Del marfil al color hígado [From Ivory to Liver-Tone] unfolds as a sustained exploration of the boundaries between matter and body. The project emerges from a persistent search to confer corporeal weight to the inanimate, activating the illusion of life in sculptural forms through gestures that move between the ritual and the everyday.
Halfway between the intimacy of the gesture and the resonance of the classical, the works combine diverse materials—such as makeup—with others of sculptural tradition and historical weight, like wax, silk, wood, or bronze. This friction between the domestic and the noble challenges conventional hierarchies, proposing a dialogue between the sensory experience of the body and the abstraction of being.
The installation generates a space where the sculptural seems to brush against the human, not through formal mimesis, but through its ability to evoke presence. Here, the inanimate takes on flesh, breathes life. From Ivory to Liver-Tone is a reflection on the possibility of inhabiting sculpture.
The exhibition departs from an approach that understands sculpture not as a closed, finished object, but as a bodily and ritual process, open to time, transformation, and sensory experience. In this transition, the use of everyday materials from the domestic sphere, such as makeup or parquet flooring from a home, is observed and worked through a sculptural lens. All of the project’s pieces originate from domestic objects to generate an ensemble that breathes life into inert materials, inhabiting them within the domestic space.
The project’s title establishes a direct reference to two classical sculptural materials: ivory and bronze. On the one hand, ivory evokes a symbolic relationship with the human bone, not only because of its whitish and yellowish tones, but also due to its history laden with corporeal connotations. On the other hand, “liver color” alludes to a specific patina applied to bronze in classical sculpture, known as hepatizon, which acquired a dark, reddish hue similar to that of the organ after which it was named. Both materials, in their tactile and visual qualities, seem to lean toward the idea of the body, as if the inanimate were attempting to simulate vital presence—signaling a symbolic passage from inert to living, and recovering the mythical gesture of Pygmalion.
Luna de Brillo/ Shinemoon is a drawing on carbon paper in which I transcribe the title of a painting made by my daughter Maya as she wrote it on the canvas itself. This title gives name to an exhibition and also to the book that accompanies the project in which this research is included (and which is titled Mayautics, a term coined by Ricardo Horcajada in a text that serves as the origin of the project).
From the Greek μαιευτικός (maieutikós, maieutiké) maieutics designates the art of the midwife and was the method used by Socrates so that, by means of questions, the student would discover knowledge already latent in him. Mayautics is the title of a long-term artistic project and Maya is the name of my daughter. It is also the name of one of the seven Pleiades, daughters of Atlas. Atlas was condemned by Zeus to forever carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. Zeus was so moved by the suffering of the daughters in the face of their father’s fate that he transformed them into stars so that they could be with him.
Mayautics is then an exploration of Maya’s drawings between the ages of two and five, but it is also an investigation of both the act of drawing and of the mechanisms of drawing itself. The project is articulated in different series each of which explores different aspects of drawing as a form of knowledge. It considers scribbling, the relationship between drawing and writing, the gestural dimension of drawing and its ability to express a vital energy that unfolds in an almost three-dimensional way.
Luna de Brillo/ Shinemoon is an exhibition and a book. Luna de Brillo/ Shinemoon is an enquiry into the distance—or the lack of it—between things.
– LFG
Appearances of Venus by Captain Cook is a series of three paper pieces that both open and close the exhibition. These works are made on carbon paper—they are the very same sheets I used to draw the artwork in the show.
These papers have been later overworked with drawings of the transit of Venus as recorded by Captain Cook. They are thus not only reused working materials but also surfaces where the image is constructed through subtraction: the drawings become visible as the carbon is removed, which reveals absence as a form of presence.
This fact interests me particularly as many of the artworks in the project explore the making visible of what lies on the margins of perception, what is not evident but refers to an act itself—whether it be the act of drawing or the tracing on the surface.
Eclipse 1764is composed by two blown and acid-etched glass panels that represent one of the first recorded total solar eclipses depicted schematically and diagrammatically. It continues a line of inquiry in which I use glass as a medium to explore cosmological phenomena that, although not directly part of our earthly plane, deeply affect it.
The eclipse functions here as a metaphor for beginnings and endings, for concealment and revelation. It also allows me to draw an analogy between the movement of celestial bodies and Maya’s drawings: they involve gestures that, like celestial motions, leave traces, marks, and trajectories, and impact their surroundings.
We know that eclipses affect not only the tides but also animal behavior, nature and by extension, ourselves. In that sense, we are essentially connected to these events: they are phenomena that intersect the biological, the symbolic, the cosmic, and the emotional realms.
