El Espacio 23 |

Mathias Goeritz (b. 1915, Poland; d. 1990, Mexico)

Mensaje num. 5 Timoteo 6:6, 1959
Perforated tin on velvet on panel

Mensaje num. 5 Timoteo 6:6 is an early example of Mensajes (Messages) series, which the artist initiated in 1958 after the death of his first wife. He referred to these metal pieces, covered in gold-leaf as “material prayers,” describing how the light reflected on their surfaces dematerializes them, like matter being transformed into spirit. Six gold plaques are placed on a red velvet background within this collection work, each displaying sequences of nail-hammered perforations. Five create rectangular shapes and linear compositions, with the remaining piece displaying an angulated serpent form. The latter is a recurrent symbol within the artist’s practice, most famously used in his large metal sculpture El Serpiente, made for his Museo Experimental El Eco in 1953, and influenced by Mexican Pre-Hispanic stone sculptures. Serpents are associated with several Mexican gods, such as Quetzalcoatl (‘Feathered Serpent’), Xiuhcoatl (‘Fire Serpent’), Mixcoatl (‘Cloud Serpent’) or Coatlicue (‘She of the Serpent Skirt’).

Sam Gilliam (b. 1933, United States; d. 2022, United States)

Empty, 1972
Acrylic on beveled-edge canvas

Sam Gilliam (b. 1933, United States; d. 2022, United States)

Baby’s Blue, ca. 1963
Oil on canvas

Ximena Garrido-Lecca (b. 1980, Peru)

Destilaciones V, 2016
Clay and cooper

Ximena Garrido-Lecca (b. 1980, Peru)

Aleaciones con memoria de forma II, 2014
Bronze and reed

A large gold-colored textile by Ximena Garrido Lecca is presented on the gallery floor. Titled Aleaciones con memoria de forma II (Shape Memory Alloys II), the piece is woven from bronze tubes. Bronze is an alloy made from copper and tin. Copper is one of the primary materials mined in the artist’s native Peru, an extractive industry that has had devastating ecological effects and has displaced many rural and indigenous communities. Peru is known for its rich indigenous textile traditions and the complexity involved in their production. Garrido Lecca’s piece becomes a complex portrait of the contemporary political and cultural landscape of Peru, as it tries to negotiate the long-term effects of its dependence on the mining industry.

Ana Gallardo (b. 1958, Argentina)

Niñxs Sicarios, from the series Dibujo textual, 2022
Charcoal and thread on cardboard

Child Sicarios (cartel hitmen)
I committed my first murder at the age of 16
From the shock of see how the torture the snitch, I vomited
They each grabbed a hand and cut it off
Finally we decapitated him.

Bernard Frize (b. 1954, France)

Éventuellement, 1998
Acrylic and resin on canvas

Helen Frankenthaler (b. 1928, United States; d. 2011, United States)

Vanilla, 1978
Acrylic on canvas

Helen Frankenthaler’s 1952 painting Mountains and Sea in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, is perhaps the work that most directly ties her explorations of abstraction to landscape, with its representational washes of green, pink, and aqua. Vanilla, from 1978 is distinctly more monochromatic than its processor, with its palette staying close to the colors of the organic material and flavor its title references. Golds, browns, and whites move horizontally and vertically across the canvas, applied with a diversity of densities, which range from thin washes that soak into the canvas, to thick globs that sit heavily on its surface. These layers construct the painting’s beautiful play between surface and depth, creating the sensation that we are looking into a clouded vista.

Francisco “Taka” Fernández (b. 1966, Mexico)

From the series Capítulo 20, 2014
Mixed media on canvas

Ayan Farah (b. 1978, United Arab Emirates)

Lunar sonora, 2022
Rust, indigo, and embroidery on linen

Jorge Eielson (b. 1924, Peru; d. 2006, Italy)

Quipus 79b, 1978
Painted canvas over wood

Quipu knots became the formal and conceptual focus of works by Jorge E. Eielson beginning in 1963. Used by various ancient cultures of the Andean region, including the Inca of the artist’s native Peru, these knotted strings are understood as having served as numerical devices for collecting data, such as census and tax records or calendrical information. The full meaning of these patterned knots remains enigmatic however, a quality that drew the artist to engage them as symbols of a sophisticated, but not fully accessible cultural past. Working primarily in Rome, Eielson was in dialogue with avant-garde painting tendencies and his works evidence transnational interests in the monochrome and shaped canvas experiments, by pulling and knotting his paintings’ canvases into Quipu knots, as in the all-white Quipus 79b.

