02: Tatiana Garmendia

August 20- September 17th, 1999 

Locust Projects is pleased to present "Physical Revelations", a new body of work by Tatiana Garmendia consisting of a large drawing installation.

Tatiana Garmendia is a figurative artist with a conceptual edge. Working with graphite and metal leaf on paper, she conjures pictures of the human skeleton and internal organs so realistic at first glance they look like x-rays. However, closer inspection of the work reveals that Tatiana brushed the powdery pigment onto textured paper that she has folded, stapled, erased, and polished. By allowing traces of her working process to show, Tatiana intensifies the physical presence of her images and challenges viewers to question the very essence of representation.

Tatiana probes the "resonance of figurative representation." Elegant rib cages form arabesques that enclose dark atmospheric passages which whisper with veins and breathing lungs. Thin lines and flat shapes of reflective metal intrude on muscular shapes suggesting the human heart, and other internal organs. They combine the artist's desire to reconcile the humanist tradition of figuration and the formal act of representation.

Tatiana has exhibited her work throughout the United States and abroad. She has shown work at The Bronx Museum of Arts, Art in General, and the Stuxx Gallery in New York City. She was born in Havana, Cuba and went to school in Miami, FL, Boston, New York City and Paris. She is now living, teaching and working in Seattle, Washington.