Sculpture Tag

ERICK MEYENBERG

THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE, 2022

Ceramic sculpture

During a trip to Japan, Erick Meyenberg saw and filmed a chrysanthemum on a Tokyo cementery after falling because of a typhoon. The scence reverberated in the artista due to a personal momento he was going through that made everything around him look fragmented. Thus, from the Japanese philosophy and technique of Kintsugi, which consist of repairing broken ceramics, highlighting the joints to underline their value and beauty despite their fractures, he had the ide of making a sculpture of the dismembered petals of that flower –considered the imperial emblem of Japon–. Meyenberg then thought that the sculpture had to rise from the ground just as Aphrodite rose from the waters; its forms recover the strenght and movement ow water, while its color reflects the love and eroticism embodied by Aphrodite. The Kintsugi metaphor invite to reconize the beauty that exits even in the fragments or breaks that are part of life.

This work represents the first time that Meyenberg works with ceramics. It was conceived specifically for his video-installations Things We Do for Love, commissioned by Arte Abierto, and was produced at Cerámica Suro workshop in Guadalajara.

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ERICK MEYENBERG

(Mexico, 1980)

Interdisciplinary visual artist who sees painting as a fundamental element of expression, although he also explores other media such as sound installation, drawing, collage, video and performance. In his work, he shows a special interest in literature, history, social sciences, and natural sciences. His work has been exhibited in spaces such as Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Museo Tamayo, inSite / Casa Gallina, Biennial of the Americas, Arts University of Berlin, among others.
Representative in the Mexico Pavilion at the 60th Venice Art Biennale (April, 2024) with the project ‘Nos marchábamos, regresábamos siempre’, along with curator Tania Ragaso.

JULIA CARRILLO

ESE PUNTO EN EL ESPACIO, 2021

Ese punto en el espacio (That Point in Space) (2021) is an optical artifact that shows the capacity of geometry and reflective matter to guide light and build simulated spaces that challenge our gaze. When looking inside the piece, you can observe a game of infinite reflections that, in turn, generate a parallel scenario in relation to our position in real physical space.

Conceived as a light sculpture, the effect it produces is the result of a precise composition in which a series of mirrors are arranged geometrically. The abstraction that is generated represents, for Julia Carrillo, a tribute to The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges in which a point in space contains the four corners of the universe, that is, the Whole.

The art piece was created and commissioned especially for the Luz Instante exhibition that was presented at Arte Abierto in 2021 and which brought together seven works by Carrillo focused on the exploration of light.

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JULIA CARRILLO

(Mexico, 1987)

She studied mathematics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She has a master’s degree in Visual Arts from the San Carlos Academy and studied at the New York School of Visual Arts (SVA). She has participated in various solo and group exhibitions in Mexico and abroad. She is currently a researcher at C3 (Center for Complexity Sciences, UNAM) and is a beneficiary of the Young Creators program of the National Fund for Culture and Arts (FONCA).

MORPHO

ANIBAL CATALAN

Morpho is a sculptural installation, especially conceived for the architectural space of Antara Polanco and developed in collaboration with Arte Abierto.

In Morpho, the Mexican artist Anibal Catalan takes as a reference the natural forms of the tiger dragonfly and the colors of the painting Yellow Landscape (1908) by the Russian artist Kasimir Malevich, to create a structure that allows the viewer to relate sensitively and spatially with the place that inhabits and travels. The side walls use the same shapes and colors in composition, creating a dialogue between the two-dimensionality of the murals and the three-dimensionality of the installation.

Morpho opens to the public in the main access tunnel of Antara and will be temporarily from Thursday March 23 to May 31, with free access.
To download Arte Abierto’s press release of Morpho click here.

To enter the Antara’s Morpho Press kit click here.

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Anibal Catalan (Iguala, Guerrero, 1973)
Estudied Plastic Arts at the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving “La Esmeralda”. He was founder and member of the collective project GL Mutante (2003) and was part of the advisory committee of the Alterna y Corriente (2009) space in Mexico City. His work is based on a reflection on space and architecture, through painting, sculpture, video and installation, as well as site-specific projects and public spaces. Throughout his career, he has been part of individual exhibitions places like the MuseumsQuartier (Viena), Museo de la Ciudad de Querétaro, Polyforum Siqueiros, CAN Foundation (Seúl); de manera colectiva, su obra se ha presentado en el Museum Gyeonggi (Corea del Sur), Museo de Arte Moderno (México), MARCO, San Diego Art Institute as well as in biennials such as the Tamayo Biennial, the Photography Biennial at Centro de la Imagen, Istanbul Design Biennale, among others.

