Absence Documented: The Work of Linet Sánchez

Linet Sánchez, Untitled (room) 2, from the series 00:00:00), 2021, wood model, 8 x 19 x 15 inches. Photo courtesy Linet Sánchez.

“My work connects mainly with memory and architectural spaces which I feel like a kind of container of our life experiences. I show them white and empty alluding to oblivion and at the same time to a kind of birth because for me, over time, our memories are separate from the reality where they were born to become something else.

My works arise from self-absorption, from introspection and not from the observation of what is around me; they intend to return to this state in their contemplation. These spaces are built as a cardboard model first, then I take the photographs.”
— Linet Sánchez

Linet Sánchez, Untitled from the series 00:00:00, 2015-16, Archival Inkjet Print, 11.8 x 7.7 inches each. Photo courtesy Linet Sánchez,

The result of the Laundromat Art Space’s fourth annual Open-Call to artists is now on view. The recipient is Cuban artist Linet Sánchez’s “The Silence of Forms” proposal, curated by Daniela Olivero. The Open-Call this year had submissions from eleven different countries and hundreds of applications, the organization’s largest one to date.

Ronald Sánchez (no relation) has been the owner/director of the Laundromat Art Space for six short years and grown the artist residency exponentially. He was a member of the initial group of artists who founded it in 2015. In addition to a gallery, the Laundromat also has 14 resident artists and is an integral part of the Miami art world. The commonality between the artists is their commitment to their craft, often resulting in the receipt of significant exhibitions and grants.

Linet Sánchez, Untitled from the series 00:00:00, 2015-16, Archival Inkjet Print, 11.8 x 17.7 inches Photo courtesy Linet Sánchez.

Sánchez’s photographs, sculpture and video in this exhibition are spare, devoid of contents or decorative architecture. There is a presence of absence in the silence. The subject is time and space, as well as the ghosts of memory. The meaning arises from the viewer’s own memories assisted by the simplification of these theaters, allowing for a universality of signifiers.

Devoid of color, the photographs speak fluently of absence and recall Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Theater Stage Series. Like David LaChapelle’s complex maquette photos, her miniaturized tableaux represent an imaginary place, with chosen details edited out.

In addition to portraits of theaters, the series of intimate photos of stages each contain a spotlight or lighting. This implies a human presence. The interpretation of a spotlight creates a narrative that surrounds the captured moment. Is the performer coming or has left already?

This series comes from personal memories in a theater, but it doesn’t intend to reconstruct a specific one, it is perhaps the result of the mixture of many of them, containing all the presences, all the possible events at the same moment. I am interested in the temporality that places keep from all what happens inside of them. The work also wants to place the viewer on the stage and in the audience at the same time as a kind of allusion to the relationship between the work itself and the viewer.
— Linet Sánchez

Linet Sánchez, Untitled (room) 2, from the series 00:00:00), 2021, wood model, 8 x 19 x 15 inches. Photo courtesy Linet Sánchez.

In addition to the photographs, Sánchez is exhibiting diminutive sculptures. The simplified structures are containments of space, mysterious in their implied function. These are containers wrested from the entirety of a building. The windowless-ness and closed doors create an intense curiosity as to what they contain. These are portraits of interior spaces, but we are only given the exterior, separating us from her memories. Time is suspended, akin to the experience of time frozen for visitors to Cuba.

Linet Sánchez digital still Untitled (Room)2 from the series 00:00:00, 2021
Full HD Single-channel video, 11 min. Photo courtesy Linet Sánchez.

Sánchez included a video of these sculptures in this exhibition. It is heavily silent and the camera dispassionate. Twice removed from reality—once through the model and again through the reproduction, they reflect contemporary philosophical concepts inspired by Jean Baudrillard and Gaston Bachelard’s thought. Each of the works is a documentation of absence through universal signifiers. Sánchez wants the narrative to occur inside the spectator’s mind. And it does. The exhibition runs through October 13.

WHAT: Linet Sánchez at Laundromat Art Space
WHERE: Laundromat Art Space, 185 NE 59th Street, 33137
WHEN: 12 PM – 4 PM Wednesday through Saturday, and by appointment
COST: Free
INFORMATION: Laundromatartspace.com

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