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Nicola López’ artist statement begins, “The landscape that we live in has become saturated with signs of the easy mobility, speed, constant communication, imposition of structure, insistence on growth and glorification of technology that have come to be so characteristic of our society today.” Her work, a melding of printmaking, drawing and sculptural form, deftly represents the world just as she describes it in her statement.
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Eye of the Storm – Ali Gass on Nicola López
Nicola López’ artist statement begins, “The landscape that we live in has become saturated with signs of the easy mobility, speed, constant communication, imposition of structure, insistence on growth and glorification of technology that have come to be so characteristic of our society today.” Her work, a melding of printmaking, drawing and sculptural form, deftly represents the world just as she describes it in her statement. The largest scale works are assembled primarily of wood block prints on Mylar, shaped into detailed installations that hang from the ceiling, crawl overhead and seep down the wall onto the floor. Discrete objects—old tires, television sets, satellite dishes, piping and industrial structures—collapse together and push at the boundaries of literal representation. Just as the viewer finds a foothold of recognizability, ribbons of wire become pathways of abstraction, and the form burgeons along the space into some other piece of technological detritus, a cartographic vision of contemporary mass society.
In discussing her work, López brings extraordinary insight and clarity to both her practice and the world in which she finds her subject matter. Obviously, the impact of technology on humanity and the environment is part of her project. Yet, asked if she is troubled by one finding beauty in the work as well, she responds, “In making an object that lives in the world, I do not just want to be exposing nightmares. In one sense, sure this can be just about global warming, but as you look, you might also find little pockets of things tied to progress and regeneration, things that might also seem hopeful.”
The work blurs the separation between the technological and the organic, and in that collapse, the message gets satisfyingly complicated. At first glance, the forms are delicious vines of color and line climbing across the picture plane or along the space of the gallery. Closer inspection reveals the actual objects and true subject matter. The crawling composition, seemingly growing out of itself, certainly suggests mass media and technology overtaking humanity. However, the flipside of this markedly organic formation of imagery is hopefulness; regeneration and growth additionally connote progress and a possibility for change. Further, the ultimate packaging of the message in fundamentally beautiful, carefully crafted and even physically delicate materiality complicates any simple social critique and retrieves the work from the realm of purely political practice.
Of course, words like “beautiful,” “crafted” and “delicate” provide an entry point into a discussion on López’ position as a woman artist. Arguably, much political art made today is, in part, a continuation of the feminist art practice of the 70s in the United States, a very recent history, as the artist is quick to point out. Her work is not specifically feminist: meaning is directed at humans in general. However, though not foregrounded in the work, López’ project is indebted to the work of those women artists, both in the fact of their success and in elements of their formal and social strategies. Additionally, she cautions that as far as women have come in the art world, there is still much progress to be made. Laughingly, López says, “a lot of times I’ll meet someone who has seen my work and they say, ‘oh, from your work, I thought you were a man!’ because I represent these traditionally masculine objects.” Here, the artist’s point about progress yet to be made for women in the art world seems most potent: even today, form and subject may be gendered in the minds of contemporary viewers.
Ali Gass is the assistant curator at the Department of Painting and Sculpture, SF MOMA.
