MAIN GALLERY
PEANA IN COLLABORATION WITH LABOR, MTY, MX
PEANA and LABOR are pleased to present the exhibition The Memory We Don’t Recall, a group show that will be on display during the course of four weeks at PEANA, from November 21st to December 23rd. The exhibition brings together the work of Héctor Zamora, Roger White, Tezontle, Jorge Satorre, SANGREE, Pedro Reyes, Gala Porras-Kim, Jerónimo Elespe, Manuela de Laborde, Tomás Díaz Cedeño, Wendy Cabrera Rubio, and ASMA.
This first collaboration between the two galleries is intended as an opportunity to offer new experiences and open new spaces for imagination and dialogue between the two cities, stimulating the exchange of artistic and stylistic conversations between established and mid-career artists.
The work of SANGREE (Bhu’ja Th’syra I & II, 2020) uses a visual language that is characterized by intertwining the past with the present, thus allowing them to navigate through the different layers of art history and popular culture. In the same vein, Héctor Zamora in Desconcretización (2020) reveals the influence of the old and new avant-gardes, as well as their affinity for the geometric form. Both artists recognize the fundamental role of the materials they work with: on the one hand, ceramics and on the other, lattices, which have been widely accessible throughout history as part of daily life, and whose aesthetic language has been explored on multiple occasions.
Taking a parallel approach, and positioning themselves as a strong referent for the renewal of pre-Hispanic and modern aesthetics, we find the imposing works of Tezontle (Estela, 2020) and Pedro Reyes (Spiral Nude, 2019), deliberately placing themselves in an ambiguous position between the primitive and the contemporary. Their pieces inspired by different historical aesthetics encompass such complex themes –political and economic philosophies, as well as bucolic and essentialist utopias– which are reformulated in order for the viewer to become a participant in the critical discourses emanating from their works.
For their part, both Gala Porras-Kim (Cola de Palma Monument 3, illuminated text, 2019) and Wendy Cabrera Rubio (On the India We Learned to Ferment Corn, 2020) draw on the potential of the art object and its function as an epistemological tool outside its traditional historical context. Undertaking intensive research that brings together politics, history, and learning processes –and which subsequently constitutes the backbone of their practice– both artists produce works that reveal the intricate fabric of historical conditions that gave rise to our conception of the present. Further expanding the use of past narratives, Jorge Satorre’s work (Piernas, 2020) has been developed as a series of responses to traces that have been excluded from hegemonic versions of history in various contexts to which the artist relates, often collaborating with specialists from different fields such as historians, geologists, writers or other artists.
In the case of Roger White’s painting Infrathin (2017) and Manuela de Laborde’s Parte de una película fijada en el color de alguna flor (2020), a re-contextualization of the objects, derived from their observation, is taken as the starting point. Both artists are interested in generating an image inscribed in a new temporality, experimenting with colors, sizes and scales, thus evoking a formal restlessness through every day and familiar objects. Likewise, Jerónimo Elespe (Une Chargone & Mekart, 2016), through a slow accumulative process of addition and subtraction, spanning months or even years, presents his paintings as a platform to investigate the very nature of time and memory. Although differing in the use of technique, these works require the viewer to pause before them, taking the time to observe their formal construction, and allowing themselves a moment’s rest in this hyper-accelerated world.
Finally, with an acute sensitivity for the materials used, and often resorting to unconventional mixtures, the works of ASMA (The Breeder, 2019) and Tomás Díaz Cedeño (Agua Zarca, 2020) employ organic forms and motifs drawn from nature –and even fantasy and magical imagery– to evoke mystical, mythological and often strange qualities in objects that fluctuate between abstraction and figuration.
The Memory We Don’t Recall seeks to establish a dialogue between the subjects and aesthetics of our history, of our past, and to highlight them through the prism of contemporary artists of our time.
