​OPUS Projects is pleased to present first solo exbhition at OPUS, Articulated Tension.  An opening reception will be held on Thursday, April 4, 6-8pm.

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Ines Esnal’s Articulated Tension explores the fusion of material and informational forces. Each work begins with the selection of a simple digital algorithm which is translated onto a two- or three-dimensional surface and then printed, utilizing paper press printing and embossing methods.  Multiple layers of geometric, chromatic and topographic information are sedimented onto each printed and pressed artifact.  Paper and mylar serve as the substrate for accumulating and demarcating spatial ensembles that evoke landscape themes ranging from the cosmological to the geological, urban, biological and microscopic scales.

The palimpsest of invisible and physical energies, stamped and pressed into a layered topography, is best revealed when illuminated and cast in shadow.  The dense field of marks and imprints form energy lines stretching and spanning the surface of Esnal’s pressure-cast series. Articulated Tension surveys the variety of techniques and subjects Esnal has explored to date, including a new silkscreen series called Canopy.  Her body of work simulates a series of selected plates from an emerging atlas of tectonic surfaces or cross sections cut through different dimensions of the universe at polar scales of extreme infinity.

Esnal’s works explore the exuberant tensions found in the forces of expansion.  Stretching is an emergent theme found earlier in the algorithmic network of lines printed and spread across the surface of the page.  Stretching, as in our expanding universe, plays a central role in the embossing of paper terrains forcing the strained thickness of paper pulp fiber to its limits between the topographic plates and the printing press. 

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Esnal completed a full-scale sculptural installation called Prism for the lobby of 205 Water Street in Dumbo, New York City.  Here, the vibrant colors of her earlier prints are translated into an inhabitable entry space defined by linear rhythmic stranded surfaces of fabric fibers in a staccato of fretted chords, fusing art and architecture into a synthesis of light, color, material and surface.