About the Artist
Tatiana Garmendia is a figurative artist with a conceptual twist. Working with graphite and metal leaf on paper, she creates images of the human skeleton and internal organs so realistic that at first glance they look like x-rays. Closer inspection of the work reveals that Tatiana brushed the powdery pigment onto textured paper that she has folded, stapled, erased, and polished. By allowing traces of her working process to show, Tatiana intensifies the physical presence of her images and challenges viewers to question the very essence of representation.
Classically trained at the American University in Paris, Tatiana also traveled throughout Europe, learning from the works of the old masters. Returning stateside in 1980, the artist continued her formal training at Miami Dade Community College, and at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. She graduated with a bachelor of fine art degree from Florida International University in 1985. After college, the artist taught drawing and painting for five years. Awarded her first G.I.A. Fellowships from the Drawing Resource Center in 1990, Tatiana moved to New York. There, she earned a master of fine arts degree from the Pratt Institute of Art in 1993. A Cintas Fellowship the same year took Tatiana to Seattle, Washington, where she currently lives and works.
Tatiana probes the "resonance of figurative representation." Elegant rib cages form arabesques that enclose dark atmospheric passages which whisper with veins and breathing lungs. Thin lines and flat shapes of reflective metal intrude on muscular shapes suggesting the human heart, and other internal organs. They combine the artist's desire to reconcile the humanist tradition of figuration and the formal act of representation.
"I grew up in a household where the human body, in various guises of dejection and exaltation, was a primary theme in devotional and medical imagery," says the artist. Perhaps it is this very preoccupation with the mortified flesh inherent in the imagery of her formative years that intensifies the conceptual depth and sensual presence in Tatiana's work.
Tatiana has exhibited her work throughout the United States and abroad. She has exhibited at The Bronx Museum of Arts, Art In General, and Stux Gallery in New York. Among the European galleries where Tatiana has shown are The Milan Art Center in Italy, Castfield Gallery in England, and the Galeria Riesa Efau in Germany. Her works are in public collections in New York, Illinois, California, Ohio, and the Dominican Republic. For more information, contact Tatiana Garmendia at fahs@aa.net or (206)763-8544.
Artist Statement
"I -consciousness- originate in skin."
- Czeslaw Milosz
I find the problematic resonance of figurative representation irresistible- particularly, how it manifests the humanist tradition that places the human form at the extreme of perfection. I equally find the fundamental deception inherent in creating illusionistic images on a flat surface compelling. These graphite and metal leaf drawings explore and parallel both these concerns. They reveal the processes both the body and its representation have undergone.
These drawings of x-rays reveal the invasive effects of both disease and technology on the human figure. The depiction of disease and medical procedures challenges the humanist notion of the body's perfection and completion. Additionally, the radiographic images present a real picture of the physical body while penetrating it on the flat picture plane. The dichotomy between actual and conceptual representation is similarly balanced in the body of these pieces. They emphasize their flatness through the use of texture and materials, thus becoming records of their act of creation while depicting the illusionism of x-rays. Pinned directly to the wall, the pieces bridge the gap between passive representation and active model. As such, the drawings stress their nature as marked paper.
Concerned with reconciling figurative representation and the formal concerns of creating illusionistic images on a flat surface, these works on paper explore the interchangeability of illusion and reality. Here, both the imperfect body and tangible art piece reveal vestiges of the biological and creative processes they have endured.
fahs@aa.net [e-mail]