In Eclipse 1764—as in other art pieces made in etched glass—I am interested in elements that do not solely belong to the realm of the visible or the everyday, but that are fundamental to understanding our existence and our place in the universe. The eclipse, with its symbolic power and real effects, offers a way to think about our connection to that which transcends us, to the cycles that shape us even when they are not always visible.
Transit of Venus 1759 is a piece made in acid-etched glass that features two diagrams of the transit of Venus observed that same year according to the records by Captain James Cook and the astronomer Charles Green during their expedition around the world. One of the main objectives of the journey was to reach Haiti to observe this astronomical phenomenon.
The study of the transit of Venus was crucial as it allowed for more accurate calculations of the distances between the planets and between the Earth and the Sun. This data was essential to understanding the dimension and composition of the Solar System and to advancing our knowledge of the universe.
This transit, along with the eclipses, serves as a starting point for reflecting on events that, while seemingly distant or unrelated to everyday life, have a profound impact on our being in the world. These astronomical phenomena connect us to something beyond our immediate experience, to a cosmic dimension that transcends the intimate and the familiar.
Through this artwork I aim to explore the link between scientific observation and the subjective experience of being in the world: how these astronomical events help us consider our existence not only from a personal standpoint but from a broader perspective in which we recognize ourselves as part of a greater whole—a cosmos to which we inevitably belong, which affects us and which we can affect.
Red 190521, Blue 190521, and Black 050621 are three artworks made using carbon sheets on Japanese paper accompanied by a digital print. Although independent, these pieces are the starting point of Mayautics.
Each piece begins with a scribble made by Maya when she was very young. I then extracted the original marks while I highlighted everything around the lines. This created a new composition that brought the peripheral—what is normally overlooked—into focus.
Once defined, the composition was scaled to Maya’s size at the time of the drawing, and then manually transcribed using carbon paper on Japanese paper. The result is an image where what is visible is not the mark itself but the space around it—it’s a way of making absence visible.
A color swatch extracted directly from Maya’s original drawings accompanies each piece of work. Thus the spontaneous and infantile gesture reappears not only through its indirect trace but also through the original mark’s color, which reveals an emotional and visual imprint.
These pieces are deeply intimate and rooted in domestic gestures but they also evoke cosmic images: nebulas, star maps, and formations of the universe. This duality between the intimate and the cosmic, the near and the distant, is central to this line of work.
In fact, this exploration gave rise to the graphic research project Mayautics in Blue, produced by invitation of the Fundación Banco Santander as part of its Derivada program. One piece from that series, Mayautics in Blue (Drawing), is also included in this exhibition.
In this body of work I am especially interested in the possibility of linking an intimate, primal, and innocent gesture—created in a space of trust and care—with the representation of something as vast as the cosmos—as if a small mark could contain an entire constellation.
Diagram 4, 3D Contour imagines what a flat image would look like if it were three-dimensional. This operation produces two objects: a digital print and a piece of compressed graphite where the drawing material itself becomes a three-dimensional object.
This move from plane to space seeks to explore the possibility of drawing as a cognitive object: not just as a mark on a two-dimensional surface, but as an entity capable of occupying and activating three-dimensional space.
In a similar vein, La medida entre—also made in compressed graphite and composite material—is a piece of work that considers and replicates Maya’s height at the time it was made. Here the graphite, a basic drawing material becomes a body, a volume, an object that exists in space.
Diagram 1, 3D Contour follows this same process: another diagram, another drawing, is subjected to a three-dimensional visualization and modeling. The result is a sort of monolithic, cryptic and dense object whose form may be difficult to decipher, but that directly refers to the original drawing from which it derives.
The Post-it series consists of drawings that mimic the well-known sticky notes of the same name. These pieces are made using chinée collé, where 3 x 3-inch paper fragments are adhered onto lager pieces of paper imitating the characteristic format of post-its.
On these fragments I used a lithographic pencil to reproduce drawings, doodles, and notes that Maya has left me over time. I often refer to these works as “false lithographs,” since they mimic both the process and the appearance of lithographic printmaking although they are hand-drawn.
This play between what appears to be and what really is especially interests me, as it refers to the idea of image reproducibility and the possibility of repeating—or reconstructing—something that is, in principle, unique.
Perro de paseo was made in collaboration with the Royal Tapestry Factory in Madrid and combines two textile techniques that are rarely used together: traditional tapestry and Turkish knotting, the latter commonly used in carpet-making. It integrates a drawing by Maya with one of her first writings—a transcribed note in which writing first appears as a form of expression.
