Author: arte

ART & ARCHITECTURE DERIVES

The ideal of the multifamily apartment complex.

A conversation with Juan José Kochen.

We all know some Housing Unit in Mexico City, we have visited them or even lived in them. They are considered a symbol of modernity in our country, but what stories do they hide? And how have they defined the ways of life and the image of the capital?

Join us in our 8th Art and Achitecture Derive, Juan José Kochen will talk about the idea of ​​the multifamily apartment complex in Mexico City.

The term multi-family emerged to identify a grouped housing typology –at different levels– to accommodate homes based on a social unit for the transformation of collective relations in the urban landscape.

Between notions of progress, modernization, “stabilizing development” and the “Mexican miracle”, the Welfare State built houses with squares, parks, gardens, murals, public art and infrastructure to add cities within the city.

How was the multi-family experience? What did we learn and what did we forget? Multifamily homes are the modern utopia of a Mexico without neighborhoods.

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The ideal of the multifamily apartment complex.
A conversation with Juan José Kochen.

  • Saturday, September 27, 2022
  • 13:00h
  • At Espacio Arte Abierto, located on the second floor 2 in Artz Pedregal
  • Free admission

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No registration needed.

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Juan José Kochen
Architect and publisher. He studied Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Journalism at the Carlos Septién García School of Journalism and a master’s degree in Analysis, Theory and History of Architecture at UNAM. He wrote for the newspaper Reforma, was editor of Arquine, consultant to the General Subdirectorate of Sustainability and Technology of Infonavit, fellow of the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt), of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and of the Youth Program Creators of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA) on two occasions. He is the author of La utopía como modelo, a professor at the Universidad Iberoamericana and director of the ICA Foundation.

TW @kochenjj

Arte Abierto continues with its new public program “Derivas de arte y arquitectura”, which seeks to renew our gaze on the architectural legacy of Mexico City. From a series of talks focused on rescuing the parallel stories of emblematic architectural projects and public spaces that have witnessed the variable intersection between art and architecture. In this first stage, the program deals mainly with modern architecture, based on a series of talks given by invited curators, architects, artists and urban planners.

With this program, ways of returning to architecture part of its public, experiential, collective character and close to those of us who inhabit the city are tested, recognizing in it its condition as a living archive. From these talks, circumstances, contexts and anecdotes are revealed that have been part of his sensitive memory and that complement his material memory, a relationship that often escapes documentary narratives and academic accounts.

The objective of the drifts is to generate experiences of spatial rediscovery, which allow us to renew our gaze on the legacy of certain emblematic architectural and artistic works, as well as those that have been forgotten.

The derives will be carried out free of charge on the last Saturday of each month, at 1:00 p.m. with a limited capacity.

Arte Abierto Derives :

February 26: Tania Ragasol / Entorno urbano, cotidianidad y arte: La Torre de los Vientos by Gonzalo Fonseca

March 26 : David Miranda / Del Animal Herido y otros eventos escultóricos dentro de la arquitectura moderna

April 23: Gustavo Lipkau y Xavier Hierro / Integración plástica de los edificios del campus central de CU: sus murales

May 28: Marisol Argüelles / La casa-estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo. Del espacio doméstico a la dimensión de lo público

June 25: Luis Javier de la Torre/ La Ruta de la Amistad MÉXICO68… más allá de 1968

July 30: Aldo Solano/ Architecture for playing in 20th Century Mexico City.

August 27: Christian del Castillo/ Tracing the modern in the architecture of the Historic Center of Mexico City.

September 24: Juan José Kochen/ The ideal of the multifamily apartment complex.

BETWEEN INTUITIONS AND ACTIONS

HOW WAS THE EXHIBITION THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE CREATED?

A CONVERSATION WITH ERICK MEYENBERG AND ROBERTO VELÁZQUEZ

DESCRIPTION

Arte Abierto’s Program continues with the activities linked to the current exhibition with a talk on the production processes and the implications of making an audiovisual and ceramic exhibition such as Things We Do for Love possible.

