reviews > COVID-19

Alejandro Loureiro Lorenzo
Alejandro Loureiro Lorenzo

The 24 photographs that Alejandro Loureiro Lorenzo will present in February in DRIFT, a delayed solo show at the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art in Gimpo, Korea, are maddening. They come in a few clearly discernable categories: tightly cropped pictures of bits of trash in situ; collages of variously configured paint spills, abstract images and tangles of wire; and studies of white-on-white objects. Meticulously composed in shades of white, black and near counterparts like taupe and slate, the photographs are bewildering enough that it seems likely nothing in them is quite what it appears to be. Are those shards of broken glass perhaps artist fabrications? In what dimension can that spilled paint be found? What even are those white things, and do they actually exist? We like to believe what we see and so the guessing entailed by Lorenzo’s photographs unsettles; that type of questioning, however, is a crucial skillset to develop for contemporary times.

—Lori Waxman 2021-01-12 2:25 PM