Elena del Rivero (b. 1949, Spain)

Letter from the Bride (117), 1997
Needles, thread, and embroidery on paper

Olga de Amaral (b. 1932, Colombia)

Modular 77 (Agua 2), 1977
Wool and horsehair

Olga de Amaral (b. 1932, Colombia)

Lienzo 30, 2001
Linen, gesso, and acrylic

Olga de Amaral was one of the artists who revolutionized tapestry during the 1960s and promoted it as an art form of equal importance to that of painting or sculpture, is known for her recurrent use of gold. She first used gold in small works produced in 1975 titled Complete Fragments, but quickly expanded its use into large wall works and immersive installations. Her engagement with the material is tied to its symbolic uses within the Pre-Hispanic and Colonial Baroque contexts of her native Colombia, with her titles emphasizing its references to the sun. Silver is additionally prevalent within her practice, as a symbol of the moon.

While celestial, landscape and ritual references appear in many of de Amaral’s titles, equally recurrent are notes on seriality, references that nod to her Post-Minimalist interests. This is the case with the two works included in the show, titled Lienzo 30 and Modular 77 (Agua 2), with the latter prominently displayed on the entrance wall. Lienzo 30 is made of densely layered threads of silver, lavender tones. These are held within a structure that can be displayed in two distinct ways. The first is flat, like a painting, the second suspended from the ceiling, allowing its threads to hang outward and vertically at different lengths, creating a more sculptural situation. The experimental nature of the artist’s practice is revealed in each artworks three-dimensionality, through which they seek a directly phenomenological relationship with the viewer’s body, an interaction not traditionally associated with weavings and tapestry.

Gene Davis (b. 1920, United States; d. 1985, United States)

Monet’s Garden, 1980
Acrylic and graphite on canvas

Gene Davis (b. 1920, United States; d. 1985, United States)

Three Sisters, ca. 1982
Acrylic on canvas

Gene Davis and Kenneth Noland, both featured in this exhibition, were principal artists in what became known as ‘Color Field Painting.’ They were influenced in the 1950s by Helen Frankenthaler’s stained-canvas techniques, which represented a formal and conceptual integration of paint and ground, involving diluted acrylic paint being soaked into the threads of her canvases. Each of them experimented with their own versions of similar processes. The two paintings by Gene Davis in the exhibition display variations on compositions made up of thin lines of stained paint. In Three Sisters these lines are compartmentalized into three vertical sections, while in Monet’s Garden the entire surface is covered with these delicately stained lines. The precision and tight placement of these lines dialogue with how thread is positioned within weaving or embroidery.

Yanira Collado (b. 1975, United States)

Penumbras para Apambichao 5, 2022
Textile sourced from men’s Palm Beach suits (1920s and 1950–70s), paper, paint, cardboard, ink, and mixed media

Cut pieces of fabric serve as surrogates for historical and emotional trauma in several works in this gallery, including Yanira Collardo’s Penumbras para Apambichao 5. This vertical, portal-like piece is based on the artist’s research of the Apambichao music of the Dominican Republic and how it offered a slower version of cumbia for the North American soldiers who were stationed on the island in the 1950s. These soldiers wore white uniforms within these dancehalls, cut fragments of which are included in Collardo’s artwork. She layers these pieces of fabric with others that reference the cultural mixing that structure Dominican identity, which include African, Islamic, Chinese, and European sources.

Manuel Chavajay (b. 1982, Guatemala)

Untitled, from the series “K’o q’iij ne t’i’lto’ ja juyu’ t’aq’aaj, 2023
Burnt motor oil, watercolor, and embroidery on cotton paper

Untitled, from the series “K’o q’iij ne t’i’lto’ ja juyu’ t’aq’aaj, 2023
Burnt motor oil, watercolor, and embroidery on cotton paper

Gabriel Chaile (b. 1985, Argentina)

Estado de espíritu I, 2022
Adobe and iron

Elizabet Cerviño (b. 1986, Cuba)

Recuento, 2022
Hand-woven sisal fiber

Carolina Caycedo (b. 1978, United Kingdom)

Sol Sonora del Sur, 2022
Hand-dyed artisanal ﬁshing net, lead weights, gold-plated polished steel plate, copper bells, jade stone, and brass keys

Sol Sonora del Sur is part of the sculptural Cosmotarrayas series. The title of the series combines references to the cosmos and atarraya, meaning “cast net” in Spanish. These weavings reference traditional fishing nets used by many indigenous communities throughout Latin America, with the title of this work specifically honoring those produced by the Yaqui tribe and used on the Yaqui River in the State of Sonora, Mexico.

The sculptures are part of an ongoing investigative project titled Be Damned, that the artist began along the Magdalena River in Colombia. She lived and worked in these waterside communities during the period before a massive dam was built, which blocked the river’s flow and had disastrous ecological and cultural effects on neighboring areas. The open or loose weave of the net sculptures represent the porous nature of borders between land, water, living beings and spiritual realms, as understood in the belief systems of traditional riverside communities, values being disregarded and lost within the context of these massive, militarized hydroelectrical projects.