 

IG @anibalcatalanstudio

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JOSE DÁVILA

JOSE DÁVILA (Mexico, 1974)
JOINT EFFORT, 2019

Concrete volumes, volcanic rock and ratchet straps

This piece is a sculpture of large dimensions that exemplifies the formal and conceptual interests of the artist Jose Dávila, such as the relationship with resistance, tension and the geometric order of the materials that he uses. The volcanic rock and concrete here point out a contrast between organic and industrial materials, highlighting their strengths and capacities through a composition in which both elements support their respective weights, while the straps strengthen the dynamic exerted between the concrete and the rock. As suggested by its title, this piece is literally a joint effort to keep the balance, strength and harmony of its components.

Jose Dávila (Guadalajara, 1974) His work addresses the existent relationships between contrasting and contradictory elements. Most of his work focuses on exploring the possibilities, capacities and properties of sculpture, through a meticulous selection of the materials and the forms with which his pieces are produced. Commonly guided by intuition, in his sculptural structures tension and calm, geometric order and random chaos, and fragility and resistance coexist while connecting the form with the content.

THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

06.24.2022 – 02.19.2023

Things We Do for Love is a project commissioned by Arte Abierto to visual artist Erick Meyenberg (CDMX, 1980). It is a video-installation and a large-format sculpture that, both together, exposes the poetics of art and its effect in our perception of reality.

The exhibition exemplifies artistic practice complexities and its transformations as resulted from the multiple perspectives and actions intervening in its production. For Arte Abierto it is essential to expose the collaborative nature of art through exhibitions that, such this one, turn out from a process and an exchange of ideas, thoughts and feelings.

Inviting Erick Meyenberg to intervene in our space came up from the interest in bringing us closer to common ideas and concepts, transformed into an intimate reflection through art. Thus, what began as a personal path became a project to recognize how we define our gaze and the meanings that we produced from it.

In those waters, in all the waters, [the human being] hope[s] to see their real image reflection. An image that has been mutilated thousands of years ago. In that situation, lost in thought by the shore, we can find them anywhere. Yearning for what? What they used to be.

–Reinaldo Arenas, The Doorman (1989)

While in an artistic residency in Japan* I was going through a personal situation that made everything seem fragmented. As in any process, the way was guided by intuition and chance. Sometimes you must travel faraway to find your own reflection in other waters. Being unaware then, this journey of reencounter with myself arrived. I thought: How to move in such a foreign world? How to heal and paste the remaining pieces after a fracture?

Camera in hand, I started touring Tokyo, Kyoto, Kanazawa, Hiroshima and Naoshima by land and sea, capturing hundreds of images and life fragments that reminded me of the existence of beauty in everyday life. While recording everything that captured my attention, a phrase always came to my mind giving new meaning to what I was looking at: “Things we do for love”.

Back in Mexico, other lands and other seas showed up. With those waters came a new promise of life. Not knowing why, it seemed that my visual archive of two countries and cultures—so different from each other—was trying to say something. I wanted to find a way to put together these life fragments to transform them into a whole that, in turn, wouldn’t hide the fractures of its history. I found in Kintsugi (a Japanese philosophy that repairs broken objects and beautifies them by gluing the fragments with gold dust) the perfect metaphor to understand video editing as that affective binder capable of intertwining images apparently unconnected. Something that I could only have done with the help of my great friend, editor and filmmaker Martha Uc.

In Things We Do for Love, what once were wounds now are lines of light that accentuate the complex diversity of lived moments in the same story. I decided not to use the images’ real sound, but to experiment with the emotional and suggestive abstraction of electronic music. That’s where my friend and musician Roderic appeared—to me, the power of his music was the perfect light that recovered what had been lived and also a powerful emotional support to merge the collection of filmed moments. The cello—in the musical composition—emerged also because of instinct: Natalia Pérez-Turner’s performance gave the work a great affective-depth.

Later, after looking at a chrysanthemum that I filmed on a Tokyo cemetery ground after falling due to a typhoon, the idea of making a sculpture that would depict the water and the sea force and movement—video’s two recurring elements—came up. A new phrase came to my mind: “the sculpture had to rise from the ground, just as Aphrodite rose from the waters”. Coincidentally, the colors involved in the goddess of love and eroticism mythological birth are tied with Japan’s national colors. Along this path, the sculptor Óscar Garduño and the ceramist Carmen de la Parra helped me to create the sculptural work at Cerámica Suro workshop in Guadalajara.

At the end of this journey, Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas appeared. Literature always comes just like that: untimely, unexpected, forceful, needed… A new intuition gave life to his text in Louise Phelan and Francisco López-Guerra voices, to whom I dedicate this work.

Just as the space forms a whole with the chrysanthemum petals on the gallery’s floor, the video editing made possible putting together the fragmentary images of my experience, turning out to be a surprising and unexpected ode to life which taught me that, beyond personal experiences, the relentless force reigns tirelessly.

