Luis González Palma

The Sixth Borough

Luis Gonzalez Palma’s series, Jerarquias de Intimidad (El Duelo) (Privacy Hierarchies – Mourning), is a meditation on the privacy or solipsism of personal relationships. These relationships may be recent or lodged in the past, or perhaps a reflection of submerged desires that are only brought to consciousness in times of loneliness and abandonment.
The images are subtle but weighted with emotion. The shadows of memory appear and disappear in empty spaces, disembodying forms and creating encounters with ghostly presences. As viewers we become part of the work; our own memories engage with the absence as we try to observe the lives of others.

The very medium of the works enhances both the implicit historicity of the images in the black and white format, while the gold leaf confers at once a sensuality and otherworldliness to the images. Palma’s mounting of the works in resin freezes them in time, making Jerarquias de Intimidad (El Duelo) (Privacy Hierarchies – Mourning) a direct reflection of the abandonment, loneliness and memory experienced in Governors Island.

Courtesy of the Artist and Schneider Gallery.