¿Y cual será la manera en que el artista preserve el instante?
Adolfo Riestra
Este modesto esfuerzo de exhibir su Cuerpo de obra se declara parcial. No se intentó aquí una revisión exhaustiva, mucho menos definitiva. Estos signos se ofrecen separados, como un juego que permite reunir nuevamente otro cuerpo, reinventar otra forma y otra y otra. Esta exposición es una re-membranza.
Sus dibujos están poblados de cuerpos proscritos, son una somateca revolucionaria —para su época, los ochenta, y para la nuestra— porque reclaman una desidentificación. Sus seres se niegan a la construcción de un ego estable, a las identificaciones identitarias, huyen de la fijación a través de la contradicción: son tintas inmóviles que persiguen la ligereza y la mutabilidad del viento.
Esa somateca* está plagada de invenciones monstruosas y hermosas, brazos que se alargan hasta la defectuosidad, torsos que se tuercen, muslos inflamados, pitos hinchados, tetas en esteroides, caídas, culos infraleves, criaturas hermafroditas. Todo en sus dibujos es defecto, deseo abyecto, formas caprichosas. Sus dibujos no se oponen a la belleza, sino que la implantan con otros cánones: su canto es el de un pájaro que pocos entienden.
Extracto de texto curatorial para Cuerpo de Obra, Mauricio Marcin.
* La "somateca", acuñada por Paul B. Preciado, describe cómo los cuerpos son archivos vivientes moldeados por discursos, prácticas y tecnologías de poder, transformando la identidad y subjetividad.
A Adolfo le compete el reconocimiento —junto a muchxs otrxs— de esa operación política y estética. La obra, el cuerpo de obra de Adolfo, es un grito en el medio de un cráter, un cráter que deviene playa, un placer que deviene muerte, una espiral.
Extracto de texto curatorial para Cuerpo de Obra, Mauricio Marcin.
En el momento en que Adolfo lograba dominar algún estilo pictórico, lo dejaba, rechazando su dominio, pues lo controlable y previsible cesa de ofrecerle un espectro de posibilidades, como si el deseo estuviese satisfecho.
Extracto de texto curatorial para Cuerpo de Obra, Mauricio Marcin.
"El trabajo en barro - tradición antigua tanto en el occidente como en el oriente de México -desde hace tempo despertó mi curiosidad y provocó mi interés, mi deseo de penetrar en la entraña de figuras fantásticas que iban emergiendo de la pasta húmeda, de la tierra moldeable. Hueco como un guaje, el barro se le amasa y moldea dejando siempre espacios para respirar, espacios rodeados de una superficie tan delgada como hojaldre. Al mismo tiempo su construcción es arquitectura que require de muros y bóvedas, túneles, amplios salones donde ventanales, chimeneas y pórticos comunican con el exterior”.
Adolfo Riestra
Adolfo fue un personaje absolutamente pasional. Todo en su mundo tenía un significado extremo y no había lugar para medias tintas o tibiezas. De ésta manera vivía, amaba, cocinaba, comía, dibujaba, pintaba y esculpía. Contra viento y marea nos gustara, lo comprendiéramos o no. De ésta manera también trabajaba, intensamente, sin cesar.
Adolfo Riestra, Galería OMR, Ciudad de México, 1994.
Con barro se puede tapar un rubí... El trabajo en barro -tradición antigua tanto en el occidente como en el oriente de México- desde hace tiempo despertó mi curiosidad y provocó mi interés, mi deseo de penetrar en la entraña de figuras fantásticas que iban emergiendo de la pasta húmeda, de la tierra modelable. Hueco como huaje, el barro se le amasa y moldea dejando siempre espacios para respirar; espacios rodeados de una superficie tan delgada como hojaldre. Al mismo tiempo su construcción es arquitectura que requiere de muros y bóvedas, túneles y pasillos, amplios salones donde ventanales, chimeneas y pórticos comunican con el exterior.
La escultura en barro es un paseo al interior de cuerpos, una aventura por extensiones de magnitud infinita, un viaje a la profundidad donde se abandona la imaginación a sus propias evoluciones. Formas, volúmenes y gestos de individuos desconocidos van apareciendo. Rostros con narices largas y anchas, manos con dedos finos. A veces, misteriosas y toscas manazas que configuran caracteres dotados de una singular personalidad.
— Vivir dentro de una figura es más fascinante que verla por fuera.
