Ana Bidart, a Uruguay-born artist based in Mexico City, has spent a portion of her career working with “desechos,” or “residues.” This idea refers to the objects that are necessary but not often highlighted. In dissecting rolls of toilet paper and packing materials and forms needed for art fairs, Bidart offers a delicate, engrossing side to essential, yet discarded goods.
Earlier this year, the artist had a solo show at Josee Bienvu Gallery in New York City, titled “2 bed / 1 bath, nice view.” As a continuation of the ideas she explored previously with art packing materials and the concepts of identity and relationational residue, Bidart uses the search for an apartment as one of the influences in her new show. From the gallery: “Here Bidart plays with the idea of an archetypical artist studio through the recreation of gestures and personal artifacts within her own studio. She includes materials such as dust sheets, paint traces, tools, packing material, clothing. Not to be construed as scenography, but rather to connote the feeling of a suspended atmosphere between fiction and reality.”
With flourishes like fingerprints and doodles, the artist adds humanity to the discarded objects. Though visually, the works differ from her earlier sculptures, the ideas of examining relevance in discarded materials and what they say about us remain.
