Magic Realism

Colombian-born and now living in California, Luisa Cohrs contemplates memories and stories passed down from her mother, who survived the Colombian Civil War (1948 – 1958). Her art employs a type of realism, in this case, paint-soaked cloth (hankies and doilies), pressed against canvas to create an impression of the real object, but also employing the resulting abstract patterns to evoke magical recollections of the past. The images are personal, powerful and surreal. The hankies become poetically symbolic references to the past. A 17-foot mural done with pencil and charcoal in ASV’s hallway was inspired by the author Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez (1927 -2014), a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo or Gabito throughout Latin America.