Circle #1

In 1998, Ortiz-Hernández turned from brightly colored figurative paintings to making simple geometric forms on paper using graphite. She is inspired by the black and white tenebrist drawings of Georges Seurat as well as by the explorations of modernist artists such as Kazemir Malevich, who sought universality in geometric forms. Circle #1 comes from an early period in this phase of her career. Made of numerous layers of almost imperceptible strokes of graphite, the circle--as multivalent a symbol as there is--appears to vibrate slightly, as if it were not fixed on the sheet, but emerging out of it. There is a subtle commentary in her combination of geometry with perceptual instability.