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THE POINT OF CONTACT GALLERY PRESENTS
playthings
the child we all carry inside... do you recall?

Drawings and Installation by Roy Bautista, Natalia Porter and Ami Suma
February 15 - March 30, 2007



the artists:

Roy Bautista: I am interested in how I learn things. And how much I learn by looking. And how much more can be learned by looking harder. A longer look at people and how people communicate, and much can be read in a body's posture and movement.  The word understand implies a pose, a stand taken. We understand through our bodies, our own physical limitations of dancing, running, wrestling. To stop any one pose of the body during any instantaneous action is to elevate it to drama or switch it into a performance, a portent. Micro-expressions flash for an instant that can divulge much information that is not stated verbally, precisely. I am interested in the idea of play, and playing with objects, which can be made to assume poses, fetishes that can be made to represent beings.

I consider my individual drawings incomplete fragments, lost stances and stanzas. It's the aggregate I'm after. I arrange them cautiously. Nostalgic.  My drawings are a form of letters to my future self. Quick notations of ephemeral objects, trash, graffiti, and ideas, where the subject is lost: reminders of bygone emotions and transfigurations. Junk poetry. I work fast most of the time, then revise slowly. Most work is done with pencil or ball-point pen on found scraps of paper. The ability to excise any one specific drawing and look at it is the ability to stop time. I revisit all my old drawings and leave my mark on them, or my remarks. Some drawings are transferred to woodblocks for printing, or transferred to lithographic stone. My figures have a kind of dread about them and a panoply of eyes. Alarmed. I aim to understand fear.

Natalia Porter: I'm interested in creating art that makes us reflect on our relationship with objects; on the significance and value we assign to them, particularly those we use everyday.

I draw using the computer as my primary tool. Each object is drawn with the mouse as a vector. Then, the object is multiplied and arranged with the others. The final product is usually a digital print.

My drawings are accumulations. Mountains of toys I've been collecting for years, which come mostly from Mexican street markets and fairs, which I cherish. Crafts as well as cheaply manufactured things which repeat continuously, adding to the growth of chaotic landscapes. To me these geographies can be read as descriptions of fantastic places that are in the border of being seen as landfills.

Ami Suma: I am showing a series of plush toy designs which has been in my mind for several years now. They are trasnformable toys. There is a Mr. Ball who is always the center piece, supposedly made out of pulyshy ball with flexble hanging hands, and an outer piece as his outfit: often animals, vegetables and fruits, and flower shapes. You can change the outer piece as your mood goes everyday, as what you want to feel each day.

My obsession is to make you giggle, and remember your childhood, feeling disgusted, but liking something. So I am obsessed with fun textures. Textures that give me goose pumps, plus odd shapes and silhouettes. The toys should stimulate children’s (and adults’) many senses.

By the way, this is a definition of TOY I thought very interesting. It explains all:

Toy ­-noun
1. an object, often a small representation of something familiar, as an animal or person, for children or others to play with.
2. a thing or matter of little or no value or importance.
3. something that serves for or as if for diversion, rather than for serious practical use.
(ref:dictionary.com)

All my art works is done by hand drawing with pencils and color markers.


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