"The Gesture and the Fold"
By: KJ Baysa
This striking body of work that Luisa Cohrs has prepared for her upcoming exhibition in Indiana reflects her diligent research methodologies, excursions abroad, and memories of her South American birthplace through the lens of history. The artist left Colombia at 6 years of age, and the gestures of white handkerchief-waving citizens lining the streets for the funeral processions of assassinated individuals were subsequently imprinted. The shape of a paper airplane, representing her intrigue with traveling, is conflated with its twin leitmotif: the outline of the waved handkerchief that embodies the binary readings of hope and of resignation. She prints with her hands and body weight, manually folding and pressing the inked three- dimensional fabric that is transformed into the two-dimensional image born onto her paintings.
The prints retain the topological folded space qualities of volume: the elaborated ridges of the folds create negative spaces, and these darkened areas are redefined as light. Besides the handkerchief, Cohrs assimilates another icon of genteel society from childhood memories: the culture and class-related doily, which she deploys as a stencil, repeating the image in several works. Drawing on prosaic items from the quotidian, like staples and tags, her process includes spray paint, a contemporary conceit, in contradistinction to her elegant use of sanguine, the iron oxide-containing clay favored by 16th century artists.
Her other mark makings are deft deliberations of liquid and charcoal graphite that effectively center, balance, and anchor the overall compositions worked with acrylic and oil pigments over moist and dry canvases. Through this body of accomplished work that plots personal and psychic cartographies, Cohrs acknowledges the blessings of daily life and of a collective memory, underscoring her commitment, as a consummate artist, to social responsibility.
