SCULPTO–WOVEN PICTORIAL ABSTRACTION

Painting has been present since the beginning of Oslyn Whizar’s artistic career more than 20 years ago. It has been her central form of visual expression. From a conventional abstract language in acrylic on canvas, she began exploring form, color, and texture as a means of emotional introspection. Little by little, she developed and uncovered the thread of her sentipensares—a hybrid of feeling and thinking—merging tradition with contemporary practice.

For the past 10 years, she has been merging painterly gesture and graphic schematization with textile objects. She has developed a thorough and committed body of research that takes shape as a consolidated oeuvre: fiber as pigment, cloth stains as binder, garments as plastic matter, and pattern as a foundational layer (imprimatura).

During her residency at lagos | estudios y residencias in Mexico City, she was able to materialize pieces she had envisioned for some time. Influenced by the intense, dense, and saturated megacity—one that throws stability into question—she combines stains and prints as warp threads, interwoven with the textile filaments of her frame-loom practice. The distance from her daily life in her native city of Tijuana—a metropolis marked by constant traffic and movement, permeated by mutability—allowed her to formulate a new tegument for her visual practice.

Oslyn has a fascination with the aesthetics of fashion, dressing, and clothing the body with the care of an artwork; with creating singular objects and unique garments. She has gradually incorporated beading into her textile-pictorial language. She uses one-of-a-kind garments acquired at Tijuana’s thrift markets ("las segundas")—which can be seen as objets trouvés—and intervenes them by juxtaposing and deconstructing their function. Through this, she has created two series of Collage Dresses, which have been showcased on runways and in exhibitions.

In this residency, she also managed to formalize these Collage Dresses into another dimension, moving toward the creation of garment-sculptures—pieces that inhabit both fashion and sculptural space.

olgaMargarita dávila
Chief curator