Adolfo Riestra “Con barro se puede tapar un rubí…”
Desde que tengo memoria, recuerdo a mi hermano dibujando o pintando y lo hacía con lo que tenía a la mano: experimentaba con humor en todo tipo de superficies, hacía cosas increíbles, como collages o mezclaba pinturas hasta con frijoles. Sus obras culminaban en imágenes que yo consideraba entonces obras maestras.
Jaime Riestra, OMR, 2019. Ed. Turner Libros.
Adolfo tuvo que inventar en cada dibujo lo que deseaba que existiera en la realidad; en una operación simbólica-demiúrgica hizo que cada pintura prodigara consistencia al mundo y es que hacer arte es hacer brotar el espacio que se desea habitar.
Extracto de texto curatorial para Cuerpo de Obra, Mauricio Marcin.
OMR se complace en volver a Art Basel Switzerland, con una selección de 15 artistas cuya práctica explora la interacción entre fuerzas opuestas en materiales y conceptos, ahondando tanto en lo natural como en lo artificial, y sugiriendo la reinterpretación de diversos contextos históricos y culturales.
Nuestra presentación incluirá la obra de artistas como Claudia Comte, que emplea tierra como material principal, simbolizando la resistencia de la naturaleza frente a la intervención humana, fusionando poéticamente forma y sustancia. Yann Gerstberger, que ha desarrollado una técnica única para elaborar tapices textiles que narran historias inspiradas en la cultura popular mexicana y combinan a la perfección elementos tradicionales con temas contemporáneos. Pia Camil, que reutiliza telas desechadas por fábricas textiles en obras que evocan la relación entre conceptos contemporáneos, pinturas clásicas y producción industrial. Sebastián Silva, cuyos enérgicos óleos evocan tanto contextos extremadamente sociales, como una fiesta de cumpleaños, como la soledad entre la multitud. Julian Charrière, que combina la especulación artística con la metodología científica para examinar la mutación de la naturaleza a lo largo del tiempo y nuestro elevado impacto sobre ella. Además, en el marco del proyecto de arte público Globus, Charrière transformará los históricos grandes almacenes Globus de Basilea con una obra de arte que traspasará fronteras y conectará a los visitantes a través de grandes distancias, tendiendo un puente entre la montañosa Suiza y un bosque nuboso de los Andes occidentales de Ecuador, del 8 de junio al 6 de octubre.
Jose Dávila’s recent sculptural work refers to notions of balance and equilibrium, which are generated during the moment of withdrawal between two opposing forces that remained in conflict, finally ceding.
The artist seeks to extend this condition of precarious balance and indetermination by taking advantage of the natural disposition of materials to be arranged in relations of correspondence, even though they hold contrasting properties.
Fragility encounters solidity, flexibility is complemented by rigidity; angular edges from industrial materials interact with the more capricious forms found in organic objects.
Yann Gerstberger’s series of textile tapestries depict narratives inspired by patterns found in Mexican popular culture, art history and nature.
These works are produced with an original technique conceived by the artist: he glues fibers of cotton (mops, originally) on vinyl to form colorful surfaces, mixed with industrial fabric, preferably patterned or textured that he finds in markets in the city. The cotton fibers are dyed
by hand, using a mixture of natural mexican dyes such as cochineal, and industrial ones like Citocol, the most basic dye that can be found in the supermarket.
Using neon, ceramics, taxidermy mounts, branches of trees, and even more personal objects from his own past, Gabriel Rico creates sculptural assemblages achieving a precise geometry in spite of the unwieldy organic nature of his materials.
For Rico, materials function as analogies for one of the main themes in his work: the fragmentation of the contemporary human being. The syntax of this sculpture reflects on just how humanoid a precise combination of materials and objects can be, and on the empathy, awakened in the viewer when these materials and objects are arranged in a certain way.
Artur Lescher’s works attest to his constant experimentation with materials, their physical qualities and objectual characteristics. Through his works, the artist makes reference to natural elements, which when reproduced impeccably by means of industrial processes, reveal and deny these real allusions.
A key component in his body of work is architecture, both in synthesis and context. In an abstraction exercise of in-situ installations, the artist adopts the spatial situations of the exhibition space to transform corners, walls and doors into large-scale installations. His works emerge subtly as poetic gestures in space transmitting force and instability, balance and movement, tension and silence.
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In this latest series, Claudia Comte diverges from traditional pigments, opting instead for a medium as elemental as it is evocative: soil. Sourced from her countryside garden near Basel, the earth assumes a central role in these works, where the tension between nature’s resilience and humanity’s intervention is embodied in the poetic coalescence of form and substance.