Erick Meyenberg

*Residence for artists Casa NaNo in Tokyo, Japan, sponsored by Fundación Casa Wabi.

ERICK MEYENBERG (MEXICO CITY, 1980)

Erick Meyenberg is an interdisciplinary visual artist who sees painting as a fundamental element of expression, although he also explores other media such as sound installation, sculpture, drawing, collage,video and performance. His work is the result of an extensive investigation on topics such as literature, history, social sciences and natural sciences. To Meyenberg, art is a tool that helps to unearth that host of historical layers that has been left forgotten, making all the elements come into play to reach an “aesthetic whole”. He also considers video editing as a key process in his work. It is from there where he explores the aesthetic potential of images, where he plays with the possibilities they offer, their relationships, and through precise observations, he discovers new meanings, and new ideas.
Meyenberg graduated from Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas (National School of Plastic Arts) at UNAM. He has a Master’s degree in Visual Arts from the Berlin University of the Arts, Germany (UdK, Berlin) where he studied under the mentorship of German artist Rebecca Horn. His work is part of some public art collections such as the MUAC, Museo Amparo, National Institute of Fine Art (INBA), Telefónica Foundation, Museo Tamayo, Benetton Foundation. He has participated in numerous solo and collective exhibitions both nationally and internationally. He is currently part of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores (National System of Creators). Meyenberg lives and works in Mexico City.

erickmeyenberg.com

RODERIC (Monterrey)

Roderic is the pseudonym of the musician Rodrigo Ortiz. His music is not attached to any specific music genre, but seeks poetic arrangements of emotions that are influenced by jazz, blues, Balkan, psychedelic, African, Latin and trance. His first album was Perfect Mirror (2016) and was preceded by It All Depends (2018).

Martha Uc (México)

She is an editor, photographer, producer and filmmaker. Some of her films and video-editing works are Nos hicieron noche (2021), Sanjuaneros (2020), Ayotzinapa. El paso de la tortuga (2018), The Guy from Oklahoma (2016), Los otros mexicanos (2015), El patio de mi casa (2015) among others. She was director of Estela (2011) and cinematographer of Bajo Tortura (2013) and Estela (2011).

Natalia Pérez Turner

Cellist and improviser. Member of the Generación Espontánea, Filera Trio, and Ensamble Liminar. She divides her time between contemporary music, improvisation and collaboration with artists from other disciplines such as dance, visual arts, theater, performance, literature and children’s shows. She was a FONCA scholarship recipient during the period 2005-06 (performer) with the projects “La cellista es una instalación” (Cellist is an installation) that offered contemporary music recitals for cello performed only at museums and art galleries. She has composed music for short films, video art theater and dance.

DANIEL BUREN

DANIEL BUREN (France, 1938)
DE LA ROTONDA DE LA FUENTE. CINCO COLORES PARA MÉXICO, 2018

In situ work, memorial to architect Manuel Tolsá

Marble, aluminum and colored glass

Daniel Buren’s work revolves around the abstraction of the form through lines and color; his artistic proposal is framed within the fields of architecture and urbanism. With his in situ work, he highlights certain aspects of the buildings and spaces he intervenes, and as a result he also has an impact on the landscape. Ultimately, his compositions address the relationship between human beings and their physical surroundings.

The artwork exhibited here was thought up and created to fit the central fountain of the ARTZ Pedregal complex. In doing so, the artist opened a dialogue with the space and its surroundings, by combining simple materials, geometric figures and solid colors that coexist with the water and the natural light.

Daniel Buren (France, 1938) have been working over five decades on the intersection between art, architecture and space. In the 60s developed the idea of the “degree zero of painting” as he called it, to play with the means and their relationship with the support and medium that made possible a work of art. His intervention projects are conceived and created in situ, borrowing and coloring the spaces in which they are presented. These pieces are meant to question how we look and perceive, as well as the way space can be used and appropriated. Buren’s work has been presented in museums, public spaces and art institutions from Germany, Belgium, United States, Spain, France, Italy and Mexico, among others.

AI WEIWEI

AI WEIWEI (China, 1957)
FOREVER, 2013

Stainless steel

Forever is China’s most popular bicycle brand and it has been mass-produced in Shanghai since 1940.

The sculpture consists of a series of bicycles tortuously exhibiting their iterative shape. It prompts a reflection on the individual in Chinese society, where little by little metropolitan growth has led to the emergence of other means of transport which have replaced the use of bicycles. Today, the urbanism of contemporary Chinese metropolis has left their utility and social status marginalized and diminished.

On the other hand, you can’t help but notice his reference to the ready-mades or found objects from the early 20th century, where the bicycle is one of the most recognizable figures.

