News and Media

Published: Jun 23, 2011

LACOSTE, France - The SCAD exhibitions department presents "Amethyst Cinema," a site-specific installation by acclaimed artist Teresita Fernández, on view through Sept. 3 in Galerie Pfriem at SCAD Lacoste. Curated by senior curator Melissa Messina, this sculptural work is a continuation of the artist's "Eruption" series, which draws inspiration from the various textures associated with transforming landscapes and local environs. The jewel-like texture of "Amethyst Cinema" is complemented by a cool, serene palate, which is in part inspired by the Provençal countryside where SCAD Lacoste is located. Through this installation, Fernández engages the viewer in an active exploration of surface, texture and space. Nuances reveal themselves through the artist's alluring use of materials-in this case, a vast plane covered in glass beads that shimmer and reflect the painted surface beneath. In a subtle yet evocative experience, gallery visitors become immersed in fields of color, organic forms and textures, which call to mind a variety of natural phenomena and topography.

Galerie Pfriem at SCAD Lacoste
Rue Saint-Trophime
84480 Lacoste, France
Gallery hours: Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday

The exhibition and reception is free and open to the public. For more information, visit scadexhibitions.com, or call : +33 (0) 4 90 75 66 34.

About the artist

Teresita Fernández was born in 1968 in Miami, Florida, and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions at sites including the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Site Santa Fe, New Mexico; Castello di Rivoli, Torino, Italy; the Witte de With in Rotterdam; and the Miami Art Museum, Florida. She was featured in "Outer City, Inner Space: Teresita Fernández, Stephen Hendee, and Ester Partegas" at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris in 2002. In August 2009, a show of Fernández's recent work, "Blind Landscape," opened at the Contemporary Art Museum at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Fernández is the youngest artist commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park, where her work "Seattle Cloud Cover" allows visitors to walk through a covered skyway while viewing the city's skyline through tiny holes in multicolored glass. Another site-specific commission, "Blind Blue Landscape," has been on view since September 2009 at the Benesse Art Site in Naoshima, Japan. In January 2009, The Blanton Museum of Art unveiled "Stacked Waters," a site-specific installation created for the cavernous entrance of the museum. "Starfield," Fernández's installation at the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Texas, opened in September 2009.

She is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards in the United States and abroad, including the 2005 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 1999 Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award, and she has had residencies in Japan, Italy and at ArtPace in San Antonio. She was commissioned for special projects by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2000, and by the Public Art Fund in 2001.