PRESS RELEASE:

d.e.n. contemporary art is proud to present the first United States solo exhibition by Leyla Cárdenas. Opening July 15 is Traces of Displaced Recollections, which includes sculptural and installation works. The exhibition will be on view until August 26.

In the last six years, Cárdenas moved from her hometown in Colombia to the U.S., completed graduate school in Los Angeles, then returned to Colombia in 2005.
In her work, Cárdenas explores the experience of relocation and displacement by documenting architectonic, urban, and natural surfaces of the places in which she has inhabited at a given time, creating a "touchable" place of her environment (i.e., her studio, a railroad track, a building, a road, etc.). Referring to her work as “site-responsive,” the series began with floor peelings of her Los Angeles studio. For pieces exhibited in the 2005 Project Room exhibition at d.e.n. in 2005, Cárdenas filled cracks in the gallery floor with dry pigments and “lifted” canvas impressions of them; and she also recreated a silhouette of the downtown Los Angeles skyline using remains of discarded roof shingles.

Trace from 33rd Street [full & detail views], 2006 street debris, paint, plexiglas, pins, 18 x 23”

In this exhibition, Cárdenas collects and re-collects surfaces. Culling the extracted impressions of debris and worn paint from buildings and objects, then repeating the process, Cárdenas investigates what lies beneath the surface as well as what lies between the layers. Like documents containing information of a particular space with all its accumulated-layered time, the fragments are carefully arranged with hundreds of pins situating them onto the wall or balancing them on the floor. Often the imagery appears to shift from what could be aerial topography to ghostly anthropomorphic forms.

By collecting small portions of abandoned houses, discarded objects or forsaken places, she explores the delicate balance of the fragile part of a stronger whole, and further reflects the vulnerability of movement, change and relocation. Cárdenas works in a sculptural way without making sculpture objects, allowing her to engage with a particular place and all the confluences as well as dimensions within.

Leyla Cárdenas was born in Bogotá, Colombia and currently lives and works there. In 1999, Cárdenas received her B.F.A. degree from Los Andes University in Bogotá. She completed her M.F.A. degree in 2004 at University California, Los Angeles, after receiving the Colombian Colfuturo Scholarship and a fellowship from U.C.L.A. Cárdenas has been awarded the U.C.L.A. Art Council Award, D'Arcy Hayman Award, and has received several honorable mention awards in Bogotá.