Anna Ortiz: The Tattooed Noon and Naked Midnight
Deanna Evans Projects is pleased to present The Tattooed Noon and Naked Midnight, a solo exhibition of new paintings by New York-based artist Anna Ortiz. This is her first solo exhibition with the gallery and will be on view from January 12 - February 16, 2024.
The Tattooed Noon and Naked Midnight is an excerpt from Octavio Paz’s prose-poem “Obsidian Butterfly.” Written in the voice of the Aztec goddess, Itzpapalotl who is characterized as a butterfly of death, the goddess laments her lost potency since the invasion of the Spaniards. In this new reality Itzpapalotl, once the creator of man, an all powerful source of life and death, has been rendered irrelevant. The goddess revels in the memory of her previous life, newly aware of this sudden loss. Finding her powers diminished she wishes to be turned from dust to seed, to regrow as a new life force.
Throughout the poem, life and death are turned over each other, intertwined and inextricably linked. The end of Itzpapalotl's reign signifies the beginning of a new chapter in Mexican history. Similarly, the paintings in Anna Ortiz’s solo show, The Tattooed Noon and Naked Midnight, revolve around ideas about the cycle of life and death on both a human and universal scale. Having lost her father during the summer of 2023, this show is a meditation on loss, the brevity of life, and the afterlife. In Ortiz's world, no death is a final act, just another step in the ever churning cosmic exchange of matter.
Working within the surreal landscape that has come to define her work, Ortiz creates imagery that embraces the duality of her identity as a Mexican-American. Within these landscapes are reimagined mesoamerican sculptures that exist somewhere between living and dead, both animate and inanimate. The sculptures hold a space for reflection in a world between worlds. While being an homage to the heritage her father adored, these figures also serve as offerings to the viewers. Similarly, the botanicals, cacti, agave and other desert plants exist in a space between spaces, they seem to communicate with the heavens; leaves, branches, and arms reaching skyward. Sculptures and botanicals alike, all made from the same star dust, reach beyond their earthly dwellings and into space seeking connection.
