Orlando Leyba – Seshat (Goddess of Writing)

$1,500

SKU: 23523

Artwork Description

Orlando Leyba – Seshat (Goddess of Writing)

Dimensions: 17.5 x 18.5″ framed / 14 x 15″ unframed
Year: 2017
Medium: mixed media with glass beads on wood

In Orlando Leyba’s mixed media on wood work, Seshat (Goddess of Writing), Leyba draws parallels between the textured and graphic surfaces of his work and the process of writing—something inherently tactile and collective like the piece’s collage quality. While the vertical line on the right side of the painting suggests a form of formal division, organic anomalies and patterns mirrored in either half of the dichotomy indicate the work persists as a whole, rather than two separate sections. 

Orlando Leyba’s works oscillate between the abstract and the representational; while free floating and formless, the detailing in his pieces—which demands a degree of intimacy to appreciate—stands in for a wide array of Leyba’s experiences, emotions, and physical encounters. Ranging from custom lowrider cars to petroglyphs, Leyba’s affinity for incorporating found objects and ideas in his work and ability to juxtapose the corporeal with the immaterial, the whimsical with the familiar, introduces a profoundly psychological insight into Leyba’s past and present life as an artist. As a high school student, Leyba describes that he and his classmates would often break into abandoned buildings in search for materials to use in their work. While Leyba’s present practices might now be considered more conventional, he continues to use ideological manifestations of what was once a process of physical collection—incorporating checker patterns reminiscent of his grandparent’s floor, collage materials, and distorted textual elements in a manner not too different from tearing wallpaper from forgotten walls. To Leyba, his works are inherently topographical and interconnected; they interact with one another rather than stand alone and represent “little pieces of land”, a concept ingrained in him from the time spent working on his parent’s property in northern New Mexico as a child.