Comte’s Soil Paintings continue a series of works characterized by their fragmented geometric abstractions, each spread across eight canvases.Comte begins the painting process by treating the eight panels as a unified whole, only to later deconstruct and reassemble them. This approach endows the work with a dynamic modularity that challenges static interpretation and blurs the boundaries between painting and sculpture.
Julian Charrière is known for his interdisciplinary approach, which mixes artistic speculation and storytelling with scientific methodologies, material studies and field work, exploring ideas of nature and how these tangle and transform over time.
With the bodies of work making up his 2024 solo exhibition at LagoAlgo, Earth Listens WhenYou Speak, Charrière seeks to re-establish an emotional link between human beings and theEarth. The artist explores how our species relates to other stratified matters, particularly those which we appropriate as fuels, such as coal and petroleum.
Punctuated by the volcanic creatures from the series A Stone Dream of You (2024), these sculptures, made with local basalt rock and obsidian spheres, plunge the visitor into the geological underworld, where immense pressure and volcanic heat give birth to mineral chimaeras.
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Jorge Méndez Blake’s colored pencil drawing Biblioteca de exploración. Estructura de biblioteca XXXII / Exploration Library. Library Structure XXXII (2024) draws on the story of the English explorer Colonel Percy Fawcett, who was lost in Brazil in 1925, while leading an expedition looking for an ancient city in the unexplored part of the Amazon jungle.
This city, which Fawcett used to call “Z City,” was supposed to be the last legacy from a forgotten civilization. The reference to the letter“Z” serves as the starting point for Méndez Blake’s series, exploring themes of utopia, progress, colonization, and the delicate nature of knowledge structures. Through this artistic exploration, the shape and symbolism of the letter “Z” give rise to a unique blend of language and archeology, forming a captivating typology of construction.
Deeply engaged with scientific and philosophical concepts, Alicja Kwade challenges conventional modes of perception through her exploration of perceptual illusions and transitions between object and function, as well as material and form.
The idea for this series of bronze cast fruit peels came to life while peeling a banana, the peel reminded Kwade of “strings” and furthermore the string theory, which assumes that the basic components of matter are vibrating strings, resembling those of a violin.
Each work within the series is in fact a self-portrait of the artist in the form of a banana, potato, orange, lemon or similar. As your own most elementary particle: a string - it vibrates as a string and generates itself, from the0-dimensional particle to the shell (quantum mechanics). The string theory requires multiple dimensions, so the works also revisit the idea of a multiverse, bringing to question reality and our(limited) human perception of it.
Pia Camil follows the evolution of the different ways in which fabric has been explored and portrayed in the history of classical painting in the West. Through the observation of emblematic paintings of various historical periods, she selects some of the moments in which fabric has nurture artists’s appetite for virtuosity, allowing to show their mastery in the basic concepts of classical painting such as depth, shape, crease, shadow or texture.
To make the paintings for the series Deshechas,Camil uses fabrics that have been discarded from textiles factories for being the last bit of the production; therefore they show printing errors.For the artist, these pieces evoke the relationship of contemporary subjects with mass production markets; moreover they serve as metaphors of the role of art within the market. By the format of the paintings and the folds that are generated, these works can be read from their resemblance to an undone bed and therefore understood from the field of intimacy.
Much like his cinematic works, SebastianSilva’s paintings and drawings serve as a medium for compassionate and witty storytelling. His energetic oil paintings are distinguished by gestural brushwork and
a distinctive abstract style, embracing the allure of curved lines and exaggerated forms.
Describing his most recent efforts as “an entropy of colors, shapes, rhythms,” the artist has also prosaically likened his compositions to “a birthday party.”
“These are shapes and worlds and colors that I need to see. I need to make them come to life, I need to see how they eat together. I want to see how they party.”
Characterized by hyperrealism and a twisted depiction of everyday objects like flowers and leftover consumer goods, Tony Matelli’s sculptures often straddle the boundaries of absurdity and humor, raising broader existential questions.
Over the past two decades, Matelli’s artistic concerns have centered around the human condition, imbuing his sculptures with a surprising and deeply human vulnerability. This quality can be found in the most unlikely of objects, such as his polychrome bronze weeds series, in which plants sprout from the space between gallery walls and floors.
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Jose Dávila’s series of cut-out works approach the pictorial languages of RoyLichtenstein and Pablo Picasso, with a special emphasis on their portraits and paintings depicting human forms.
The progressive dissection of elements from the photographic documentation of these works transforms the brushstrokes and the color blocks into autonomous three-dimensional presences.The background or the primary subject become absent figures, creating compositions that exist only through negation. These apophatic gestures contribute to the possibilities of the homage and the reinterpretation of art history.
