Diaphanous panels of fabric, suspended from the ceiling appear to float throughout the main gallery, yet upon closer inspection these tulle panels reveal some areas that have been tightly stitched while others are allowed to billow freely. Color is insinuated with a very light touch and often one side of a composition is a different hue than the other. At regular intervals small chunks of dry ice are added, creating fleeting white twirls that come from the bottom of the composition and waft outwards. Each work in this group is numbered and titled Levianes. This title underscores the contradictions that this artist explores in the opposed meanings of ‘light’ in Spanish and ‘malicious’ in Portuguese. With Levianes #8 (all works 2021), two triangular sections are grafted together with a larger plane of pinkish tulle. Vaguely suggestive of lingerie, the addition of dry ice in the downturned triangles vaporously activates the space of threads, cloth and the viewer’s perception.

In a darker chamber behind the main gallery, all the works play off a starker palette. The sizes of the black, white and gray meshes vary, causing the light to skim between the layers. In Levianes #4, the overlay creates a moiré pattern, counterfeiting motion. The deftness of the needlework is rich but not exaggerated. The surface of Levianes #9 is festooned with small black triangles and the material at the bottom of the panel is free flowing, reminiscent of a shawl or monk’s hood. There is something both palpable and vaporous about these works, suspended from the ceiling, both fragile and mobile, creating their own atmosphere—floating in the air, clouded by evaporating swirls of dry ice, the sense of transformation from a solid to an airborne element is quite palpable.

Laura Lima, Installation view, Six Feet Over, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles, November 6, 2021 – January 22, 2022.. Photo by Jeff McLane. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles.

Anchoring everything at the center of the main gallery is another series that uses woven straw, wood and thread that antithetically mirror the Levianes, constructions of billowing cones that expand into space. These numbered works are titled Communal Nest. Richly folded upon themselves, they suggest that winged creatures might soon come to stay in these exotically fashioned abodes. Communal Nest #7 is perched in a skylight and offers the same temporary habitat for the avian mind as the others, and offers a horizontal array of multicolored wood elements as its base.

Four other works from 2019 are in the front gallery. For these portraits, the artist hired professional tailors to translate drawings of various figures who inspired her. Each portrait depicts an individual personality in abstraction. Details about the specific identities of each are secreted in the back of the framed art and therefore unknowable.

Laura Lima explores materials that are flexible and undergoing constant transformations. Her poetic invention is founded in a softly framed but finely tuned sensibility that plays with the distinction of things pliable, those in which we may wrap and cloak our physical selves and the textiles that simply have their own materiality.