Teresita Fernandez, known for her work on installation art based on a unique understanding of the material is holding a private exhibition in 313 Art Project, Seoul, Korea from 20th September to 29th October. Her work is famous for a nature-inspired, nature-replicating characteristics. Teresita's work, with a vast interest in the field of visual perception of man and the psychology of sight begins with the true form of nature and a unique imagination branching from it. She is known mainly for her large-scale installation pieces describing her impression on nature. She replicates the impression of the primal nature such as light, water, fire and sunlight through minimalistic expressionism and nudges the spectators to build their own fantasy and reality by visualizing time.
Some of the representative pieces that re-construct natural phenomena through an abstract mise-en-scene is the Waterfall, describing a waterfall, Ring of Fire that creates a visual illusion of fire using thousands of threads of string. One of her well-known pieces that explores her interest towards human visual perception and the effects of light is her 2004 piece Seattle Cloud Cover. This peace was made in a park in Seattle where visitors would walk through a space of colored windows and feel like walking amidst the sky in the city. In 2009, Naoshima, Japan, her piece Blind Blud Landscape in the Benesse Art Site corridor walls using 30,000 glass cubes gave the spectators a beautiful visual experience by depicting its surroundings. Aside from that, her work at the Texas Dalls Cowboys stadium, Starfield (2009), San Francisco Louis Vuitton Unison Square Maison's Hothouse (Blue) (2008) and New York Madison Square Garden's Bamboo Cinema (2001) has earned her the international fame.
Her most recent piece, Portrait Blind Landscape (2010) consists of two stainless steel panels accurately cut, resembling either a vine, or a cell under a microscope. The artist paints green enamel paint behind the panel fixed to the wall, creating the effect that the same colored light is emitting from within the piece.
In this exhibit, her symbolic ingredient, the glass cube, appears in Mirage, and Nocturnal, a flat piece using graphite. The piece Mirage in this exhibit is a rather serene piece. As you can notice from the title of the piece, the dim color of the wall allows the glass cubes to be barely visible, creating an odd sense of existence. However, the graphite piece, Nocturnal is a dark, heavy monochrome type work. The dim emission of purple and the movement of the brush remind one of a mysterious night scene. A written interview was carried out to take a detailed look into her work and philosophy.
art Your Nocturnal Series will be exhibited in the 313 Art Project exhibition. These works differ from your earlier Nocturnal series exhibited at Lehmann Maupin in 2009. The previous Nocturnal series in 2009 were monochrome and had depicted waves concretely; however, the 2011 series show beautiful colours of pink and sky blue. In addition, the canvas seems to have become more abstract and minimalistic than the previous series, presenting the materiality of the surface in a more delicate way. Please tell us about the 2011 series and its difference from the 2009 series. What inspired you to use these colors and show exquisite materiality?
TF The drawings fluctuate between the picturesque and the abstract. The new series at 313 became progressively more abstracted but still alludes to the basic landscape elements of land, water, sea, and the night sky. I began to incorporate color because I was interested in how the black surface absorbed the color. The colors used are in fact very bright, but once applied on the graphite become dark and showy. It is like one's eyes adjusting to the dark, or a photograph being chemically developed.
art You used solid graphite in these paintings. The canvas is made entirely of graphite. Since when did you choose to utilize graphite as a painting material and why?
TF The work I'm doing uses graphite in many ways from the drawn line, to precision-machined slabs, to its natural, rock-like state. My reference is to an actual, specific site: the valley of Borrowdale, in the Lake District in Cumbria, England, where graphite was first mined. I started thinking about the history of landscape drawing, and about Leonardo da Vinci as the first Western artist to draw landscape for its own sake, not as a background. Graphite was first discovered in the 1500s in Borrowdale, England. My interest in drawing in general led me to a material exploration of its history that then led to a l rethinking of what exactly is a drawing.
art Your works can be seen as a landscape drawing, sculptural relief or monochrome minimalist painting. Your paintings are not just a painting, but also a sculpture since its surface shows emboss finishes and relief. Please tell us the relationship between the sculptures and the paintings of your work.
TF I became fascinated with the idea of the actual landscape as physical drawing, the whole of Borrowdale sitting on a solid bed of graphite. My new works are all about making a sculpture that's really a drawing, a kind of dirty, dimensional, physical smudge. So that the act of drawing and the object of drawing become one and the same. In a way, they are like drawings on top of drawings on top of drawings. The word 'drawing' of course constantly being reframed to mean something outside of its traditional associations.
art You are well known for evocative room-sized installations and large- scale sculptures that address space, light, and perception. After the works are installed, it creates a meditative space where viewers can fully embrace their spiritual side. What are your thoughts toward space and spirit?     
TF I'm interested in making works that generate a singular, intimate experience. So I do need someone to set a piece into motion and complete the circuit of meaning in the work. I am interested in this simultaneous presence of viewer as both spectator and performer, wholeheartedly complicit and willing. What I'm after is a lingering ephemeral engagement, slow, quiet, and with enough depth, kinesthetically, to be recalled by the viewers after the work is no longer in front of them. I think the best works of art somehow haunt you a little bit.
art As your installations create meditative space, it seems that you have a profound interest in Eastern thoughts. Please tell me if you have any interest in Eastern philosophy and if so, how this has influenced your work.
TF I have traveled and spent extended periods of time in Asia, especially in Japan, Singapore and Bali. I have a profound respect and sensitivity to Eastern art and design in general. Many of my works are directly connected to the ideas and places that I researched during my time in Japan. When I was in Naoshima installing 'Blind Blue Landscape' I was also looking at the Seto Inland Sea, and at  the local village, where all of the houses are made of wood that's been burned. It was like walking around a village that was a charcoal drawing. It was in fact one of the experiences that led to the graphite pieces.This kind of historical and contextual framework is an important part of how I develop my ideas.
art Please tell us about your choice of materials and where this came from. We'd like to know about your creative process as well.
TF My creative process is completely conceptual. I do research, read, write and take photos as notes to develop an idea for each project and only when the conceptual is developed I start to explore materials and form.
art People say that your works evoke the grandeur of the universe. Please tell us about your thoughts about natural or universal dispensation.
TF I am not so literal about my referencers to the natural world. Usually the works evoke images that are more of a catalyst that suggest or evoke something in the viewer rather than any real representation of something. I am interested in how the viewer is in a constant state of constructing subjective images that have more to do with their own history than with the art work that is in front of them.
art You said 'my works refer to specific features in the landscape or nature.' What kind of characters in nature interests you, and what is your approach to understanding it? For example, we can think about nature from various perspectives such as natural phenomena, circulation of natural system, ecology, etc.
TF I often refer to the landscape because it is a perfect vehicle with which to have a discourse about the ephemeral. What all of the images have in common is that they are not solid, that they represent more of an event or phenomenon rather than a representation of a  tangible object or place.   
Sae-mi Kim

Teresita Fernandez who was born in 1968, Miami, US, is an installation artist currently based in New York. She majored fine arts in the College of Fine Arts in Florida, and completed her masters in Virginia Commonwealth in 1992. Since 1995, she producing pieces and shown them at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; the Centro de Arte Contemporaneo de Malaga, Spain; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Site Santa Fe, New Mexico, Castello di Rivoli, Torino, Italy and the Witte de With in Rotterdam. Recently her solo exhibit was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Cleveland (2011), Contemporary Art Museum, University of South Florida, Tampa and Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX (2009). From 22th Sept. to 29th Oct., Teresita Fernandez: Night Writing will be shown at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute (STPI) and next year, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI will have her solo exhibition. She is the recipient of the 2005 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 1999 Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award.