Shana Hoehn & Milagros Rojas

Deli Gallery presents the exhibition Shudders and Perforations by Shana Hoehn & Milagros Rojas.

Branches, leaves, knots, cylinders and movement. Milagros Rojas presents a series of drawings that explore a deformed geometry, combining abstraction and figuration to create forms that glide over the paper. Fragments and layers are defined by graphite, or at times by white space. This series announces an intangible environment capable of absorbing the gaze through the detail and the constant line. In this way, Rojas constructs circular and tubular figures and pieces of fabric that acquire a certain volume and brightness. In all of these works there is a game of perspective, either the insistent clash of a line that divides the composition and suggests different blocks in the drawing, or because we are presented with a detail of a scene that seems wider. The triptych on display takes this exploration to the limit in combination with a landscape format that fragments and divides the scene. Here, the horizon organizes our field of vision in a different form, and the perspective shift invokes a fall.

Gestures, extracts, cavities, protuberances, hybridizations. Shana Hoehn exhibits a group of sculptures characterized by multiple meanings, a doubling image. Bodily shapes that simultaneously work as fragments of a body or an unsuspected landscape, references that go over the curves of the dermis to a great anus. These volumes present an action that culminated in a disoriented episode, either by weirding or shivering. The choice of materials, wood, bronze or sawdust completes this purpose. Hoehn plays with temporality, the finishes on each object refer to the passing of time -to a certain decomposition-, while their combination announces the conclusion of an event: germination, penetration, attack, rest.

The dialogue that these two bodies of work confirm the construction of landscapes where mystery and the abject dominate. Both Rojas and Hoehn point to an opening towards scenarios where the recognizable is mixed with the unrecognizable, the obvious with the undefined, the earthly with the fantastic. Both works are based on constant materiality, whether it is the graphite in the drawing or the salvaged wood in the sculptures. With these resources, they build transitory scenarios, going from apparent calm to implicit violence. This transit in each artist leads to a spiritual sense. In the case of Rojas, there is a symbolic trait that proposes the luminous as a way of thinking in an alternate plane. For Hoehn, the object itself is a relic that opens holes and caves and insinuates a passage to another dimension.

Shana Hoehn (b. Texarkana, TX 1991) is an image and object maker whose work examines gender within Western iconography. Drawing from personal and historical research, Hoehn transforms wood and metal through traditional and digital fabrication techniques to modify and re-cast oppressive symbolic motifs. Hoehn received her MFA from the Virginia Commonwealth University in Sculpture and Extended Media and earned a BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has been the subject of solo and two-person exhibitions at Jack Barrett Gallery, New York City, NY (2023); Frieze LA with Make Room, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Prairie, Chicago, IL (2023); Make Room Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA (2022); Art Pace, San Antonio, TX (2022); Euqinom Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2021), among others. Recent group exhibitions have been held at François Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2023); Simon Lee Gallery, London (2022); The Blaffer Museum in Houston, TX (2022); Contemporary Art Museum Houston in Houston, TX (2020-21); Lodos Gallery, Mexico City (2021). Hoehn has participated in various international residencies, including a Fulbright Fellowship in Mexico (2013-2014), Artpace International Artist in Residence in San Antonio (2021), the Jan Van Eyck Academie in Netherlands (2019-2020), Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2013), the Core Program at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2016-18), and SOMA Summer in Mexico City (2016). Hoehn's work has received notable coverage in publications including Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, and ARTnews, among others.

Milagros Rojas (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1985) is a visual artist and writer based in Mexico City. She studied at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes (U.N.A) and in the workshops of Marcia Schvartz, Ana Gallardo, Cecilia Pavón, and Gerardo Jorge. During 2022 and 2023 she took part in the artist program of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (arg), in 2021 she was invited to take part in the residency for visual artists URRA (arg), in 2018 she participated in the residency La Verdi (mx) and in 2017 she was selected in the artist program of the Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas (arg). She participated in solo and group exhibitions such as Harvester (2023) at Gadalajara90210 (mx); Anteanoche (2023) at Commonwealth and Council (mx); A fashionable crowd lurching towards the eclipse (2023) at Salón Acme (mx); Noctámbula (2022) at Relaciones Públicas (mx); La luz que atraviesa los cuerpos (2021) at URRA (arg); Que el día se convierta en noche (2021) at Salón Silicón (mx); Espíritu Guerrilla Girls: Cycle of performances, video, poetry and music, as part of Guerrilla Girls: The art of misbehavior (2018) at Usina del Arte (arg), El derecho a la opacidad (2018) at Aguirre (mx), El lenguaje de las cosas I (2018) at Biquini Wax EPS (mx), Un museo como una novela eterna (2018) at Centro de Arte UNLP (arg), among others.

— Deli Gallery