For this year’s Kabinett sector, Teresita Fernández will present her most recent body of work, Rise and Fall, comprised of graphite relief panels depicting the rise and fall of the tide and shifting horizon lines. Best known for her public installations and large-scale sculptures that evoke striking landscapes, Fernández’s work is characterized by an interest in perception and the psychology of looking. In Rise and Fall, the articulation of the landscape appears dipped in a metallic liquid, an effect of the unadulterated graphite that is reminiscent of artist Robert Smithson’s Pour works, in which he used viscous materials like glue or concrete to cascade over a landscape, treating the earth itself as a canvas. Rise and Fall can thus be read within this art historical context as both landscape painting and land art. Graphite has been elemental in her practice and Fernández has long questioned the traditional genre of landscape through abstracted interpretations of the land where history and mined materials are layered.
