YVONNE ESTRADA | 'Blue' — Burning Ambulance Review

Above, L-R: Yvonne Estrada, LD6-07; Anna Atkins, Himanthalia Lorea; Eduardo Souto de Moura, Silo Norte Shopping

By Izalia Roncallo

"In recent years, drawing has assumed an expanded and more independent role in the art world. For a long time, drawing was seen by many as a transitional phase in the creative process, leading to the eventual production of a larger piece, for example a painting or a sculpture. But today, drawings’ subjects are not limited to figures or landscapes; in fact, it seems that contemporary drawing is fascinated with dealing with the nature or essence of drawing itself. 

In Yvonne Estrada’s recent works, collectively titled Blue, abstract ultramarine and cobalt forms are produced that have a painterly element to them. The painterly element of this group of images comes from the use of blue gouache and watercolor, in some cases running down the image in streaks. Multiple drawing instruments are employed—graphite, felt and ballpoint pens—while techniques like crosshatching, contour lines, circles and scribbles create dimension, tonal value and texture, features generally associated with drawing. The gestural markings are simple and layered from thick to thin lines to build up a biomorphic image. Estrada is crossing media boundaries with her combinations of painting and drawing methods.

At times, her abstract forms are organic, and may resemble a flower bud or a leaf. In a way, the images are reminiscent of cyanotypes, not only because of the strong use of blue but also because of cyanotypes’ early history as a way to depict organic specimens. For a counterexample, look at the images of Anna Atkins. Atkins’ technique makes details lessen, so the image is an outline of the flora. This is not the case with Estrada, however, whose forms are not necessarily flowers or leaves—in fact, they are complex abstract shapes with intricate detail. In an interview with Stephanie Buhmann for The Villager, Estrada explained that the blue of these works is a nod to architectural blueprints.

"I always wanted to work with architectural blueprints, as I love their powdery, purplish blue lines," she said. “In some ways these works reflect my affinity for these documents."

But there are no rectilinear forms to see in her work; the only evidence of a blueprint is the way all forms connect to one another on the paper, creating a cohesive shape. Still, while Estrada's images are abstract and at times have an unfinished quality about them, there is order to the chaos, even if her shapes look randomly placed. Every spot, stain, smear or streak Estrada makes is calculated. A large work can take up to six months to a year to complete.

In one way or another, everyone has participated in the medium of drawing; still, to see the theme of nature explored in a different way is always appealing. The labor-intensive shapes of Estrada's Blue present an intimate and personal view of nature that is much appreciated after the development of construction teams working on images together, as in the drawings emanating from Robert Longo's studio. No matter what style of drawing the viewer may enjoy, there is something for everyone since the medium is unrestricted, and this is a reason drawing is filling up museum and gallery walls. Yvonne Estrada’s work represents just one more way that drawing is developing."

Read original post @ Burning Ambulance

YVONNE ESTRADA | 'Blue' — ArtSlant Review

A Simple Nature 

by Lee Ann Norman

Yvonne Estrada crafts images in the spirit of improvisation. She creates abstractions that allude to the natural world through forms that suggest a leaf, or imply a flower bud or bulbous seed casing. She prefers to construct images from memory instead of using source material like photograghs, indicating a fondness for the imaginative and dream-like over the representational real. In “Blue,” her second solo exhibition at Von Lintel, Estrada’s singular focus shifts to the color blue in hues ranging from cobalt, ultramarine, and cerulean to indigo, azure, and turquoise. Her characteristic style of precise mark making and whimsical gesture coupled with organic shapes, patterns and forms is rooted in self-imposed restriction although she adds subtle augmentations like the metallic-violet undertones of ballpoint pen ink, smatterings of silvery graphite, and splashes of sunny yellow.

 

Eight of the twelve works on paper (all 2011) are large in scale (at least five feet tall) yet convey an intimacy through their otherworldliness and stylized, gestural marks. Estrada channels the spirits of Sol LeWitt and Isamu Noguchi in her pursuit of expressiveness through a kind of aesthetic ease. Line and space receive equal attention alongside the color blue to produce compositions that mimic the precision of architectural plan drawings. Through her use of brushes to make painstakingly rendered lines (she sparingly used pens and pencils) and the utilization of the paper’s white space as a neutral ground on which to anchor the images, Estrada highlights the range of expression that can be achieved with limited means, resulting in drawings that have a fluid, lyrical, and nearly amorphous appearance from a distance, but gain a density and depth that is revealed upon closer inspection.

Estrada’s use of the viscous and fast-drying medium of gouache compliments rather than belies the lithe grace of watercolor pigment, which gives her drawings an affinity with collage. Fine lines skillfully rendered with brushes allow her to build layers of color on the paper, imparting the gouache with a hearty texture that stand in contrast to dissipating graphite lines that form bands in some of the pieces and create shiny, pigment-rich forms on others. Broad brushstrokes of blue-grey or turquoise watercolor pigments form the background for some images while creating fragments that recall the imprinted pattern of cloth on others. Using nature as inspiration and understated source, Estrada creates a fantastic and exhilarating world through meditations on the beauty of simplicity. 

Read @ ArtSlant

Images: LD16-11 Blue, 2011 (detail), gouache, watercolor, graphite and ballpoint pen on paper, 60 x 40 inches; MD400-11 Blue, 2011, gouache on Spanish handmade paper, 25 x 20 inches

YVONNE ESTRADA | 'Blue' — Review @ The Villager

Shades of blue and forms from nature

New works on paper embrace ‘dominance of a specific color’   

By STEPHANIE BUHMANN

Yvonne Estrada collects forms from nature. Towards the entrance of her Greenpoint, Brooklyn studio, one can find a glass vitrine, in which she stores some of her most valued objects: a bird’s nest, a rare beetle, an ancient stone flute found at shore, a bone, a piece of natural black chalk. This interest in nature’s expressiveness and its wealth of mysterious detail resonate strongly in Estrada’s work. Though not rendering specifics, her vocabulary springs from — and always channels — nature.

Estrada works from memory rather than from book illustrations or photographs (although “Gray’s Anatomy” is occasionally consulted for details about muscle and bone structure). An abstract artist, she is not interested in reproductions as a pictorial source or rendering something as realistic as possible. Along these lines, Estrada keeps her works Untitled (and numbered) to avoid directing associations. Her process is intuitive and guided by the subconscious. “I often start with stains and gestures and the work develops as a response to what happens on the page.” When looking at several of Estrada’s compositions, one recognizes a few repeating forms evocative of large petals, strings of seed-like globes or balls of rolled up hair. In the context of her oeuvre, they are familiar protagonists rather than a clear set of symbols. She explains, “Any repetition has to do with my fascination with the organic shapes that are everywhere, such as floating leaves in a tree or dried grape stems flattened by traffic on the street. My impulse has always been to synthesize the shapes that I see — but they are filtered through memory.”

Though Estrada’s touch is delicate, her gestures can range from finely nuanced to bold. In her compositions she employs the dynamism of contrasts to maximum effect. The interplay between minute detail and broad mark-making — as well as between translucence and opacity — are at the core of each work. It is this consistent push and pull between dense clusters of information and areas of lightness that defines Estrada’s rhythm.

In her newest works on paper, Estrada embraces the dominance of a specific color. This focus on palette in a body of work marks a departure for the artist. The show reflects this in its simple, yet poignant title “Blue.” However, the shades that this series is based on are far from arbitrary.

“The blues I used in this group are ultramarine, which is very intense, and cobalt. They are very similar except for that the former is darker and more pigmented. I always wanted to work with architectural blueprints, as I love their powdery, purplish blue lines. In some ways these works reflect my affinity for these documents.”

In Estrada’s hands, ultramarine and cobalt are hardly reminiscent of blues found in the landscape. Instead, they are electric — as if lit up from within by an artificial light source. However, in context with the overall composition, they aid in crystallizing the organic elements to stunning effect. By enveloping, veiling, partially covering or receding behind biomorphic shapes evocative of algae growth, cells, or nerve strings, for example, Estrada’s blues provide them with a sense of urgency.

For “Blue,” Estrada increasingly worked with gouache, a heavily pigmented medium that dries fast. She applies the paint with fine brushes instead of broad strokes, building up many layers of lines into vibrant fields of color. “Building up multiple layers reminds me of slowly growing plant forms. In that sense my works grow organically.” She further employs ballpoint pen, pencil and graphite in her works.

One constant in Estrada’s work is the use of large areas of white paper as a background — serving as a neutral stage, on which each mark stands out with utter clarity.

In “Blue,” the concentration on a specific palette signifies both a thorough contemplation and a self-imposed restriction. The challenge is to seek variety through subtleties. In that regard, Estrada relates to two artists she greatly admires: Sol LeWitt and Isamu Noguchi. She as well aspires to find utmost expressiveness through the careful consideration of line in space. To her, there is elegance in simplicity.

Estrada’s process needs time. Each large work takes about six months to a year to complete. Like a piece of music or writing, Estrada’s works have their own rhythm and story to tell. “The process is labor-intensive I can only work on one piece for so long,” she explains. “I like to work on several pieces at the same time to avoid becoming goal-oriented and obsessive. I often need to put a piece aside sometimes for weeks or even months so I can forget about it, detach and brake it open mercilessly when I return to it. It is ultimately a process of creation and destruction.”

