Galeria Luisa Strina is pleased to announce the third solo exhibition by Mateo López, Hesitante, from June 29 to August 21, 2021, in which the Colombian artist exhibits ten works in different media: drawing, video, sculpture, and installation.
These are works that explore the idea of play, movement and activation of the exhibition space.
Following his inventive research on the spatialization of drawing, López extrapolates to the exhibition space different systems of lines and grids: in Palenquera (2021), for example, a modular structure similar to a scaffolding, but produced by hand with wood, suggests a body in movement, with monochromatic cotton fabrics serving as garments for this abstracted body. The inspiration for the work comes from fruit sellers on the streets of Cartagena, known as “palenqueras”. The term has its origins in San Basilio de Palenque, Department of Bolivar, near the Caribbean coast of Colombia, where the settlement was formed in the...18th century, one of the oldest quilombos in the Americas. The women of this community carried fruit collected in the crops in baskets upon their heads to sell in the city, ensuring their livelihood this way. Nowadays, the “palenqueras” of Cartagena, who wear colorful clothes and carry the fruit for sale in bowls on their heads, constitute an intangible cultural heritage like the Bahian acarajé sellers in Salvador.
Other works in the exhibition are an invitation to be activated by the viewer, such as Caja de Pinturas, Staccato, Bosque Paralelo, Monstera, Si Pero No. Although in the current context this idea of participation and interaction with others seems impossible, these pieces may continue persisting in provoking and making us think about our relationship with art in a more horizontal, playful, and less hierarchical way.
Some of the works originate from autobiographical anecdotes and his personal relationship with the history of art. An example is the series entitled Caja de Pintura, which carries a genesis of affective sphere, as the work’s design is originally inspired by a box of painting materials passed on by Mateo’s uncle, when he learned that he would study visual arts. Also modular, these works are made with binding boards layered with vinyl paint. The modular panels run through delicate grooves made in the box, generating intervals and internal spaces that allow the eyes to wander around the interior of the painting, as happens, for example, in the enjoyment of the works of Donald Judd.
Minimalism is a reference for López, who prefers, however, to oppose the monumentality of the North American movement with the more human scale of objects created by Brazilian concretism and neo-concretism. A tribute to the latter is in the work Monstera (2021), a foldable and manipulable abstraction of the Monstera Deliciosa plant from Araceae family, which grows in the courtyard of the artist's house in Bogotá, and that the visitor could wear like a parangolé, or inhabit like Lygia Clark's Poetic Shelter.
At the end of the room, at the back, is the exhibition's centerpiece, Corpos Disobedientes (2020-2021), an audiovisual projection that reinforces the aspect of human resilience in the midst of sanitary and political crises. The video is a documentation of a work commissioned by the Museo Banco de la Republica, filmed in collaboration with three dancers, Lobadys Perez, Ana Contreras, and Melissa Alvarez, in halls inside the museum in Bogotá. There, according to the artist, it was shocking to see the huge public library empty, with the newspapers of March 17, 2020 intact on the table. That Tuesday, the 17th, was the day the lockdown began in the city of López, four days after our fateful Friday, the 13th, in São Paulo. Upon receiving authorization to carry out the project of the videos in shut down spaces, intending a solo exhibition scheduled for July this year, Mateo López says that the proposed occupation of spaces by the bodies of dancers gained more strength, given the state of suspension in which he found corridors, amphitheater, auditorium, library, and exhibition rooms during a technical visit to the closed museum due to the pandemic.
In the artist's words: “the title, Cuerpos Disobedientes, came to my mind performing the activations in space. And it was specifically in the auditorium of the Luis Ángel Arango Library where Melissa -one of the dancers- moved over the chairs of the auditorium in a very anarchic manner and contrary to the norms of behavior in public spaces of specific use that “the disobedient body” occurred me and I believe that when everyone sees it, we feel this freedom. My work is precise, meticulous and over time I learned to deal with chaos, to make something out of chaos at a time when we were made to believe that everything is under control."
About the Artist
Mateo López (Bogotá, 1978) practices speak of cartographies, journeys and construction processes while revolving around the themes of chance, encounter, time, and the connection of events that take place in our daily life. His work traces a conceptual approach and expands from drawings to installations, architecture, films and sculptural coreographys.
Recent solo shows include: Si Pero No, Casa Republicana, Museo Banco de la Republica, Bogotá (2021); Hesitante, Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo (2021); Goodman Gallery, London (2020); Travesía Cuatro, Mexico City (2020); Ruta del Castor, Mexico City (2020); Bodega Piloto, Bogota (2019); Travesía Cuatro, Madrid (2019); Casey Kaplan, New York (2019); Travesía Cuatro, Guadalajara (2018); Blue Project Foundation, Barcelona (2018); Drawing Center, New York (2017); Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo (2016); Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York (2015); Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo (2011).
Recent group shows: Goodman Gallery, Cape Town (2019); KMAC Museum, Louisville (2019); Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, (2019); Contemporary Art from the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Puebla (2019); Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (2018); Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá (2018); Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2017); MuBE, São Paulo (2017); MoMA, New York (2017); MANA Contemporary, Jersey City (2016); UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2016); Drawing Room, London (2015).
Collections which his work is part of include: MoMA Museum of Modern Art, USA; CACI Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim, Brazil; Banco de la Republica, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, Colombia; CIFO Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, USA; Coleção Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Venezuela and USA; Coleção Berezdivin, Puerto Rico.
Entrada actualizada el el 21 jun de 2021
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