Delcy Morelos
Overview
Evoking sand spirals, tidal sculptures, cell-like clusters, the drawings refer to cycles of life and markers of time.
Delcy Morelos: Works on Paper presents a series of ink and watercolor drawings produced over the last decade. Known for her sculptural installations and paintings, drawing has been a consistent but private practice for the Colombian artist. Shared here for the first time, these small-scale poetic works have the affective charge and intimate register of works produced without the intent to be shown. These works were made for herself.
The works on view in this special presentation shed light on a little-known facet of the artist's practice and reshape our understanding of her creative ecosystem. Morelos often works on her drawings following the completion of a major installation or project. She describes her drawings as 'exercises' or 'meditations,' as a pianist might describe practicing the scales: a means of meditating on the work she has just completed, or is about to undertake; to ground herself; to inscribe rhythm and motion within a contained form; and to find difference within repetition. Here, the hand works out what is occupying the mind.
The physical world is a vital catalyst in Morelos' work. The works on paper take up the infinite variety of organic forms, patterns, and structures found in the natural world and within the human body. Morelos works slowly on these dense drawings, over long periods of time, often building on simple, repeated motifs that accumulate into complex compositions. In her delicate felt drawings and gauzy watercolors, Morelos pushes patterns and geometries to their ultimate completion.
Earth, roots, plants, iron, and blood are the substrate of Morelos' work. Her rhizomatic drawings allusively depict these themes, which are taken as both material and metaphor in her larger practice. Evoking sand spirals, tidal sculptures, cell-like clusters, the drawings refer to cycles of life and markers of time. These works on paper are a form of distilled attention, of listening and looking at the world and at herself. Through them, Morelos responds to signs and makes a mark.
Evoking sand spirals, tidal sculptures, cell-like clusters, the drawings refer to cycles of life and markers of time.
Frame: 15 x 21 5/8 x 1 3/8 in. (38.2 x 55 x 3.4 cm)
Frame: 31 1/8 x 45 1/8 x 1 5/8 in. (79.2 x 114.5 x 4 cm)
Frame: 15 x 21 5/8 x 1 3/8 in. (38.2 x 55 x 3.4 cm)
Frame: 17 7/8 x 17 1/8 x 1 3/8 in. (45.5 x 43.5 x 3.4 cm)
Frame: 31 1/8 x 45 1/8 x 1 5/8 in. (79.2 x 114.5 x 4 cm)
Born in 1967 in Tierralta in the region of Córdoba in Colombia, Delcy Morelos studied at the Cartagena School of Fine Arts. She lives and works in Bogotá.
Her solo exhibition at Galerie Marian Goodman, El oscuro de abajo, is on view from 14 October - 21 December 2023. She has concurrently been invited by Dia Chelsea, New York, to present a new large-scale installation based on the ground, territory and topography which opened on 5 October 2023.
Morelos's Earthly Paradise installation was prominently featured in The Milk of Dreams, Arsenale Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022). Her past solo exhibitions include El lugar del alma, Museo Moderno, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Enie, Fundación NC-Arte, Bogotá (2018); Inner Earth, Röda Sten Konsthall, Göteborg, Sweden (2018); La sombra Terrestre [The Shadow of the Earth], Fundación Fuga, Bogotá (2015); Barranquilla Museum of Modern Art (2006); Gt Gallery, Flax Arts Studios Residence Program, Belfast, Northern Ireland (2006); Academia Superior de Artes de Bogota, Santa Fe Gallery, Bogota (2004); and Color que soy, Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia (2002).