  • Thursday, September 22, 2022
  • Time: 17:30 hr
  • All audiences
  • Free admission

BETWEEN INTUITIONS AND ACTIONS: HOW WAS THE EXHIBITION THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE CREATED?

A conversation with Erick Meyenberg and Roberto Velázquez about the production processes and the implications of making an audiovisual and ceramic exhibition such as Things We Do for Love possible.

During the production process of  Things We Do for Love, there were a series of encounters and disagreements with different materials and supports that, despite the technical distances, made the project an assembled whole. Thus, this exhibition is an example of how the complexities of artistic practice and its transformations as a result of the multiple perspectives and actions that intervene in its production can be addressed.

This conversation with Erick Meyenberg and Roberto Velázquez, Director of Planning and Operations at Arte Abierto, will be a journey through the various collaborations that shaped the project, recounting the intuitions, actions, voices and finally, the matters that were involved. in its elaboration, such as ceramics, video, sound or museography itself.

Some of the questions that will guide the discussion are: How were the video and ceramic pieces in the exhibition created? What does it mean to mount an exhibition of these dimensions? What kind of knowledge, knowledge and trades are involved in the artistic creation and exhibitions?

For Arte Abierto it is essential to expose the collaborative nature of art through exhibitions that, like this one, arise from a process and an exchange of ideas, thoughts and feelings.

 

Roberto Velázquez

He is Director of Planning and Operations at Arte Abierto. He has experience in directing and coordinating artistic projects, as well as advising on the construction of museums and designing cultural management and administration programs for different institutions, exhibition spaces and warehouses specializing in the storage of works of art, such as the Museo Jumex, Jumex Collection Ecatepec, Arte Abierto para Sordo Madaleno Arquitectos and other private collections.

He is the founder and operational director of Oficina Particular, specialized in the management, development and construction of art and museum projects, as well as institutional strategies and artistic content programs.

IG: @robvelasquezsu

Erick Meyenberg

He 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 research on topics such as literature, history, social sciences and natural sciences. He considers the editing process fundamental in his work, from where he explores the aesthetic potential of images.

He is a graduate of the National School of Plastic Arts of the UNAM. He has an MA in Visual Arts from the University of the Arts, Berlin, Germany (UdK, Berlin) where he studied under the mentorship of German artist Rebecca Horn. His work is part of some public collections such as the MUAC of the UNAM, Amparo Museum, the National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA), the Telefónica Foundation, Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art (Mexico) and the Benetton Foundation, (Italy) . He has participated in numerous collective and individual exhibitions nationally and internationally.

Currently, he is part of the National System of Creators. Meyenberg lives and works in Mexico City.

erickmeyenberg.com/
IG: @erickmeyenberg


Erick Meyenberg’s show Things We Do for Love, is open from Tuesday to Sunday from July 24 to December 18, 2022 at Espacio Arte Abierto, located on the second floor in ARTZ Pedregal in Mexico City.
Fee $ 35 pesos.

ARTZ Pedregal: Periférico Sur 3720, Jardines del Pedregal, Álvaro Obregón, Mexico City.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE DERIVES

CONVERSATION WITH CHRISTIAN DEL CASTILLO

TRACING THE MODERN IN THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE HISTORIC CENTER OF MEXICO CITY.

• Live conversation with Christian del Castillo.

• Saturday, August 27, 2022. at 1:00 pm.

• The event will be held at Espacio Arte Abierto, located on the 2nd floor in Artz Pedregal.

• Free admission.

If you need to know more about this Derive, please click here to enter Arte Abierto’s Public Program page.