Estrada grew up in Bogotá, Colombia. She left for New York at nineteen and has spent most of her life in big cities. While her forms might feel like an antidote to urbanity, the complexity of her arrangements abstractly reflect the eclectic currents of a metropolitan environment. Her elements seem to be linked by an invisible web. They associate with, overlap, merge with and separate from each other ceaselessly.  “Blue” will be Estrada’s first New York solo exhibition in almost ten years. For her personally and the world at large, it has been a tumultuous decade. Her work in all its vibrancy, careful consideration and meditative clarity, offers a place of quietude. At times her intertwined forms translate as a metaphor for the infinite possibilities of paths to take, relationships to have and roads to travel. Her work serves as a reminder that everything springs from nature and that everything is linked together.

View @ The Villager

YVONNE ESTRADA | 'Blue' — Opening Photos

 

 

YVONNE ESTRADA | 'Blue' — Installations Photos

YVONNE ESTRADA | 'Blue' — Featured on ArtDaily

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YVONNE ESTRADA | 'BLUE' - Opening Reception Thursday, Jan 12, 6—8 PM

 

Yvonne Estrada
LD15-10 Blue , 2010
gouache, watercolor and graphite on paper
50 x 38 inches

 

Detail

Yvonne Estrada
Blue
January 12 – February 18, 2012
Opening reception: Thursday, January 12, 6-8 PM

Von Lintel Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works on paper by Yvonne Estrada.

“The universe is an infinite sphere, its center is everywhere and its circumference nowhere.”

–Jorge Luis Borges

Yvonne Estrada’s latest body of work is predominantly rendered in varying intensities of ultramarine and cobalt blue gouache and watercolor. Mainly inspired by architectural blueprints, these works are marked by vivid color and expressionistic gesture. Organic shapes, patterns and structures appear in her work as ubiquitously as they appear in nature. These elements interconnect endlessly by means of abstraction and synthesis.

Graphite pencil is used to create silvery accents and ballpoint pen turns ovals and spheres into deep, concentrated blues.

The artist works from memory associations, improvising moment to moment. From afar, large gestures, drips, stains and loose lines weave in and out of graphic forms and geometric patterns. Upon closer inspection, the intricacy of the artist’s labor-intensive method reveals itself. Layer upon layer of countless, ordered lines are rendered in minute detail - each fine line, sometimes no larger than a single mark of punctuation, is made all the more extraordinary by the artist’s technical skill.

To view one of Estrada’s works is like looking through a microscope at a surreal world of the artist’s own making, where the dichotomy of symmetry and chaos inherent in the natural world is conveyed by a complex dynamic between pure gesture, geometry and minute graphic detail.

Yvonne Estrada has exhibited her work for the past three decades. Born in Bogota, Colombia, the artist currently lives and works in New York. This marks Estrada’s second solo exhibition with Von Lintel Gallery.

View more @ Von Lintel Gallery

YVONNE ESTRADA | SELECTED WORK

Yvonne Estrada
LD21-11 Blue, 2011
gouache, watercolor and graphite on paper
60 x 41 inches

Yvonne Estrada
LD18-11 Blue, 2011
gouache, watercolor, graphite and ballpoint pen on paper
60 x 40 inches

Yvonne EstradaL
LD18-11 Blue, 2011 (detail)
gouache, watercolor, graphite and ballpoint pen on paper
60 x 40 inches

Yvonne EstradaL
LD16-11 Blue, 2011
gouache, watercolor, graphite and ballpoint pen on paper
60 x 40 inches

Yvonne Estrada
SD394-11 Blue, 2011
gouache on Spanish handmade paper
8 x 5.5 inches

Yvonne Estrada 
LD15-10 Blue, 2010
gouache, watercolor and graphite on paper
50 x 38 inches

Yvonne Estrada
MD403-11 Blue, 2011
gouache on Spanish handmade paper
25 x 20 inches

Yvonne Estrada
380-10, 2010
watercolor on paper
14 x 11 inches

Yvonne Estrada
379-10, 2010
watercolor on paper
14 x 11 inches

Yvonne Estrada

Yvonne Estrada

Untitled (EY 174), 2002

Watercolor on paper

12 x 9 inches

Yvonne Estrada

Untitled (EY 165), 2002

Watercolor on paper

9 x 7 inches

Yvonne Estrada
Untitled (EY 155), 2002
Watercolor on paper
9 x 7 in  (22.9 x 17.8 cm)

Yvonne Estrada
Untitled (EY 033), 2002
Watercolor on paper
12 x 9 in  (30.5 x 22.9 cm)