Lunar (Theatre), 2014 by Teresita Fernandez

Blog post by Katherine Petit

Lunar (Theatre), 2014 by Teresita Fernández, installation, gold-finished platform and glass beads

While walking through Teresita Fernández’s exhibition at MASS MoCA titled “As Above So Below,” I was particularly drawn to Lunar (Theatre), 2014—at first curious, and then captivated by the way the expansive installation made me feel.  Taking up nearly half of the floor space in the room, an 800 square-foot gold platform stretches before the viewer, its shiny and reflective surface catching the light that streams in from the row of windows immediately behind it.  Upon the surface, Fernández has placed thousands of tiny, glass beads.  Some are arranged in a single, shallow layer while others are placed in piles of varying thicknesses, making them appear opaque despite the translucency of each individual bead.  The edge of the vast platform, the portion closest to the viewer, is gradually “terraced.” The surface becomes closer to the ground, seeming as if it might spill over onto the viewer’s feet.

The longer I stood in front of Lunar (Theatre), 2014, the more I felt as if I were standing in front of the sea, waves nearly crashing onto the ground before me.  The shiny surface of the gold platform reflects the light from the windows, mimicking the similarly reflective qualities of a body of water.  The beads, carefully arranged in piles of varying shapes and sizes, create the illusion of surface ripples undulating and freely running into each other.  This sense of movement is made even more evident as the viewer moves about in front of the scene, the light and its reflections changing with every step.

The gallery space itself further creates the sensation of standing amid an ocean landscape.  Vertical columns stretch from floor to ceiling, their bottoms immersed in the sea of gold and glass beads, rustic and weathered like the poles of an old pier.  Only viewable from one side, the installation once again references the ocean, accessible from only the shore.  The blank white walls on either side of the platform are like cloudy skies above a straight and calm horizon. Teresita Fernández’s Lunar (Theatre), 2014 creates a full-bodied experience for the viewer, recreating a body of water and thus creating an ocean-like presence. I became a small part of a much larger landscape.

 

See Teresita Fernández’s exhibition “As Above So Below” for yourself at MASS MoCA until April 5, 2015 or check it out on the museum’s website below:

www.massmoca.org

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