Even though the isolated brushstrokes render an ambiguous composition, they successfully reference their origin. This visual identification becomes almost automatic due to the familiarity the public has with the works by Picasso orLichtenstein.
Reality Is Not Always Probable is part of an ongoing series of works in which Troika bring together playing dice and computer algorithms borrowed from the invisible virtual backbone of our physical world. The work is constructed from tens of thousands of colored dice and generated, line by
line, by manually emulating the rules of a simple computer binary program, a physical reenactment of an invisible process.
It originates from the artists’ interest in the human experience of digital production and the shift away from the material towards the virtual and the digital – towards a new everyday reality, in which the material and immaterial are increasingly interchangeable, compressed as if all of life could be reduced to 1’s and 0’s.
Humans have used dice for centuries; they are a symbol of fate, chance and luck. By using thiseveryday material to simulate digital sequences,Troika reflect on how the digital world increasinglyreaches out into the physical one and the rolealgorithms play in determining our future.
Reality Is Not Always Probable is part of an ongoing series of works in which Troika bring together playing dice and computer algorithms borrowed from the invisible virtual backbone of our physical world. The work is constructed from tens of thousands of colored dice and generated, line by
line, by manually emulating the rules of a simple computer binary program, a physical reenactment of an invisible process.
It originates from the artists’ interest in the human experience of digital production and the shift away from the material towards the virtual and the digital – towards a new everyday reality, in which the material and immaterial are increasingly interchangeable, compressed as if all of life could be reduced to 1’s and 0’s.
Humans have used dice for centuries; they are a symbol of fate, chance and luck. By using thiseveryday material to simulate digital sequences,Troika reflect on how the digital world increasinglyreaches out into the physical one and the rolealgorithms play in determining our future.
In the series Because Nothing is More Pleasant to the Eye Than Green Grass KeptFinely Short, Gabriel Rico develops a work based on concepts of the morphological psychology theory, recognizing that the mind is in a constant state of flux, being shaped and shaping at the same time.
In this way, the artist applies morphological tension as a means to geometric structure, assuming a position to all the elements that compose it in order to contain a visually determined but clearly unfinished form – in this case – the circumference determined by the tips of the knives.
If Value Then Copy is a series of text paintings by SUPERFLEX. First conceived asa slogan for the work Copy shop, it questions the idea of rights to immaterial works and ideas.
Within the copyright regime, every commodity and concept is assigned ownership and thus becomes incorporated within a global system that functions to protect and defend its perceived value. The dictum “if value then right” is used by copyright advocates to suggest that anything that could be valuable should therefore be copyrighted, and that all unauthorized copying should be considered theft and be punishable by law.
Each iteration of If Value Then Copy consists of three identical paintings; this repetition points to the uniformity of commercial mass production.At the same time, the slogan challenges the very idea of originality, authorship and value. Is any idea truly original? Can one claim ownership of immaterial goods? How do we evolve if not by mimicking and copying what is already surrounding us?
Signed on the back Weight: 10.5 kg
A condition can be asymptomatic if a patient doesn’t present the notable symptoms with which the condition is normally associated.It is under this principle that Gabriel Rico assumes the objects that compose this series as exercises in which the geometry forms an integral part of the aesthetic of the piece, yet it does not define it, and thus makes it impossible to read as part of a method.
This series began with the selection of elements that Rico uses to give dimension to a figure, such as the circle, the ellipse, or the frame, supposing that these elements are conditions to achieve an asymptomatic form.
Besides the levity imparted by his earlier metal and wood pieces, Lescher’s newest series explores transparency by using multifilament wires.
Since the beginning of his career, at age 22, Lescher has highlighted his interest in ideas of synthesis, tension and instability when it comes to shapes and space as a means of constructing uncommon landscapes.
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Throughout his career, Jorge Méndez Blake has explored the intersections of literature, visual arts, and architecture. He skillfully translates language and narratives into visual compositions, including sculptures, drawings, paintings, installations, murals, and videos, often paying homage to the great masters of universal literature such as William Shakespeare, Jules Verne, Franz Kafka, and Jorge Luis Borges.
Part of a series based around the book “Utopia”by Sir Thomas More, Si hubieras estado conmigo en Utopia / If You Had Been With Me in Utopia(2021) reproduces the title page from the 1518 Basel third edition first published in 1516 with a subtle black color. The original woodcut by Hans Holbein the Younger has been transformed by adding red color to the faces of the young characters holding the title.