Project Atrium: Nicola López

Through her work in installation, drawing, and printmaking, New York-based Nicola López describes and reconfigures our contemporary-primarily urban-landscape. Her focus on translating “place” into an art form stems from an interest in urban planning, architecture, and anthropology. López's practice is fueled by time spent working and traveling in different landscapes.

For MOCA Jacksonville, López produces a free-standing sculpture, A Gentle Defiance of Gravity, that stretches from floor to ceiling of the forty-foot Atrium Gallery. Built of galvanized steel studs, much like a skyscraper, López's exposed structure reveals a building's skeletal form, suggesting either an edifice or a fortress. Sheets of new printed imagery hang on these bones, creating a surface that points toward containment but is incomplete in its coverage. This detached “skin” of printed material exposes more than it hides as it simultaneously speaks to construction and deconstruction and permanence and fragility within the realm of architecture.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.