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Christian del Castillo
He is an architect from UNAM, where he also studied a Master’s degree in Analysis, Theory and History with a focus on Mathias Goeritz and his contribution to Mexican architecture in the second half of the 20th century. He was curator and coordinator of the Micro-urbanism program of Casa Vecina (2013-2017). He is co-author of The Goeritz Guide (Arquine, 2015), author of Rastreando lo moderno, arquitectura en el Centro Histórico de la ciudad de México 1930-1960 (Casa vecina: Foundation of the Historic Center of Mexico City, 2017) and co-author of Mathias Goeritz: Espacio creativo (University of Guadalajara / CUAAD, 2019). He was a fellow of the Young Creators program of FONCA 2014-2015, in the Architectural Design category with the project “Possibilities of an emergency architecture”, the same project that was part of the exhibition “Mexicalidad. Design and new generations” carried out by the MODO museum (2018-2021).

<Arte Abierto>’s Art and Architecture Derives is a program of routes proposed by invited curators, architects, artists and urban planners, to explore a series of architectural spaces and significant artistic interventions in public spaces in Mexico City. The purpose of the derives is to generate experiences of spatial rediscovery, which renew our view of the legacy of certain architectural and artistic works, both emblematic and forgotten.

The derives are held the last Saturday of each month of 2022 at 12:00 p.m. Free entry. Limited seating.

DERIVES OF ART & ACHITECTURE

Tracing the modern in the architecture of the Historic Downtown of Mexico City.

A conversation with Christian del Castillo.

In our 7th Derive of Art and Achitecture we are joined by Christian del Castillo, who will talk to us about the modern architecture of the Historic Downtown of Mexico City.

The architectural imagery of the Historic Downtown of Mexico City is mainly nourished by the typologies of colonial architecture and the beginning of the 20th century, including pre-Hispanic architecture. It is a space where buildings from different eras and contexts overlap that have defied the passage of time, real estate speculation and the expiration of their materials.

Seeking to expand this imaginary, this conversation invites us to rediscover the projects and buildings —still standing— designed by those architects whose work was oriented towards the banner of modernity and who also emerged from the dialogues between plastic integration and the artistic avant-garde in Mexico.

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This talk that seeks to find modernity in the architecture of the Historic Downtown of Mexico City.
A conversation with Christian del Castillo.

  • Saturday, August 27, 2022
  • 13:00h
  • At Espacio Arte Abierto, located on the second floor 2 in Artz Pedregal
  • Free admission

>>
No registration needed.

>>

Christian del Castillo
He is an architect from UNAM, where he also studied a Master’s degree in Analysis, Theory and History with a focus on Mathias Goeritz and his contribution to Mexican architecture in the second half of the 20th century. He was curator and coordinator of the Micro-urbanism program of Casa Vecina (2013-2017). He is co-author of The Goeritz Guide (Arquine, 2015), author of Rastreando lo moderno, arquitectura en el Centro Histórico de la ciudad de México 1930-1960 (Casa vecina: Foundation of the Historic Center of Mexico City, 2017) and co-author of Mathias Goeritz: Espacio creativo (University of Guadalajara / CUAAD, 2019). He was a fellow of the Young Creators program of FONCA 2014-2015, in the Architectural Design category with the project “Possibilities of an emergency architecture”, the same project that was part of the exhibition “Mexicalidad. Design and new generations” carried out by the MODO museum (2018-2021).
www.christiandelcastillo.com/
FB @anarchitecture

Click here to see Christian del Castillo’s publication Rastreando lo moderno, arquitectura en el Centro Histórico de la ciudad de México 1930-1960.

Arte Abierto continues with its new public program “Derivas de arte y arquitectura”, which seeks to renew our gaze on the architectural legacy of Mexico City. From a series of talks focused on rescuing the parallel stories of emblematic architectural projects and public spaces that have witnessed the variable intersection between art and architecture. In this first stage, the program deals mainly with modern architecture, based on a series of talks given by invited curators, architects, artists and urban planners.

