Persuaded by her alchemist rhapsody and teetery yet unshakeable assertion, Isabel Nuño de Buen’s exhibition, “Now and Away” at Chris Sharp Gallery instills in me a yearning for more. Her intricately crafted wall sculptures, characterized by their personable scale and meticulous intensity, consist of paper mache, wire, yarn, graphite, watercolor, muslin, hand dyed fabrics and more, forming a collection of tightly woven palimpsests.  Indecipherable and yet complete, Nuño de Buen’s meandering formations display a determination and rigor in their material sensitivity, paralleled only by their intent to encode. Tasking observers to take turns and follow her path through an integration of components, Nuño de Buen presents multiple forms that carry varying social interests. At times, the conditions of her construction become a bindle or a fragment of a structure, while at other times, they accumulate into a gift, net or tapestry. The way she builds requires careful consideration of access, exchanges – circulatory, visual and energy – between layers. What and who is it for? What happens when it is received or given away? Must we carry it? Could it be that Isabel Nuño de Buen’s exhibition is a structure, a system, a figure, a DNA, a type, a body of distant planes suddenly collapsing into its own regime?

Chris Sharp Gallery
4650 W. Washington Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA

On view through November 18, 2023