Artist in Residency:

Luis Casanova Sorolla at the John Chamberlain Estate, Shelter Island New York

(June & July 2024)

In his multimedia works, Luís Casanova Sorolla constantly searches for traces of what can be represented. What remains, what was, what will have been when dances and performative expressions, gestures, musical performances leave their stage? In various media he uses visual annotation systems to investigate the ephemeral expressions, which mostly elude the visible, and documents them with references to their momentary presences. Imaging processes are used, such as long-term exposure in photography or a process he has developed, in which dance traces are captured using pigments scattered on the dance floor on which large-scale visual scores become timeless paintings.

In addition to already known groups of works by the artist, here for the first time we find works that concern the precarious balance of his most frequently depicted and fragmentarily documented subjects. It is the professional ballet dancers whose bodies tell their stories on the canvases. Here, too, it is pigments that carry the previously staged photographs. Since last year in particular, we have been able to experience how vulnerable the existence of performers can be, as their bodies are their main tool.
Casanova Sorolla brings these “little stories”, which mostly elude the public, into the light and in relation to the big performances and has chosen the smallest possible stage, a podium on which the dancers let their bodies speak. In interviews and conversations led by Casanova Sorolla, the dancer subjects and their bodies alike tell of injuries, temporary failures, effects on careers and livelihoods and describe the tremendous fragility behind their strong presences and symbolically stand for their numerous undanced dances.

-Gabriele Cram