami in 1968. Fern‡ndez holds a
B.F.A. from Florida International University, Miami, FL and a M.F.A. from Virginia
Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA. Her work has been exhibited internationally,
including solo exhibitions at Masataka Hayakawa Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; The Corcoran
Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Deitch Projects, New York; and the Museum of
Contemporary Art, Miami, FL. She has been included in group shows at The Power
Plant, Toronto, Canada; De Appel, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; The Contemporary
Museum, Baltimore, MD; The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; The
Drawing Center, New York; and TBA Exhibition Space, Chicago, IL. She has received
fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation,
The National Endowment for the Arts and a Cintas Fellowship. The artist's work at
ArtPace will travel to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadlephia, PA and Deitch
Projects, New York.

Fern‡ndez has worked in large scale, primarily through site-specific installation.
Employing feminist architectural theory, her work investigates spatial relationships
through a rigorous conceptual framework. Through color, light, reflection, scale and
material, Fern‡ndez creates gendered spaces that engage the viewer psychologically and
kinesthetically.

At ArtPace, Fern‡ndez has created five sculptures that introduce bold colors into her
otherwise minimal aesthetic. Room-sized fabric structures float in the gallery, each a
monochromatic chamber that glows from within. The floor of each structure is made of a
tile-like grid, on which Fern‡ndez has drawn a dense, decorative pattern reminiscent of
17th Century European formal garden design and Oriental carpets. Hanging from a
suspended solid ceiling, a transparent thin wall of colored fabric separates the viewer
from the space's interior. The tension between the solidity of the ceiling and floor and the
fluidity of the sheer walls creates spaces that are both concrete and collapsible, enclosed
yet penetrable. This work is the outcome of the artist's interest in merging the idea of
landscape and interior through combining physical and historical elements of the formal
garden and the decorative interior. "I am intrigued by the idea that to look at decoration is
to be absorbed by it," Fern‡ndez states. "Vision itself is swallowed up by the sensuous
surface so that the body of the viewer disappears into the sensuous excess of the
decorative."

445 North Main Avenue San Antonio TX 78205 t 210 212 4900 f 210 212 4990 www.artpace.org