monotype on Mylar, projectors with steel mounts and video lent by the artist; 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Albuquerque Museum. Photo by Albuquerque Museum.
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Haunted: Nicola López
at the Albuquerque Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
July 2020-June 2021
According to artist Nicola López, there is no longer any such thing as “nature” unmarked by humanity. Alongside the forces of geology and time, our human actions have by now impacted every part of the earth’s surface and the reality of all things that inhabit it. Nature as a site untouched by humanity is a ghost that haunts us just as the future is already haunted by the trickle-down and side effects of past, present, and future technologies and the specters of the atrocities we inflict on our environment in the name of progress.
monotype on Mylar, projectors with steel mounts and video lent by the artist; 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Albuquerque Museum. Photo by Albuquerque Museum.
López installed collaged, printed and hand-drawn elements directly on the museum lobby’s wall to create a hybrid landscape in which geological and human-built features intertwine. This static landscape is inhabited by moving images projected directly over the wall-mounted collage. Since sunlight pours into the lobby area through large windows adjacent to the exhibition space, the projection is visible to varying degrees as light conditions shift throughout the day and seasons. Sometimes the projection is barely visible—and entirely ghostlike—while at other times it is stronger, the way that phantoms can seem most palpable in spaces of darkness. The projected imagery includes a mix of original documentary and constructed video footage. It engages ideas of the sublime, the surreal and the all-too-real as it explores how our landscape is now permanently haunted by human impact.
Nicola López (born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, lives and works in Brooklyn, New York) is the 2020 Visiting Artist. Since 2011, the Visiting Artist program at Albuquerque Museum has featured contemporary artists with a connection to New Mexico. The annual program provides an invited artist the opportunity to reimagine and activate the museum’s lobby, which is the first space visitors encounter upon entering the museum. The program includes the display of the artist’s work for one year, public engagement, and artist talks. The program aims to provide a bridge between the artistic practice of the visiting artist and the experience of contemporary art by the public.
INFORMATION
Albuquerque Museum
2000 Mountain Road NW
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87104 USA
(505) 243-7255
Hours:
Tuesday-Sunday, Noon-5PM