Events in Time
Mindy Solomon is pleased to present Events in Time, a two-person exhibition of Frances Trombly and Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova. This marks the first exhibition of the two artists at the gallery that includes a series of new works in conversation. The exhibition opens on May 18 and runs through June 29, 2024. This new body of work continues the artists’ interest in abstraction—one with craft at her core and the other with readymade artifacts. They come together through metaphoric ideas around the mathematical theory of spacetime and special relativity.
Spacetime is a mathematical model used in physics that combines the three dimensions of space with the one dimension of time, creating a single four-dimensional continuum. It allows us to comprehend relativistic effects, such as how observers perceive the occurrence of events in terms of their location and time.
In considering ideas for the basis of new work for Events in Time, some of the concepts from the research for spacetime inform the artists’ thinking—albeit far more simplified from the complexities of physics. Frances Trombly and Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova have shared a life and have influenced each other for decades—often collaborating at times. Both their work has remained separate and interested in similar themes but different methods of production.
For Frances Trombly, the concept of spacetime plays out in the micro. Through a meditative process of dying, weaving, placing, and draping, Trombly focuses on recording time in a stationary state. Not moving position, but active within a space. Every motion of throwing the shuttle back and forth represents a series of events. The organicness of the hand-dyed yarn reveals itself as it’s woven. Every hesitation and mistake is left as an event within the fabric—an event in time. In spacetime theory, an “event” is represented by a set of coordinates. Unlike popular analogies used to explain events, mathematical events have zero duration and represent a single point in spacetime.1
In the context of spacetime, time cannot be separated from the three dimensions of space, because the observed rate at which time passes for an object depends on the object’s velocity relative to the observer.2 In Trombly’s case, she plots events in a stationary recording of time as she weaves the fabric of her time (technically, she’s not stationary as she’s weaving on a rock hurtling through space). But metaphorically, in the context of her work, she takes the place of the “observer” documenting events in her work. What she gives us is the act of painting through the action of building its own structure. Color is not applied onto a surface, it is built up by the threading and pounding together of each line—with every line, a record of events.
A path of a particle through spacetime can be considered to be a succession of events, with Trombly, one can consider the particle as a string. A series of events can be linked together to form a line that represents a particle’s progress through spacetime. That line and all of its events link together forming weaving as time.
Trombly’s process forms a conceptual fabric of time and space, which ultimately folds and drapes. Her fabric bends around frames imitating the behavior of spacetime around objects of significant mass. If anything is the visualization of spacetime, it’s these poetic manifestations so fluid and delicate.
With Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova, spacetime zooms out to a more conceptual and macro level. Similar relationships are at play, but they are concerned with people, economics, and geography. In this case, instead of being concerned with events at his hands like Trombly, he considers the trajectory of the readymade. The materials he works with and their relationship to global economies, the migratory patterns of people, and how they navigate geopolitical circumstances.
The fence structures are just that, barriers designed to obstruct and divide spaces. He uses them symbolically for what they are and as a lattice to hold events (as in spacetime) represented by the objects. These events are positioned by the artist suggesting remnants left behind by migrants on their journeys as they escape dangerous conditions. They mark events in a conceptual trajectory through time. Like footprints in the sand or the marking of a trail—events of life in space and time.
The objects don’t only mark events when left behind, but they travel through an economic system that also leaves an impact as economic forces affect the places migrants travel from. These events play out as a series of corporate, political, and economic conditions that produce violence and poverty.3 For Rodriguez-Casanova, spacetime theory takes place in many other places before reaching his studio. Ultimately, the final events happen with artifacts circulating through consumption, usefulness, disposal, or loss. They are recycled into a new conversation representing events on the fence of time. The lattice-like illustration of spacetime as a fence.
There is a connection that Trombly and Rodriguez-Casanova have around conditions of display, purity of materials, and references to time. They have been brought together professionally and personally in the spacetime continuum to share in the love of the work they give us. Even as the contrast in their methods of production is so evident, the same interests in marking events in time can be seen when you expand the conceptual lens and understand the greater picture they both share.
