SAN ANTONIO, TX.- Ruiz-Healy Art announces a solo exhibition highlighting work by internationally renowned artist Johanna Calle. Trama opens to the public on Thursday, May 11, 2017 with a reception from 5:30-7:30 pm and the artist will be in attendance. An Artist talk contextualizing the exhibition will be held on Saturday, May 13 at 2:00 pm.
Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Calle gracefully investigates lines with a preference for a black and white palette. Her exploration of drawing and pushing the medium into a wide variety of techniques are at the heart of her formal practice. Her method of line making is that of a physical approach--one that includes wire, stitching, text, along with the more traditional use of ink and pencil. The artist is contently expanding and reconfiguring the very idea of a line and mark making.
Calle bestows formalism with a social conscience. Rather than sensationalizing the grave issues and violent troubles of the world, she incorporates the heaviest of subject matters such as, environmental decay and the horrific conditions of the slums and presents the topics in a philosophical and contemplative manner. She sheds light on humanitarian tragedies while submerging them within a subdued aesthetic.
In the series Arañas/spiders, Calle creates unique works by hand-drawing the different spiders that form the 20 editions of the serigraph suite. Calle employs excerpts from the article Urgent Cities, written by anthropologist Maria Margarita Ruiz-Roges, as implied lines to create an intricate network of text dealing with the rapid growth of developing countries. This is done as a form of visual poetry, whereas only select words are legible so the viewer can question and contemplate the quiet interplays of line and word.
Sin titulo (jaula)/Untitled (cage) is a great example of Calle’s sculptural methodology that she incorporates into her works on paper. This series uses a pressed birdcage as the matrix in the intaglio printing process and was inspired after reading the philosopher Peter Singer and his seminal work Animal Liberation. Calle uses the birdcage as a metaphor for the slums of Bogotá to question the effect of small confined spaces (and cages) on human (and animal) psyches. By crushing birdcages in the press, she is destroying their ability to trap and confine. The results are a delicate formulation of impressions on paper that echo the confinement within its two-dimensionality and resonates memory of its space before compression.
The exhibition will also include an in memoriam work to the 43 missing students in Mexico. Libro de artista unico/ Unique Artist's Book, a hand-stitched book made of intaglio prints on ancient parchment paper, also pays homage to the artist's father, an accountant, as faint organized ledger lines are apparent. The pages are nearly blank and signify the missing records of the disappearance of the 43 students. The accounting ledger is a repeated theme of Calle's, also found in Sin titulo (saldo cero)/Untitled (zero balance), printed by Flying Horse Editions at the University of Central Florida. By utilizing a system that is no longer utilized in the age of computerized accounting, Calle speaks of a broken order that highlights the economic disorder of our time.
Johanna Calle earned her BA in Art History from Los Andes University in Bogotá, Colombia and received her MFA from the Chelsea College of Art at the London Institute. Calle's work can be found in prestigious collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX; and the National Museum of Colombia, Bogotá.
Calle has been selected for numerous international exhibitions and biennales. During 2016, she exhibited in the 20th Sydney Biennale, Australia. In 2015, she participated in the IV Trienal Poli/Gráfica, San Juan, Puerto Rico and in 2014 she was included in SITELines: Unsettled Landscapes, New Mexico, USA. Other group shows include Lines at Hauser & Wirth in Zurich, Switzerlandin 2014. This year Calle had a solo-exhibition at Galerie Krinzinger Gallery in Vienna, Austira and Galeria Marilia Razuk in Sãn Paulo, Brazil. Calle’s artwork will also be included in the forthcoming exhibitions, Home – So Different, So Appealing, which will open at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2017 and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2018.