With this program, ways of returning to architecture part of its public, experiential, collective character and close to those of us who inhabit the city are tested, recognizing in it its condition as a living archive. From these talks, circumstances, contexts and anecdotes are revealed that have been part of his sensitive memory and that complement his material memory, a relationship that often escapes documentary narratives and academic accounts.

The objective of the drifts is to generate experiences of spatial rediscovery, which allow us to renew our gaze on the legacy of certain emblematic architectural and artistic works, as well as those that have been forgotten.

The derives will be carried out free of charge on the last Saturday of each month, at 1:00 p.m. with a limited capacity.

Arte Abierto Derives :

February 26: Tania Ragasol / Entorno urbano, cotidianidad y arte: La Torre de los Vientos by Gonzalo Fonseca

March 26 : David Miranda / Del Animal Herido y otros eventos escultóricos dentro de la arquitectura moderna

April 23: Gustavo Lipkau y Xavier Hierro / Integración plástica de los edificios del campus central de CU: sus murales

May 28: Marisol Argüelles / La casa-estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo. Del espacio doméstico a la dimensión de lo público

June 25: Luis Javier de la Torre/ La Ruta de la Amistad MÉXICO68… más allá de 1968

July 30: Aldo Solano/ Architecture for playing in 20th Century Mexico City.

August 27: Christian del Castillo/ Tracing the modern in the architecture of the Historic Center of Mexico City.

MEMORY BEAT

CERAMIC WRITING WORKSHOP

WITH SANDRA SÁNCHEZ

DESCRIPTION

Arte Abierto begins the Public Program activities linked to the exhibition Things We Do for Love with a ceramic writing workshop taught by Sandra Sánchez.

  • Saturday August 20, 2022.
  • Time: 12:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
  • Aimed at all public: children, youth and adults.
  • Limited admission | Prior registration at info@arteabierto.org
  • This workshop is free.

MEMORY BEAT

This workshop is an invitation to explore personal memory through narrative, visual and tactile writing. We will investigate our own history and translate specific experiences into forms, sensations, intensities and flows.

Ceramics will allow us to capture not only stories and figures, but also forces, footprints and body movements. In addition to making an inquiry about intimacy and writing. The result will be a piece of pottery that each participant can take home, like a talisman.

No prior knowledge is required.

IMPORTANT: As we will be working on low-temperature ceramics, after the workshop, we will keep your piece for burning. A week later we will have the piece already fired and enameled available for you to pick up at Arte Abierto.

 

Sandra Sánchez Writes in different media, including ceramics. Her current research focuses on modes of collaborative writing and proposals for production and reception beyond the aesthetic relationship “artist-work-spectator”. In 2015 she founded Zona de Desgaste, a space dedicated to mediation, writing and critical reflection on contemporary art and art philosophy. She currently edits OndaMx magazine, leads Aeromoto Library and teaches at Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana.

IG: @phiopsia


Erick Meyenberg’s show Things We Do for Love, is open from Tuesday to Sunday from July 24 to December 18, 2022 at Espacio Arte Abierto, located on the second floor in ARTZ Pedregal in Mexico City.
Fee $ 35 pesos.

ARTZ Pedregal: Periférico Sur 3720, Jardines del Pedregal, Álvaro Obregón, Mexico City.

BREAK THE BEAT

THIS FRIDAY BREAK THE BEAT COLLECTIVE MIXES

This Friday, August 12, you are welcome to join PASTNOIR – @pastnoir_beats y sus alumnos de la quinta sesión de BREAK THE BEAT – Mezclas Colectivas. Este grupo lo integran: Nancy Díaz, aka NANNPOWER (@nannpower), Diego García, aka OXES (@el_oxes) and Yael Flores, aka YAEL_FT (@yael_ft).

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The Collective Mixes begin at 4:00 pm at Arte Abierto.

Join us this Friday August 12, 2022 at our live sessions.

