Under the Blue Sun: Fabiola Menchelli

FABIOLA MENCHELLI

(MEXICAN, B. 1983)

Fabiola Menchelli began working with cyanotypes in 2014, a process that connects the history of photography with architecture through its early use in blueprints dating back to the late 19th century. As an artist in residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Menchelli produced a series of unique darkroom-based, angular abstractions including two prints in the exhibition.

In 2015, an observatory at Casa Wabi in Oaxaca became Menchelli’s source of inspiration for two recent bodies of work. Designed by Tadao Ando as a site for deep contemplation, the concrete structure’s aperture is abstracted using multiple exposures in Menchelli’s series of monochromatic echoes (Ellipse, 2015) and cyanotypes (Bajo el Sol Azul, 2017). The resulting works on view speak to her continual investigations about the poetics of space, observation and light.

Ellipse is an interconnected group of seven double-exposure prints that reverberate across separate panels like the waves crashing just outside Ando’s observatory, initiating a visual dialogue larger than the sum of its parts. In Bajo el Sol Azul, the artist translates the curvature and contemplative experience of the physical space, reconnecting the concrete structure of the observatory to the sky it was designed to observe. Deep blues and misty gradients of light only hint at the structure within, allowing the void of space beyond to invite reflection. Lastly, a series of Polaroid prints also made at Casa Wabi, shown for the first time, capture the influence of the Light & Space and Constructivism art movements in Menchelli’s contemporary practice.

Fabiola Menchelli (b. 1983, Mexico) received her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and holds a BA in Computer-Mediated Art from Victoria University, Melbourne. She has participated in international exhibitions across Mexico, the United States, Canada, UK, Sweden, Australia, and UAE. She has been invited to significant artist residencies including Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Casa Wabi, and Casa Nano in Japan. In 2014, she was awarded the Acquisition Prize for the XVI National Biennale of Photography from Centro de la Image Museum in México City and in 2018 was included in the JP Morgan Chase Art Collection. She is currently a part of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores del Arte from FONCA in Mexico.

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PRESS LINKS for fabiola menchelli

• Architectural Digest Mexico - Arquitectura de Luz
• Glasstire - A Grain in the Eye of the Mountain
• CNN Style - Architecture goes abstract...
• TERREMOTO - Fabiola Menchelli

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Video Credit: Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts