The air we breathe seems as one vast library, on whose pages are forever written all that everything and everyone has ever thought or felt.
-Inspired by Charles Babbage, 1837
In Sol Oosel's first exhibition for PEANA in Monterrey, two stone menhirs named Las Coristas welcome us at the entrance of the gallery. In addition to the sculpture, seven paintings, a film and two sculptures that project still images are on display.
The components of the exhibition are a direct result of the trips Sol has made to the Mina desert in Nuevo León over the course of several years. They revolve around the non-traditional idea of landscape and its relationship with man and how a dialogue is created in which one modifies and sculpts the other. One could think of a reciprocal relationship between the two, whether passive or active and/or outside the limits of conscious perception that we know. In this case, landscape plays a fundamental role in defining our identity. It is also important to take into account that all of Sol's work is related to each other, either directly or symbolically in his quest to rethink "traditional" knowledge and create a unique poetics.
Las Coristas, a sculpture, performance and film shot in 16mm, is the origin that marks the birth of this exhibition. The two monumental stones, brought from the Mina desert in Nuevo León, were part of the public art exhibition Horizontes, curated by Paola Santoscoy for Las Artes Monterrey, at the Macroplaza in Monterrey. With them, the artist questions the idea of traditional sculpture by emitting sound waves amplified in loudspeakers as a performance and in turn they respond as a chorus. In this way, one sculpts the other in an imperceptible process of constant transformation. The experimental film, made in collaboration with Guillermo Garza, is the direct result of the performance with Las Coristas, which reflects this dialogue between the stones and the artist and the constant modification of the landscape. In the artist's own words, "If everything sculpts everything all the time and the constitution of one is thanks to the other, where are the limits of one and the other? In the same room where the projection is shown, there are also two sculptures made in collaboration with Emilio Algo that project still images, also the result of these trips to the desert.
The paintings are based on this landscape-man exchange born with Las Coristas and are created from the experimentation and collaboration that exists as a leitmotif in Sol's musical and artistic practice. The pieces, a sort of abstract landscapes, are made with rusted steel dust, each of them responding to the spirit of consciousness and sensitivity transmitted by Sol's experience with the desert. We can consider that in turn, the viewer also affects them, modifying them with his presence or gaze, thus emphasizing the idea that nothing is fixed, everything is in movement. Each painting, with each visit, changes, in this way each viewer adds to the collaboration, leaving behind a new painting for the next one.
For Sol, the most relevant question is the one that asks to what extent, beyond what a mind oriented by a particular genetics and education can present us, is it possible to open a door to the forces, coming from a realm that excludes the knowable and the intelligible discourse, that emanate from any work or realization.