Hugo Garcia-Urrutia, Soaring Sky High, 2024, Photograph on Maple Wood

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Soaring sky high, part of the “wooden postcards” series, lifts the viewer above union square’s rooftops, capturing new york’s iconic … Read more Soaring sky high, part of the “wooden postcards” series, lifts the viewer above union square’s rooftops, capturing new york’s iconic water towers against a vast blue sky. Shot with a holga camera and cross-processed medium format film, the scene is rich with layered meaning. White oak serves as the substrate, with the wood grain's patterns echoing the sky’s textures, reinforcing the piece's organic connection to the city's landscape. The film sprockets frame the image, creating a cinematic window through which the viewer sees the city’s architectural beauty and open sky. This fusion of wood and film transforms the everyday skyline into a serene, almost surreal composition that invites contemplation of both natural and urban environments. Artist statement in their ongoing series, wooden postcards, hugo garcia urrutia and mk semos merge their talents to craft a striking blend of image and form. Recycled materials create a foundation from which the artists explore themes of the universal human experience, cultural memory, and environmental consciousness, transforming everyday textures into evocative, layered compositions. Their collaborative process results in a visual narrative that captures the nostalgic essence of a place, blending urban decay with vibrant charm. This dynamic body of work celebrates iconic cities of the world that serve as cultural epicenters and melting pots— new york, london, and mexico city, among others. The urban landscapes are depicted as living organisms that cradle diverse ideas, cultures, and histories, each with their own unique pulse. The work reflects not only the physical sprawl of city-life but also the internal experiences of those who inhabit these spaces. Semos incites the artistic journey using a manual holga film camera, a tool that allows her to create layered, intuitive compositions by overlapping frames and double-exposing film. Her analogue cross-processing technique amplifies the original color-pallate of the photograph, injecting each scene with a degree of heightened saturation that reflects the vibrancy of urban spaces. Through this technique, semos captures a tapestry of vivid signs, pop-colored elements, and unexpected codes that form visual storyboards. These narratives reveal moments of congregation and migration that celebrates the ebb and flow of everyday life. The absence of human figures is intentional. Rather, her images capture a residual energy, whispering secrets of unseen pedestrians whose movements are traced through the footprints they’ve left behind. Urrutia use of unconventional substrates parlay the work into to another dimension. Through an intensive process of integration, urrutia fuses the photographic images to reclaimed hardwood while leaving space for the natural grain and texture of the material to become part of the composition itself. Imbued with its own history, the recycled hardwood echoes the bustling foot traffic of urban life and adds a tactile layer that evokes the very essence of the cities depicted— the wear, movement, and impact of countless lives passing through. Through wooden postcards, urrutia and semos explore the profound, layered interactions between people, places, and materials, inviting the viewer to contemplate the unseen yet deeply felt imprints we leave on the world around us. This piece is attributed to the mentioned designer/maker. It has no attribution mark and no
official proof of authenticity,
however it is well documented in design history. I take full responsibility for any authenticity



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