Ai Weiwei (China, 1957) is one of the leading artists and cultural of his generation, both for his artistic production and political activism. His work moves between modes of production and social investigation, which defined the forms of representation and composition of his art. Through sculptures, photography, performances, installations and ready-made —usually uniting craftmanship and conceptual work—, explores the human existence in relation to economic, political, natural and social forces. His work has been presented in museums, public spaces and art institutions from Germany, Austria, Brazil, United States, France, England, Israel, Mexico, Portugal and Turkey, among others.

TANIA CANDIANI

TANIA CANDIANI (Mexico, 1974)
KIOSKO SONORO, 2018

Steel structure, trumpets, tubes, concrete base.

To create this interactive piece, the artist used as a starting point a traditional kiosk, and the social and cultural role it plays in the public square.

The sound sculpture reflects on the historic burden contained within this type of construction. It does so through its structure, which comprises a reticulated installation of trumpets, connected via rigid hoses to a single transmission point that can be activated by the public. The piece then acquires new attributions by allowing for a direct personal experience in a public environment.

Tania Candiani (Mexico, 1974) is a multidisciplinary artist working in the intersection between art, literature, design, music, architecture, science and technology. Her projects plays and approach to the different symbolic and communication systems used daily, such as the phonetic, graphic, linguistic and technological languages. Thus, her works —performances, installations, objects, sculptures, actions— seeks to reflect on the different ways in which we relate each other as social and cultural beings. Candiani has been fellow of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de México (National System of Art Creators) since 2012 and represented Mexico at the 56th Venice Biennale. Her work has been presented in museums, public spaces and art institutions from Colombia, Cuba, United States, Italy, Lithuania, Mexico, Poland, United Kingdom and Russia, among others.

ABRAHAM CHÁVEZ

Abraham Chávez González (CDMX, 1988) is a multidisciplinary visual artist, graduated from ENPEG La Esmeralda and the Active School of Photography.
He has collaborated with various artists and participated in group and individual exhibitions in Mexico.
Chávez’s work focuses mainly on installation and sculpture. His work is inspired by cave paintings and petroglyphs, using neon and drawing as a means of expression to translate his ideas.

Abraham is co-founder of the independent space FRONTERA. This artist-run space offers residencies and also functions as a production house and workshop.

Abraham Chávez lives and works in CDMX.

IG @abrahamovich_3
IG @frontera_115

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This video is part of ARCHIVO ABIERTO, a project by Atelier Romo and Arte Abierto.

Enter here if you prefer to watch the video directly on our YouTube channel.

CREDITS

VIDEO EDITOR > Saulo Corona

MUSIC > ‘Dreamer’ – Hazy (cc)

PRODUCTION DESIGN > Sebastián Romo

DIEGO PÉREZ

Diego Pérez García (CDMX, 1975) is a multidisciplinary visual artist who began his career in photography, although stone sculptures have been the center of his practice in recent years and now, sand, which makes us reflect that we are a small moment on the timeline. This practice results from a combination of gardening, models and stone carving of different colors, textures and materials.

For Diego to imagine and daydream is vital, since he considers both a trigger for the creative act. He constantly searches for that limit that divides art from other types of objects, convinced that all material is an endless source of forms whose relationships do not end in the work, but extend to the environment and the viewer.

His individual exhibitions include Pasatiempo, in collaboration with Iván Krassoievitch, Galería Machete (2015); Nuestra casa sería un campamento, Museo Experimental El Eco (2013); Lo lejano hace señas a lo lejano, Sala de Proyectos Gamboa del Museo de Arte Moderno, Ciudad de México (2010); Sombra de sol, Künstlerresidenz Blumen, Leipzig, Alemania (2008); Topografía Próxima, Centro Fotográfico Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Oaxaca (2006) y Sólo para el viento existen las hojas de los árboles, Celda Contemporánea (2006). His work has been shown in various group exhibitions at the Juan José Arreola Lake House, Luis Adelantado Gallery, kurimanzutto, Jumex Collection, Carrillo Gil Art Museum and Contemporary Art University Museum. He has participated in artistic residencies in Germany, Canada and the United States. He was a beneficiary of the Bancomer-MACG Arte Actual Program (2008-2009) and the Young Creators program of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (2001-2002 and 2008-2009).

Diego Pérez lives and works in Mexico City.

diegoperez.org/
IG @zerepogeid

::::::::::::::::::::

This video is part of ARCHIVO ABIERTO, a project by Atelier Romo and Arte Abierto.

Enter here if you prefer to watch the video directly on our YouTube channel.

CREDITS

VIDEO EDITOR > Saulo Corona

MUSIC > ‘Atlas y un fósil’ – Banquer (cc)

PRODUCTION DESIGN > Sebastián Romo