AUGUST 2022
PASTNOIR – @pastnoir_beats

GROUP 5
Mentorship (zoom) 08.08.2022 _ 7:00pm – 8:00pm
Live (at Artz) 08.12.2022 _ 4:00pm – 7:00pm

GROUP 6
Mentorship (zoom) 08.22.2022 _ 7:00pm – 8:00pm
Live (at Artz) 08.26.2022 _ 4:00pm – 7:00pm

As part of our Public Program we designed BREAK THE BEAT – Collective Mixes. It is an experience created for young adults and teens 15 and over, where they will learn music mixing basic principles with on line tutorials and mentorship with a professional DJ. Young adults will be able to explore music through DJing culture. After the mentorship they will have the chance to mix and experience with their favorite music in a live performance for their friends and music community from a profesional DJ booth at Arte Abierto Garden.

This link will take you to the Break the Beat site to learn about rules and registration.

>>

Arte Abierto’s garden is located on the 2nd floor of ARTZ Pedregal: Periférico Sur 3720, Jardines del Pedregal, Álvaro Obregón, Mexico City.

DERIVES OF ART & ACHITECTURE

Architecture for playing in 20th Century Mexico City.

A conversation with Aldo Solano Rojas.

For the sixth session of Derives of Art and Achitecture in Arte Abierto our guest is Aldo Solano Rojas, who will talk about one of the fields where architecture was most experienced in 20th-century Mexico City: play areas or playgrounds, a typology that attracted architects and artists for its playful, uncertain and innovative quality.

During the first two thirds of the 20th century, the Modern Movement applied its principles in architecture and urban planning. In Mexico this resulted in a city full of buildings, squares and parks that obeyed different ideas and architectural principles.

Through the playgrounds, the principles of plastic integration were applied, also influenced by participatory sculpture and pedagogical currents. This talk reviews the history and evolution of playgrounds in Mexico, their importance as creators of public space and as an important fundamental typology for the history of Mexican architecture.

Click here if you want to see the digital version of the book Playgrounds of Modern Mexico by Aldo Solano Rojas.

 

>> 

Live talk: Architecture for playing in 20th Century Mexico City.
With Aldo Solano.

  • Saturday, July 30, 2022
  • 13:00h
  • At Espacio Arte Abierto, located on the second floor 2 in Artz Pedregal
  • Free admission

>>
No registration needed.

>>

Aldo Solano Rojas (Mexico City, 1986)
He is a teacher in Art History from the University of Granada, Spain; he is specialized in historical Mexican industrial design and its application to public space, as well as in children’s street furniture. He is the author of Playgrounds of Modern Mexico, a publication supported by Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo and edited by Promotora Cultural Cubo Blanco. He is a doctoral candidate in Art History with a research on public space and his interventions in the years of activity of the Modern Movement by the Institute of Aesthetic Research of the UNAM.

< Arte Abierto > continues with its new public program “Derivas de arte y arquitectura”, which seeks to renew our gaze on the architectural legacy of Mexico City. From a series of talks focused on rescuing the parallel stories of emblematic architectural projects and public spaces that have witnessed the variable intersection between art and architecture. In this first stage, the program deals mainly with modern architecture, based on a series of talks given by invited curators, architects, artists and urban planners.

With this program, ways of returning to architecture part of its public, experiential, collective character and close to those of us who inhabit the city are tested, recognizing in it its condition as a living archive. From these talks, circumstances, contexts and anecdotes are revealed that have been part of his sensitive memory and that complement his material memory, a relationship that often escapes documentary narratives and academic accounts.

The objective of the drifts is to generate experiences of spatial rediscovery, which allow us to renew our gaze on the legacy of certain emblematic architectural and artistic works, as well as those that have been forgotten.

The derives will be carried out free of charge on the last Saturday of each month, at 1:00 p.m. with a limited capacity.

