Teresita Fernandez has had a big year. From her monumental, canopy-like installation Fata Morgana, composed of mirror-polished metal discs, which drew a record number of daily admirers to New York’s Madison Square Park over the summer, to the thoughtful installation Double Glass River which currently resides at Grace Farms, the MacArthur ‘genius award’ winning artist has become a formidable force in the art world.
This week, Lehmann Maupin’s New York gallery celebrates Fernández’s latest sculptural works, a series of veritable ‘intimate interior landscapes’ in concrete, cast bronze, malachite, and glazed ceramic.
For this riveting body of work, Fernández (who served on President Obama’s U.S. Commission of Fine Arts) turned to the Viñales Valley, an iconic and surreal landscape with extensive caves in rural Cuba, for both inspiration and palette in exploring scale. Rather than turn to marble or materials sourced from the streets, Fernández first plucked up emerald green chunks of malachite. Her mixed-media sculpture Viñales (Reclining Nude) is composed of concrete sculptural bases topped by the glimmering mineral.
'I was fascinated by the saturated rich greens and turquoise colours in malachite and the way the natural clustered formations resembled aerial views of lush landscapes; how something on a small scale such as that mineral sample could suggest the vastness of places, maps, regions, and rainforests all seen from above,’ Fernández notes from her Boerum Hill studio.
Malachite’s quixotic quality with flecks of silver is also reflected in a set of ceramic panels measuring twelve feet in length. Sparkling in various shades of green, blue, black and tobacco brown, the panels, made of some 1,000 minute tiles, are all-encompassing in nature.
Fernández, who served on President Obama’s U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, turned to the Viñales Valley, an iconic and surreal landscape with extensive caves in rural Cuba, as inspiration for its palette and exploring scale. Pictured: ’Viñales (Cervix)’, 2015, mixed media on wood panel
Her mixed-media sculpture ’Viñales (Reclining Nude)’ (pictured) is composed of concrete sculptural bases topped by glimmering malachite
'I was fascinated by the saturated rich greens and turquoise colors in malachite and the way the natural clustered formations resembled aerial views of lush landscapes; how something on a small scale such as that mineral sample could suggest the vastness of places, maps, regions, and rainforests all seen from above,’ Fernández notes
The sculptural works come together like a series of veritable ‘intimate interior landscapes’, made from concrete, cast bronze, malachite, and glazed ceramic
INFORMATION
‘Teresita Fernández’ will be on view until 2 January 2016
ADDRESS
Lehmann Maupin
536 W 22nd Street
New York
-
Highlights from the transporting Cruise 2026 showsThe Cruise 2026 season began yesterday with a Chanel show at Lake Como, heralding the start of a series of jet-setting, destination runway shows from fashion’s biggest houses
-
Behind the design of national pavilions in Venice: three studios to knowDesigning the British, Swiss and Mexican national pavilions at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 are three outstanding studios to know before you go
-
Premium patisserie Naya is Mayfair’s latest sweet spotHeritage meets opulence at Naya bakery in Mayfair, London. With interiors by India Hicks and Anna Goulandris, the patisserie looks good enough to eat
-
Ai Weiwei’s new public installation is coming soon to Four Freedoms State Park‘Camouflage’ by Ai Weiwei will launch the inaugural Art X Freedom project in September 2025, a new programme to investigate social justice and freedom
-
Leonard Baby's paintings reflect on his fundamentalist upbringing, a decade after he left the churchThe American artist considers depression and the suppressed queerness of his childhood in a series of intensely personal paintings, on show at Half Gallery, New York
-
Desert X 2025 review: a new American dream grows in the Coachella ValleyWill Jennings reports from the epic California art festival. Here are the highlights
-
This rainbow-coloured flower show was inspired by Luis Barragán's architectureModernism shows off its flowery side at the New York Botanical Garden's annual orchid show.
-
‘Psychedelic art palace’ Meow Wolf is coming to New YorkThe ultimate immersive exhibition, which combines art and theatre in its surreal shows, is opening a seventh outpost in The Seaport neighbourhood
-
Wim Wenders’ photographs of moody Americana capture the themes in the director’s iconic films'Driving without a destination is my greatest passion,' says Wenders. whose new exhibition has opened in New York’s Howard Greenberg Gallery
-
20 years on, ‘The Gates’ makes a digital return to Central ParkThe 2005 installation ‘The Gates’ by Christo and Jeanne-Claude marks its 20th anniversary with a digital comeback, relived through the lens of your phone
-
In ‘The Last Showgirl’, nostalgia is a drug like any otherGia Coppola takes us to Las Vegas after the party has ended in new film starring Pamela Anderson, The Last Showgirl
