Carmen Argote, Artist

In-Line (magnet drawing)

2011

About the Piece

This work composed of chicken wire hexagons and copper mesh is held together by hundreds of small magnets. Each magnet holds a component to the canvas surface. This works looks at systems of organization such as strands and lines to create an image created by lining up these small hexagonal mechanically woven wires. With these works, I explore the idea of where a drawing can happen. I envision the space between the magnet and the chicken-wire piece to be the place where the drawing happens.

I envision these as freestanding, allowing the viewer to walk around the work and see the magnetic elements inherent in the work.

Material: chicken wire, magnets, canvas

Dimensions: 6' x 7' x 2"

Above image: A series of sculptures inspired by a simple laundry folding tool, co-opted as a sculptural form. These sculptures are reminiscent of both architectural structure and the physical movement which translates loose fabric into folded structure. They embody the ritual of folding, a process of layering over onto itself, so that one part covers another. The folded structures, like the installation, are of a human scale, yet transform into architectural models through repetition and play.

Material: Paper mache, paint, cardboard, tape, muslin

Dimensions: Variable

Artist Statement

As a multidisciplinary artist working in installation, I explore notions of home and place, interacting with architecture to reflect on personal histories and my own immigrant experience. I work with places and materials that surround me, utilizing local resources as points to expand from. My practice uses the act of inhabiting as a starting point, allowing the work to take form as I respond to a space, materials and ideas developing from my own experiences and relationships to a site.

I work from an intimate and personal place, using shared experiences to connect the spaces that house us to notions of home and self. Often working with family, I explore our common immigrant experience as a layered, multigenerational, transnational experience that is echoed though shared memories, traumas, and aspirations, extending outward from the intimate space of home.

Architecture for me exists apart from the physical structure, in familial myth, in class structures, in shapes, and as an imprint acting upon the body. My interest in the shape of spaces and in the layout as a visual language for expression developed in childhood from looking at my father’s architectural drawings of houses he wanted to build.

carmenargote.com