Sergio A. Fernandez- Global


2009-03-01

In his photographs recalling the aesthetics of Candida Hoffer and Thomas Demand, Sergio Fernandez lyrically documents empty office buildings. Combining a minimal and lonely sense of place, each image is both gorgeous and ironic, as though Le Corbusier had built machines for working and nobody came. The ten-year project, in which the artist shot buildings across the world, began with the intention of finding examples of modernism’s vaunted universal experience. While highly specific, each image is unidentifiable in the larger contexts of geography and function. Capital “U” Universalism becomes generic and disposable. Of course all the empty offices carry extra resonance in the current climate; the artist’s bio says that his works are in the collection of Goldman Sachs, ROFLMAO. While you’re there also check out the project space, featuring Dana Gentile’s collages that cheekily examine agricultural practices.

—Dylan Peet