NAVIGABLE ZONES

by Nayda Collazo-llorens

Curated by Laura Roulet
View curatorial statement

Artist Talk: Saturday, May 12 - 5:30pm
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 12 - 6:00-8:30pm

Project 4
is proud to present Navigable Zones by Puerto Rican artist Nayda Collazo-Llorens. In this site-specific exhibition organized by Independent Curator Laura Roulet the entire gallery space will be hyper-linked as a multi-media installation. Evoking themes of displacement, navigation and language these installations seek to examine Collazo-Llorens’s dual cultural existence as a Puerto Rican living and working in the United States. Her paintings, drawings, text and video act as interconnected systems to form a non-linear mindscape. Employing repetition, variation and mapping the work explores the mind’s internal systems that perceive, order and remember external environments. At times autobiographical, Collazo-Llorens’s artwork is an evocative hybrid of science and poetry. Her paintings have a post-minimalist aesthetic. Rorschach-like ink drops mark the canvases in grid patterns. Connections among the dots are then mapped and delineated, gradually building up a surface that is both organic and systematic. Her drawings reflect an interest in private, invented language; how mark making crosses over between letters, symbols and abstraction. The videos further explore notions of perception and the mind's conscious/subconscious interaction using text, imagery and sound.

Nayda Collazo-Llorens was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1968. She currently lives and works in New York. She received a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and an MFA from New York University. Recent solo exhibitions include Route/Journal at LMAK projects, Williamsburg, NY; Mindscapes, Space Other, Boston, MA and Roaming, CSV Cultural Center, New York. She has exhibited widely in group exhibitions in the U.S., Europe and Puerto Rico, including None of the Above, Contemporary Work by Puerto Rican Artists, Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT, traveling to the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan; Painting as Paradox, Artists Space, New York, and Here & There, Six Artists from San Juan, El Museo del Barrio, New York, traveling to the Blaffer Gallery, Houston, TX. Nayda Collazo-Llorens was awarded a grant from Urban Artist Initiative, New York City in 2006.

For additional information
Contact: Anne Surak , Director
Project 4
903 U Street NW Washington DC 20001
tel: 202 232 4340
info@project4gallery.com
www.project4gallery.com/
Hours: Wednesday - Friday 2:00 - 6:00 pm, Saturday noon - 6:00 pm and by appointment.