“The Dept. of Signs and Symbols is pleased to announce the exhibition: DISENCHANTMENTS, Filipe Cortez’s first solo exhibition. The exhibition will feature a site-specific intervention, whereby Cortez instills his process of ‘contamination’, along with an installation of his new series, ‘Fossils’. In this body of work, Cortez confronts the contemporary cycle of consumption with its own decay. DISENCHANTMENTS will be on view from July 9 through July 29, 2015. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, July 9 from 6 – 8 p.m.
Cortez’s new series, ‘Fossils’, consists of latex casts and plaster replicas of abandoned objects found on the streets of New York City. Cortez collects the discarded objects from construction sites and piles of waste, attracted by their forgotten state. He then castes them in latex, which when removed creates a skin that preserves the object’s shape and absorbs the texture of the surface. Flakes of paint and dirt cling to the latex membrane, embedding the original object within its copy. These skins act as reservoirs of memory, forming an archive of the abandoned objects. The skin is then used to create a plaster replica, with Cortez meticulously duplicating the found object and preserving the traces of human life. The ‘fossils’ are distinct from that which they are records of, yet concurrently retain many of the original properties. They exist as residues of past lives, recalling the passage of time and process of decay.”
