Artist Gaby Collins-Fernandez
March 19, 2018
Gaby Collins-Fernandez
Baroque Folding and Contemporary Expressive Form
On March 22nd, the Art and Art History Department is pleased to welcome artist Gaby Collins-Fernandez to DePauw University. The Brooklyn-based artist will present her recent theoretical project connecting Baroque imagery with popular culture, genetic coding, and contemporary art practice.
Baroque Folding in Contemporary Expressive Form, is an exploratory argument about the function of folding and repeated imagery in the Baroque, as well as its relevance to contemporary art. Originating in ideas in her own artwork and studio practice, Collins-Fernandez discusses a range of sources, from protein folding to pop music, Instagram trends, and current artworks, in relation to the logic of Baroque imagery and its dual emphasis on ecstatic expressiveness and historical lineage.
Collins-Fernandez has her own complicated relationship with Baroque and Renaissance painting – declaring her love for them and admitting their influence even as they can be emotionally difficult, even painful. When asked about this in a 2015 Brooklyn Rail Interview, she explains, “I had to come to terms with the fact that Caravaggio and Piero [della Francesca], for example, were Christians. Whether or not they were orthodox according to their time—which Piero maybe was and Caravaggio certainly wasn’t—they nonetheless believed. It’s not just because Saint Matthew was such a great story that Caravaggio made those paintings—he is not just trying to make you believe in painting, he’s trying to make you believe in God. This was a part of the work that explicitly excluded me—and looking at art history you can draw those lines of exclusion at many other points related to identity: straightness, whiteness, maleness, down the list. If you really love art you have to accept that your love of art is going to come up against these incredibly human, contextual elements of distancing and exclusion. Like: I’m not represented by this painting—this may be a painting of a woman, but this is not a painting that includes me as a woman within its vision of its audience.”
Gaby Collins-Fernandez (b. USA, 1987) is an artist living and working in New York City. She holds degrees from Dartmouth College (B.A.) and the Yale School of Art (M.F.A., Painting/Printmaking). Her work has been shown in the US and internationally, most recently at the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama Nathalie Karg Gallery, Danese Corey, and currently in an exhibition at the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale University. Her work has been discussed in publications such as The Brooklyn Rail and artcritical. She is a recipient of a Fellowship at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY, and a 2013 Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Art Award. Collins-Fernandez is also a writer whose texts have appeared in publications such as the popular Painting on Paintings blog, The Miami Rail, and The Brooklyn Rail. Her translations with Kimberly Kruge of Golden Age Spanish sonnets was published in 2015 in Riot of Perfume. Collins-Fernandez is also an editor and founder of Precog Magazine, and works with Drea Cofield as co-director of the art and music collaborative, BombPop!Up. Her work is in the collections of the Bowdoin Museum of Art, Maine, and the Alex Katz Foundation, NY.
Public Event - Lecture
4:15pm,Thursday, March 22nd
Peeler Auditorium, DePauw University, 10 West Hanna Street, Greencastle, IN 46135
free and open to the public
