Leftover magazine clippings, broken slabs of concrete, aluminum foil and excess tile samples, perhaps discarded from a construction site or an architect's studio, are recovered by Elena Bajo's brand of bricolage. Her practice emphasizes how deconstructed and recontextualized objects form subtle relationships. The work begs the questions; how does one reconstitute fragments of the city and how does one reconcile this fractured urban fabric within the context of the white cube?
For her recent multi-wall installation entitled "It's not the end of the world," Bajo stretches packing and masking tape and pulls brushstrokes of gray, yellow, beige, brown and black hue across a linear collage of her own painting and cutouts. This work features images of turtles, stacks of books, and fragmented cows. Bajo's installations extend beyond the boundaries of a given space — entering into a threshold of an adjacent room, the artist continues to stamp a wall with her painting. Her blocks of paint even seep onto the gallery's exterior. For Bajo, boundaries are surmountable.
Her self-contained paintings are also multivalent and porous, and always insistent on materiality. Like miniature versions of her installations, Bajo's paintings consist of collaged architectural and natural elements complemented by fields of painterly blues, beiges, and coppers in an effort to reimagine our urban landscape.