Arte Abierto Derives :

February 26: Tania Ragasol / Entorno urbano, cotidianidad y arte: La Torre de los Vientos by Gonzalo Fonseca

March 26 : David Miranda / Del Animal Herido y otros eventos escultóricos dentro de la arquitectura moderna

April 23: Gustavo Lipkau y Xavier Hierro / Integración plástica de los edificios del campus central de CU: sus murales

May 28: Marisol Argüelles / La casa-estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo. Del espacio doméstico a la dimensión de lo público

June 25: Luis Javier de la Torre/ La Ruta de la Amistad MÉXICO68… más allá de 1968

July 30: Aldo Solano/ Architecture for playing in 20th Century Mexico City.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE DERIVES

Arte Abierto’s Art and Architecture Derives is a program of routes proposed by invited curators, architects, artists and urban planners, to explore a series of architectural spaces and significant artistic interventions in public spaces in Mexico City. The purpose of the derives is to generate experiences of spatial rediscovery, which renew our view of the legacy of certain architectural and artistic works, both emblematic and forgotten.

The derives are held the last Saturday of each month of 2022 at 12:00 p.m. Free entry. Limited seating.

CONVERSATION WITH ALDO SOLANO

PLAYGROUNDS ARCHITECTURE IN 20TH CENTURY MEXICO CITY.

• Live conversation with Aldo Solano.

• Saturday, July 30, 2022. at 1:00 pm.

• The event will be held at Espacio Arte Abierto, located on the 2nd floor in Artz Pedregal.

• Free admission.

One of the fields in which the architecture of the Modern Movement in Mexico was most experimented with was that of playgrounds, a typology that attracted architects and artists for its playful, uncertain and novel quality.

Click here to see the book Playgrounds of Modern Mexico by Aldo Solano Rojas.

>>

ALDO SOLANO ROJAS (Mexico City, 1986)
He is a teacher in Art History from the University of Granada, Spain; he has specialized in Mexican historical industrial design and its application to public space, as well as in children’s street furniture. He is the author of Playgrounds of Modern Mexico, a publication supported by Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo and edited by Promotora Cultural Cubo Blanco. He is a doctoral candidate in Art History with a research on public space and his interventions in the years of activity of the Modern Movement by the Institute of Aesthetic Research at UNAM.

BREAK THE BEAT

ARTE ABIERTO’S PUBLIC PROGRAM CREATED FOR YOUNG PEOPLE CONTINUES

Open call for July and August, 2022 mentorship and live sessions.

JULY 2022
ESA MI PAU – @esamipau

GROUP 3
Mentorship (zoom) 07.18.2022 _ 7:00pm – 8:00pm
Live (at Artz) 07.22.2022 _ 4:00pm – 7:00pm

GROUP 4
Mentorship (zoom) 07.25.2022 _ 7:00pm – 8:00pm
Live (at Artz) 07.29.2022 _ 4:00pm – 7:00pm

AUGUST 2022
PASTNOIR – @pastnoir_beats

GROUP 5
Mentorship (zoom) 08.08.2022 _ 7:00pm – 8:00pm
Live (at Artz) 08.12.2022 _ 4:00pm – 7:00pm

GROUP 6
Mentorship (zoom) 08.22.2022 _ 7:00pm – 8:00pm
Live (at Artz) 08.26.2022 _ 4:00pm – 7:00pm

BREAK THE BEAT – Collective Mixes is an experience designed for teen over 15 years old where they will learn music mixing basic principles with on line tutorials and mentorship with a professional DJ. Young adults will be able to explore music through DJing culture. After the mentorship they will have the chance to mix and experience with their favorite music in a live performance for their friends and music community from a profesional DJ booth at Arte Abierto Garden.

This link will take you to the Break the Beat site to learn about rules and registration.

>>

Arte Abierto’s garden is located on the 2nd floor of ARTZ Pedregal: Periférico Sur 3720, Jardines del Pedregal, Álvaro Obregón, Mexico City.

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.