Art review: Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia at CB1 Gallery

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Clotheslines, floor mats and document shredders come to mind in Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia’s exhibition at CB1 Gallery. Hand-woven fabrics, pixelated imagery and religious tapestries are also evoked by his grid-bending abstractions, whose insouciance provides a nice balance between goal-oriented authority and seat-of-the-pants improvisation.

Each of Segovia’s eight pieces in the main gallery begins as a dozen or more sheets of thick paper. After painting both sides in an organic palette of mellow tertiaries, the Mexico-born, L.A.-based artist cuts each sheet into hundreds of long, skinny strips. Then he weaves them together, creating compositions whose humble beauty, both supple and sturdy, stands on its own.

A second gallery features eight little pieces, push-pinned to the walls like collected butterflies, and the largest work: a two-sided, 10-foot-square abstraction that does double duty as a room divider.

Many of Segovia’s works recall tartan plaids. But repetition yields to cockeyed improv, each element missing the mark and being all the more captivating for it.

In some, shadows shroud the picture plane in dusky mystery. In others, coherence disintegrates into flickering fields that resemble digital transmissions gone bad. Many read pictorially: the warp and woof of their surfaces opening onto spatial illusions. A few capture the sexy swing of hips sashaying beneath skirts and trousers.

In all of Segovia’s tastefully restrained paintings, hinting at things proves to be more potent than laying them bare.

RELATED:

More art reviews from the Los Angeles Times

-- David Pagel

CB1 Gallery, 207 W. 5th St., (213) 806-7889, through Feb. 19. Closed Mon.-Tue. www.cb1gallery.com