"investment of material"

Just in case based on my mention of the TAC artist resident show you did not have time to venture any further into Josefina Concha's work, I did.



I saw Josefina's work a few times over the course of the residency in her studio and the first time I was just blown away by the density of her stitches. Most of her work is done on a machine and because of the sheer number of stitches he work becomes extremely heavy and sculptural. The only artist that I have seen that uses such dense stitches would be Rebecca Ringquist. But where Rebecca is sharing personal narrative Josefina is exploring abstraction, gesture, and her relationship to painting.


Sadly what her website shows is that her work DOES not translate well in pictures. First the scale is pretty big, generally about body size of slightly bigger.



But the density of her stitches and the subtly of her color moves is lost on screen. Her work is interesting in that it has a boldness to its form and presence but then after that is has a very quiet subtle voice of color, undulation and texture.


In her statement she says:

Instead of painting, I sew, and I explore the qualities of the thread, trying to recreate gestures that go from the saturation of the matter to the synthesis of the line, and from the expressiveness of the stain to the definition of the image, evermore indefinite and evocative

The building of my work is articulated through the investment of a material (the thread) on a piece of cloth, and the time dedicated to sew it...

The work ventures between the rapprochement and the estrangement towards painting: rapprochement for the intent of simulating it and estrangement for the will to replace it.

Do not miss seeing her work in person at the TAC but... if you do I think you will have plenty of opportunities in the future. See more here.