Searching for the Willow Pattern, 2020. Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles. Installation view.

Argote’s latest body of work investigates the exchange of goods, aesthetics, and culture through historical trade routes. Sculp- tural paintings of raw linen standing tall in looped folds evoke skyscrapers, and their pockets (resembling rows of windows or balconies) are poured and pressed with colorants. The paintings and accompanying works on paper painted with unfired ceramic oxides such as cobalt, trace cultural exchanges between Spain, Asia, and the Middle East. In thinking about the commerce along these routes (precursor to present-day capitalism) and the aes- thetic legacies of imperialism, Searching for the Willow Pattern probes how contemporary ideas and ideals of modern living and taste betray histories of cultural pilfering, appropriation, and the repackaged globalization of western aesthetics.

Glove Hand Dog, 2020. Solo exhibition, Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles. Installation view. Image: Courtesy the Artist and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles.

Me At Market, Visual Arts Center, University of Texas, Austin. 2020. A multi-part installation comprising a large linen textile and two works on paper. Mixed media including dyes made from cochineal and lemon juice. Installation view. Image: Courtesy the Artist and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles.

With site-responsive interventions, Argote addresses the architecture of her surroundings, disrupting the boundar- ies between inside and outside, public and private. A grid of pockets sewn onto bolts of linen resembles skyscrapers or apartment blocks. Chance and deliberation coincide in Argote’s materials, whether through stains or splashes. Cochineal, a pigment derived from insects found on cactus throughout North and South America, is mixed with lemon juice and doused over paper or dripped on linen. This autonomy of engagement exceeds these materials’ commodity status yet still recalls histories of labor, consumption, and colonialism.

The remnants of Argote’s actions—pouring liquids through fabric pockets or swiping her hands and body over puddles of dye and lemon juice—ensure that the artist’s body and labor become implicated in the work.

As Above, So Below, 2019. Solo exhibition, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. Installation view. Image: Courtesy the Artist and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles.

For her first solo museum exhibition, Argote presented a selection of new and recent paintings, large-scale works on paper, and a sculptural installation. As is typical with her practice, Argote responded to the surrounding architecture and agriculture, incorporating the varieties of plants and fruit in Orozco’s central courtyard and gardens as well as other locally sourced produce into this body of work as raw mate- rials. The exhibition’s title, “As Above, So Below,” comes from an aphorism associated with sacred geometry and tarot that construes the terrestrial world as a reflection of the celestial one. The title speaks to the transformative quality of Argote’s work, in which native plants, natural pigments, architecture, and the artist’s body interact with one another alchemically, giving rise to something else entirely.

Paper work (process), Launch Pad LaB, Autumn 2019. Image: Courtesy the Artist.