As she moved through the exhibit describing a carbonized wood sculpture she created, New York-based artist Natalia Porter recalled the challenge of assembling stacks of fragile charcoal into a vertical piece of art.

‘It’s the stacking gesture of a kid,’ Porter said. ‘These sculptures are like the everyday passage of life. You take one step and another, and in the end, you have a whole. This installation represents our learning and growth as artists.’

Porter was one of two Mexican-born artists from New York City who presented their collaborative installation project ‘Edifice,’ currently on display at the Point of Contact Gallery in Syracuse. Curated by Pedro Cuperman, founder of the gallery and associate professor of Spanish at Syracuse University, the exhibitioncommemorated Hispanic Heritage Month. The gallery hosted an opening reception with Porter and Gabriela Alva Cal Y Major last Thursday.

Inviting Boston-based writer Andrew Witkin to participate in the collaboration, the artists formed a dynamic partnership between written word and spatial composition, said Tere Paniagua, the gallery’s managing director and associate editor. Porter and Alva employed Witkin’s writings, which read like lists of accumulated thoughts, as inspiration for their pieces. The artists responded to Witkin’s juxtaposition of order and abstraction, as well as the visual composition of his printed words.

‘It was interesting but also a challenge to keep the integrity of my work and still explore interests through someone else’s perceptions and thoughts,’ Alva said.

While Porter created vertical structures that parallel Witkin’s organized building of written word, Alva based her works on individual poems using the word layout to generate new compositions in her prints and photographs.

What draws Porter and Alva together is their interest of urban landscape and architecture, reflected in the installation’s common theme of buildings, constructions and industrial objects.

‘Human built objects placed in nature are fascinating,’ Porter said. ‘I was inspired by cityscapes we live in and their elements, like graffiti marks on the sidewalk.’

In one of her pieces, Porter stacked laser-cut paper shaped like tree foliage to build a vertical structure. The sculpture interacts with the porous quality of the gallery’s ceiling, connecting with its environment to communicate an image of a stone stalactite spearing from above, Porter said.

Porter drew inspiration mainly from architecture and Alva employed industrial objects as the basis for her pieces. Using glass from broken soda bottles scattered all over cities in Mexico, she used the easily available material to portray an aspect of her home country. Alva said that in her home country, glass shards are placed on top of fences and used for protection.

‘Glass became a part of the landscape in Mexico,’ Alva said. ‘I tried to show the contradiction between danger and the feeling of safety. Broken glass is dangerous, but when light hits it under a certain angle it reflects beautifully.’

The colors resonating through the exhibit are predominantly earth tones and grays resembling urban concrete, with surprising flashes of bright pink and orange color. Artists use colors they are suddenly drawn to, but also adhere to rules they created to keep consistency in their work, Alva said.

While it is an enriching experience for people to see works of art firsthand in a gallery, both artists also said it’s important that their work is represented in print media.

‘Many people can’t experience and see artwork in person,’ Alva said. ‘It’s important how you reproduce your pieces in print because it’s the closest some people will get to your work.’

kvdolins@syr.edu

Published on October 2, 2011 at 12:00 pm