GeoVanna Gonzalez: when we open every window

The mind is structured. There’s an analog geometry to how we think and remember, locate and socialize, ideate and act. Against entropy we are order-builders: our architecture and design create lines and grids that mimic those neuroscientists are now discovering in our brains. In two neighboring synapses the network of coordinates and markers that we use to locate and pathfind ourselves are created and stored. And it is from these same brain mechanics, as Barbara Tversky has shown, that we construct concepts and stories. Grids and lines and systems are how we make sense of the world. Being comes from place. There is no who without where. When we open every window, a solo show by GeoVanna Gonzalez at Gr_und in Wedding, is an opened cube of a home constructed from fragments and fractures of recollection. Bisabuela’s house in Inglewood, Los Angeles. Parties because there hadn’t been a party for a month. Home and backyard made one – made everyone’s. Grill smoke in the heat shimmer. 1st, 2nd and 5th generation Puerto Ricans and Cubans, Costa Ricans and other Latinxs. Card games and a roadside shack of a bar. Music tilting from hip-hop to canciones clásicasso familiar to all generations. A participatory social experience, an open palm of invitation, an interventionist incursion (in a gallery space already infiltrated by the street), Gonzalez’s work aims to facilitate and conjure shared moments. Events throughout the show’s span, open to all, will pose questions about proximity and intimacy, privacy and community. The work is a natural progression in Gonzalez’s interest in the lines and modules that create and connect public/private spaces. Her sculptures, installations and other works queer straight edges and uniform angles, exploring what it means to combine memories and metal, rivets and relationships, plywood and performance. She collages in three dimensions, maybe even four. More outline than detail, it is and is not Bisabuela’s home. Is and is not a home from your own upbringing. The invitation is to fill in for yourself, to connect the dots, finish the lines, complete the map. The invitation is to step across the garden, duck under the lintel, lounge on the stoop out back. The invitation is to step inside yourself. You’re welcome. Text by: Martin Jackson GeoVanna Gonzalez is an artist, curator and organizer based between Miami and Berlin. Her most recent project, PLAY, LAY, AYE at the Bass Museum, Miami, is a modular sculpture examining the way public art can be used to create spaces that are more inclusive and queer. She is founder and curator of Supplement Projects, an alternative art space & community meeting point based in a communal home and a studio in Miami; co-founder of performative reading club Read What You Want!; and member of queer/feminist arts collective COVEN Berlin. www.gr-und.de