Damian Ortega CAPITAL less at Barbara Gladstone

Damián Ortega at Gladstone Gallery

Ordinary objects are typically used by Damian Ortega to project his interest in the mundane and everyday. This emphasis on one specific object creates a strong meeting, with a centralized idea and concept of what the true meaning of the object is. A simple object can become a powerful message when manipulated by Damian Ortega.

In Gladstone Gallery, his work is created with one simple material. Brick. I of course am always partial to brick. I like the appeal of the down-home southern charm, the old world essence of the material, and some of the nostalgic feelings it can stir up. Also, the solid nature of the material paired with its everyday architectural uses, can easily compose an unbending foundation. The solidarity of the material creates such a bold entrance and message in its structure, it is hard to take the work as anything but serious and sturdy.

The brick is created with intentional voids within the brick structures, scattered throughout the space. Not only does every structure stand far above a standard person's height, but Ortega created the bricks with voids from concrete blocks and brick by sanding them down.

All are titled "Building", and are a dwelling-like structure. It mimics not only the windows found in the NY stacked houses and buildings where people literally "live on top of each other", as well as mimicking Aztec dwellings of the past. Its a display of 5 structures that comprise a series of these dwellings, though they could just as easily be uninhabited.

As you learn more about Ortega you will realize that most work is political, as he started as a political cartoonist. The buildings are exactly that, political representations of poverty in brick form. The show's title," CAPITAL less" evokes the loss of captial. The loss is in the buildings its self, as they represent what once was a thriving structure, though it also represents a sections of the sociopolitical world in which the buildings are imaginarily situated. The buildings are paired with a video of a building in Sao Paulo Brazil, the Treme-Treme, which the video is entitled, that houses homeless occupants. The buildings are also for the capital less citizens of the city. The world play continues! Capital, as in city, refers to the loss of the city in which they once were a part of, and now live within what once was. The nostalgia continues as a capital remembered is lived in but continues to deplete into erosion.

The play on positive and negative space is used as a pun. And we all know how much I love word play. The space is positive shapes, made of negative space. The capital waste turns into a living space. The waste of the space is used as a place for homeless to dwell. It is a serious blunder on the city planning board's record, and this is Ortega's not so subtle way of rubbing it in their face with minimalist sophistication. These spaces come to represent the dilapidation of a structure, and the utilization of such a space. It is industrial and at the same time archaic.

In another sculpture, the inside of ventilation hoses are cast and displayed. An internal space is shown again, and exhibited as a form. The negative space turned into a positive one becomes a conversation with the other 5 pieces of buildings.

I am always completely enraptured by urban environments and all of the contradictory relationships within the atmosphere. The complications of life that arise in such an environment are often convoluted and thriving with positive and negative polarized views on the benefits and consequences of such a structure. Within art the perspective can be sociopolitical, architectural, and a range of confused expressionist representation. Any way you put it, an urban study is one that appeals to almost everyone, and can create a situation for ideal introspection of the structures of a society.

What do I like about it?

I like the minimal materials used

I like the clever show title

I like the ambiguous stance the work takes on the issue it raises

I like the subtlety

I like the simple and pure aesthetic

I like the concepts that come out of such a simple title and structure that provide endless meanings

I like that the introduction on Barbara Gladstone's Gallery makes for a nice segway into my next post about chapter 3...