Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez

While the materials employed by Fernandez have weight and substance – sheet glass, welded steel, chrome rods, wooden logs, plaster board – they are brought together in assemblages that are relatively light and fragile. Typically constructed through layering, interspersion and balancing, the resulting sculptures are dynamic, sensual, dexterous and intimate.

The Frauleins (all 2006) are made up of vases of different historic styles and decorative patterns. Unified by their sprayed matt black surface into single free standing, chess-like figures, these neutral monoliths are interrupted by a revealing, single strip of unsprayed surface – a Newman zip – that runs down the sculpture like a sedimentary timeline. Other works like Blink (2006) transform two discarded light box shells into display cabinets containing composed accumulations of metropolitan detritus, each punctuated by a new, highly reflective chrome bar in place of the absent fluorescent light.

Sometimes merged into these assemblages are found images taken from antique and flower arranging books, auction catalogues, fashion and decorative arts magazines. At other times these images are collaged into beguiling, overlaid, two-dimensional abstractions. It’s a subjective, spontaneous archaeology: a process of remaking culture and history, disassociated from fixed chronologies and familiar material relationships.

Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez was born in Costa Rica (1974). Subsequently she lived in Colombia and then Germany, taking her BA at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Art. Following her BA in Düsseldorf, she moved to London to study at RCA, graduating from the MA sculpture course in 2005. She currently lives and works in London.