LAUNCH LA is proud to present Blissful Deflowering by Leigh Salgado, curated by artist Marion Lane.
Leigh Salgado’s Blissful Deflowering possesses a dazzling level of complexity. Beautiful, layered lace-like patterns unfold in a bewildering profusion of shapes, rendered in a soft palette of muted pinks, reds, yellows and hydrangea blues. The intricacy of patterns in her work is such that most first time viewers assume that Salgado uses mechanical means to cut paper, yet Salgado’s tool of choice is the X-Acto knife – allowing her to excise unwanted negative space like a surgeon removing foreign objects from a body.
Each work entails countless hours of drawing, cutting and painting in sections which grow organically to take up the entirety of the material. The surfaces that remain after cutting receive just as much attention; they are painted, scraped and singed with a wood burning tool to create the perfect blend of textures. By hanging some of her works away from the wall, these pieces gain an extra layer, a sort of ‘shadow drawing’ on the wall behind. For these works, Salgado often paints their backs, letting this color reflect onto the wall- a technique she discovered through accident and experimentation.
Salgado’s art swerves between abstraction and realism: at times her patterns take on the guise of floral arrangements, netting, ornamented gowns and lingerie, fused into one anomalous whole. Her most recent art explores the topic of femininity through objects that acquired special significance in her progress from girlhood to womanhood. The delicate lace-work, entrapping netting and restrictive chain-link patterns lend her work a rich store of allegorical possibilities. Salgado provides a starting point for our interpretations: “My work is about persistence in the spite of the impossibility of perfection.” Her process certainly entails an abundance of persistence – with wondrous results.