Catalysta

Iliana Ortega

United States of America

Iliana Ortega was born in Mexico City, she studied at Yale, receiving her MFA degree in painting from that institution in 2011. Since then, she has lived on the Lower East Side in New York City, where she has a studio. Her current work centers on black-and-white photographs of seascapes and small towns occurring in places well-known and not so well-known--eastern Long Island and Iceland are among the sites of her images. Ortega also creates more technically complex images, in which photos are embellished and changed by pencil, paint, etc. Her imagery tends toward a deep romanticism, in which the play of light on darkened water and waves suggests a visionary reading of nature, one that looks to an apocalyptic scenario that overwhelms the artist’s audience with its drama and high visual contrast. Romanticism, generally speaking, does not fly high in the American art world; we are given to politics and social issues much more than infinite dreams.