- Lawden, D. F. (1982). Introduction to Tensor Calculus, Relativity and Cosmology (3rd ed.). Mineola, New York: Dover Publications. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-486-42540-5.
- Schutz, Bernard (2004). Gravity from the Ground Up: An Introductory Guide to Gravity and General Relativity (Reprint ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-45506-5. Archived from the original on January 17, 2023.
- Doherty, Carroll. Kiley, Jocelyn. Asheer, Nida. How Americans View the Situation at the U.S.-Mexico Border, Its Causes and Consequences. 2. What Americans Say is Causing a Migration Surge at the U.S.-Mexico Border. Pew Research Center. February 15, 2024. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/02/15/what-americans-say-is-causing-a-migration-surge-at-the-u-s-mexico-border/
About Frances Trombly
Frances Trombly was born in Miami, Florida where she lives and works. Trombly received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Maryland Institute, College of Art (1998). Her work considers the relationship between textiles and painting, exposing history and labor by deconstructing and liberating the canvas. She continues her art practice celebrating the importance of fiber as a material in contemporary art.
Selected solo exhibitions include “All This Time” (2020), Emerson Dorsch, Miami, Florida; “Material and it’s Making” (2016). Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica, California; “Frances Trombly: Everything and Nothing” (2011), Moore College of Art & Design, Goldie Paley Gallery, Philadelphia, PA. Selected group exhibitions include “#Fail” (2022), Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA; “Illusions are Real, Manif d’art, Québec City Biennale” (2022), Quebec City, Canada; “Americana: Formalizing Craft” (2013), Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL; ”united states” (2012), The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT. ”To Weave the Sky: Textile Abstractions from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection” (2023/24), El Espacio 23, Miami, FL. Trombly received an ArtPace Residency (2022) San Antonio, TX; Oolite Arts Residency (2019) Miami Beach, FL; Hambidge Center Residency (2019) Rabun Gap, GA; Ellies (2019) Oolite Arts Grant.
Trombly co-directs Dimensions Variable, a nonprofit contemporary art program in Miami, FL.
About Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova
Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova (b. 1973 Havana, Cuba) is an artist, curator, co-founder, and co-director of Dimensions Variable (DV) and currently resides in Miami. He attended the Ringling School of Art and Design as well as the New World School of the Arts. Rodriguez-Casanova is a recipient of the Cintas Foundation Fellowship in Visual Arts and has been awarded two South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowships. He was also nominated for the Joan Mitchell Fellowship and the United States Artists Fellowship. His projects have received support from various entities including The National Endowment for the Arts, The Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, Miami-Dade County, and the State of Florida. He has been recognized as a five-time Knight Foundation award winner and has been awarded an Ellies Creator Award.
His work has been exhibited widely at Sculpture Center, Socrates Sculpture Park, Abrons Arts Center, Anina Nosie Gallery, and White Box in New York; Museo de Bellas Artes and Factoria Habana in Havana, Cuba; ZONA MACO Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City, Mexico; Capri Palace and Villa Lena in Italy; Prosjektrom Normanns in Stavanger, Norway; Shoshanna Wayne, LA; Casa Riegner, Bogotá, Colombia; PAMM, Frost Museum, The Bass, MOCA, DV, Fredric Snitzer Gallery, David Castillo, Emerson Dorsch, and Locust Projects in Miami. His work is in several public and private collections including PAMM, Frost Museum of Art, CIFO Collection, The Cintas Foundation, Sayago Collection, Villa Lena Foundation, and The Bass. His projects have been covered in The New York Times, The Miami Herald, Art Nexus, Arte al Dia, Artforum, Artsy, Sculpture Magazine, Hyperallergic, The Miami Rail, and Miami Magazine.
His work is in select publications including Fortunate Objects, published by CIFO and Edizioni Chart, Milano; Remains-Tomorrow: Themes in Contemporary Latin American Abstraction, published by the Sayago Collection and Hatje Cantz, Berlin. Since co-founding DV in 2009, he has organized and curated many projects by local and international emerging artists.
