Laura Ortiz' book Unwritings is available now at Amazon.
Laura best explains her work here: "Unwritings: A Journey to Visual Poetry presents the multidimensional visual poetry artwork of Laura Ortiz from 2016 to 2021. It tells the visual story of her quest of self-discovery as an avant-garde artist. As a member of the international avant-garde movement INISMO, each visual piece featured in this book displays a multidimensional treatment through the interaction of layers of colors, geometric shapes, photography, and automatic and composed symbolic language, saturating it with mysterious, mystic, arcane meanings. Automatic calligraphic writings, symbolic writings and visual elements interact with each other to create new itineraries of meanings, sometimes evoking the hieroglyphs from ancient cultures, past and present language systems of aboriginal civilizations, Chinese and Japanese characters, present spiritual esoteric systems of belief and practice, or the world itself, which is always evolving and changing."
Blurbs:
Laura Ortiz' Unwritings opens with her own introduction written in a kind of false Latin interspersed with other apocryphal languages, a great opening for a book in which possible archaic languages are suggested in a strongly visual context. Her introduction, however, is not completely without sense: “Ditaturiore quiam faciatur magnam volessu ntibusapel et liquunt eatet aliquo experruptisi sape perferest la consera tionsec estiandita volest, si comnis alia qui officiet laborro...”, which seems to be commentary about the type of writing she is interested in. Her works in the book are a melding of visual poetry, holographic abstract writing, drawing, and drawn writing. The result, rather than appearing to be a creation of fake archaic documents, is a very contemporary visual art, that includes writing as a kind of atmosphere, a colorant that adds an important depth or explanation to the overall impact, in that handwriting in itself is expressive of meaning, quite apart from any lexical content it might (or might not) have. It is no surprise that this Argentine/Canadian poet is associated with the international INI group and movement. Her work here, deeply colorful, and unique, has a strong transcultural and trans linguistic appeal. I look forward to seeing more of Laura Ortiz' work!
—Dr. John M. Bennett
One of the many qualities of Laura Ortiz’s visual work
is her multiplication of graphic layers into a complex sequencing. Her
Unwritings create an anti- or hyper- semantic environment, which brings to mind
the construction of perspectives / architecture. One isn’t sure if their eye is drawn to the
quasi-texts or to the abstract lines and areas of color.
At the same time, these multi-layered interventions
seem to be superpositions and overlapped strata forming a kind of coexisting
drawings, or if you will, whose identity cannot be reduced to a single
(restrictive) definition. No one side seems to prevail and assume the role of
the first “code” on the page. All of them contribute to the overall impact that
the piece has on the reader.
If one of the INI’s poetics statements describes
“densely packed arrangements of letters, words, glyphs, and symbols” where
often “images and abstract shapes are superposed”, it can definitely be said
that most of the experiments Ortiz is practicing since (at least) the year 2016
–––up to now go in that direction. And she’s perfectly aware of it, as her
afterword states.
The pages that are filled with single glyphs or
waterfalls of simple intertwined signs bring our imagination to extremely far
regions: maybe times past. When/where some letters appear to have an Etruscan
impact we may see the cultural heritage of some Western civilizations. (And a
kind of “legacy feeling” in the vast aesthetic field, too.)
Chessboards, orbits, dialogues between impossible languages,
between volumes that face each other, and circles that recall Kriwet’s
alphabets, invite us to and lead us through a journey. That journey is both inside (but also
outside!); series of signs which paradoxically appear to be alien because
they’re actually deeply rooted in our mind.
—Marco Giovenale
Unwritings has brilliant, new dimensional and invented abstraction of visual poetry works. Get ready to dive in these spectacular avant-garde Masterpieces by Laura Ortiz.
—Dona
Mayoora.
“Laura is a
Persephone-Sophia; catching divine sparks and sharing their illuminations.”
“Laura Ortiz is a Decoder, a Journalist,
Strong-of-Heart, a Journeyer, a Teller of Visions beyond the tale.”
—Kimm Kiriako
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Product details:
- Publisher : Post-Asemic Press (August 12, 2021)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 105 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1734866241
- ISBN-13 : 978-1734866247
- Item Weight : 7.5 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.25 x 9 inches
Bio:
Canadian Avant-garde artist. Laura’s visual works and abstract
poetry are packed with glyphs, letters and symbols superposed with abstract
shapes. Her treatment of symbols, typography, letters, and shapes has helped
her gain a place in the International Novatrice Infinitesimale _INI an
avant-garde art movement founded in 1980 by Gabriel-Aldo Bertozzi at Café du
Fiore in France.
Many of her works have been featured in exhibitions at
contemporary art venues around the world, such as Asemic Writing Exhibition
Mappature del Contemporaneo at Parco Archeologico in Scolaciumin, Italy;
Concreta-Fetapoesia Asemic and Concrete Poetry Exhibition in Rome; Asemic
Writing: Offline & in the Gallery at Minnesota Center for book art in USA;
Muestra Latinoamericana de Poesia Visual Hotel Dada in the Museum of Contempary
Art of Junin, Argentina; Asemic Tech Exhibit in Barcelona, Spain; and L’Aquila
concrete and asemic exhibition in Italy, Arte in Dimora-Discovery of Urban
Sites, Italy.
Also, I have been published in many of the major,
influential visual poetry journals such as Berenice, Utsanga, Angry Old Man
Magazine, Frequenze Poetiche, Dialogue, Angel House Press, Experiment 0, Brave
New Word Magazine, Hotel Dada Magazine,
Aura Poesia Visual, and Women Asemic Artists & Visual Poets // WAAVe
Global as well as blogs including Michael Jacobson’s Asemic: The New Post
Literate: a Gallery of Asemic Writing , Marco Giovenale’s Differx_it, and De
Villo Sloan’s Asemic Front.