ART-PRESENTATION:Liliana Poter-Actualidades

Liliana Porter’s work often places carefully chosen small figurines and other objects, addressing larger philosophical questions and emotional states. Alongside printmaking, she has also worked extensively in the media of photography and video, and has created works on canvas, drawings, collages, and installations.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Hosfelt Galley Archive

For “Actualidades” her solo exhibition at Hosfelt Galley, Liliana Porter premieres her  new homonym video and a full range of new work, including paintings, sculptural objects, installations, works on paper, and photographs, each challenging the proposition that time is linear and reality graspable.  Over the years, Porter has amassed a collection of figurines, knickknacks, toys, and souvenirs from her global travels.  These kitschy objects appear regularly in her work, inviting political, philosophical, and existential interpretation through their arrangement in unexpected situations.  Porter delights in manipulating time, history and reality by combining them as though in dialogue in an atemporal white space. She writes, “Many of these pieces depict a cast of characters that are inanimate objects, toys and figurines that I find in flea markets, antique stores, and other odd places. The objects have a double existence. On the one hand they are mere appearance, insubstantial ornaments, but, at the same time, have a gaze that can be animated by the viewer, who, through it, can project the inclination to endow things with an interiority and identity. These ‘theatrical vignettes’ are constructed as visual comments that speak of the human condition. I am interested in the simultaneity of humor and distress, banality and the possibility of meaning”. In her new video, entitled “Actualidades”, Porter structures each scene as if it were a segment from a newscast or section in a newspaper, including “Arts and Leisure,” “Fashion and Style,” “World News,” and “Religion”.  With music arranged and composed by Sylvia Meyer, each scenario becomes an evocative portrayal of the absurdities and tragedies perpetuated by poignant human surrogates in the form of shabby children’s toys, hilarious religious and political icons, and other peculiar and pathetic mass-produced objects.

Info: Hosfelt Galley, 260 Utah Street, San Francisco, Duration: 1/10-23/11/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sat 10:00-17:30 Thu 11:00-19:00, http://hosfeltgallery.com