However, this writing does not yet follow a conventional textual logic; the words appear non-sequentially and are more akin to drawing. This is evident in the arrangement of the letters, which do not follow a linear order but occupy the space visually or intuitively, according to what the child perceived as appropriate. These types of arrangements especially interest me because they evoke the early graphic gestures of child development, those initial moments when writing is not yet governed by a linear logic.
This textile work also represents one of the first explorations in which I begin to investigate the physicality of the line in drawing: how a pencil line can become a thread, and how that thread can weave, construct, and shape a material that moves away from the wall into the three-dimensional space. It is, therefore, a reflection on how drawing can acquire a body, volume, and texture, and shift from a graphic dimension to a sculptural one without losing its gestural and expressive quality.
YMAAis a neon tube that displays the letters of the name “Maya” out of order. Such sequence corresponds to the first time Maya wrote her name and recognized herself in those four characters. Clearly at that moment—as it happens during the learning of reading and writing—Maya did not yet grasp the importance of the order of the letters in constructing a legible message.
This notion of linear order—the idea that a specific sequence of signs produces a precise meaning—is particularly interesting to me as a contrast to a broader, more holistic conception of drawing. Unlike writing, which operates sequentially, drawing allows for multidimensional connections; it does not follow a linear logic but opens up a field of relationships where different elements may connect in non-explicit or non-grammatical ways.
In this piece—and others that also incorporate writing—I aim to explore what writing versus drawing implies. The choice of neon stems from an interest in exploring lines in drawing and their potential to extend beyond the two-dimensionality of paper into three-dimensional space. Neon tubing, by its nature, not only occupies volume but also emits light, intensifying the presence of the lines it creates.
The issue of light is in fact central to other works in the project such as Eclipse 1764 or Transit of Venus 1759, both made of blown glass and where illumination is essential for the works to be fully visible and appreciable. The transition from drawing to writing—that is, from free gesture to a temporally ordered conception of written language—and from three-dimensionality to flatness, are fundamental dimensions of my research.
Almendritais a series of large-format drawings in which I transcribe illustrations made by Maya from the story of the same name, Almendrita. These drawings represent different fragments of the tale that I reinterpreted by applying the rules of linear perspective to them—which is the visual representation system used in the Western pictorial tradition.
Through this process I aim to highlight how the gesture contained in a mark—in the drawing—is not merely a flat image on a piece paper but it can be understood as a three-dimensional gesture. That is: the act of drawing can be conceived as a movement that unfolds in space and not merely on the surface of a piece of paper.
This understanding of a gesture as something three-dimensional is crucial to the development of my research, and allows me to draw an analogy between Maya’s movements and gestures while drawing and the movements of the celestial bodies in the universe. I am interested in connecting the vital energy as it manifests in Maya’s drawings with the cosmic energy that is expressed in astronomical phenomena such as eclipses and transits. These events—in which the Sun is temporarily obscured by the Moon or Venus—are fundamental for understanding our planet and the solar system: they allow us to measure distances between planets, to calculate dimensions, and to better understand the structure of galaxies.
From a metaphorical perspective I thus propose that there is a relationship between an apparently innocuous gesture like a child’s mark and another similarly subtle gesture, like the transit of Venus or an eclipse. Both, whether discreet or spectacular, hold a deep significance that transcends their immediate manifestation.
AQUILO QUE O CORPO JÁ ESQUECEU
Sara Carneiro Luis M. S. Santos Nuno Silas Sofia Yala
Curator: Ângela Ferreira
Throughout the centuries, the human body has been one of the major subjects of interest for artists. If we consider that we, as human beings, inhabit our bodies, the fascination of artists with it is hardly surprising. However, over time, the way artists approach the human body has naturally evolved. In recent years, much has been written about the body, and the focus has shifted to the idea of the body as a vehicle of memory, as an expression of new understandings of sexuality and gender, and as a racialized body.
In a bold and unusual approach, Sara Carneiro’s video work Colonial Project (2020–23) tackles the vast metaphor of colonial horror and the subsequent historical amnesia of its processes through a mostly abstract visual language. Frequently using the idea of the fluidity of matter and materials as evocative reminders of the mineral exploitation that founded the colonial project, the images she creates refer to the imposed domination of the land through the palm that grasps and squeezes, to the virginal body of milk and sugar, to the hand’s traces that refer to memory (or its loss), to scorched earth, and to eyes extinguished by fire. The work is marked by a great subtlety, but also by an inherent violence.
The work of Nuno Silas is openly focused on the idea of constructing African identity through the representation of the body. The concept of identity is ever-present in this powerful series of collages and digital montages. The works in this exhibition come from various moments in his practice, with a special focus on the series The Intensity of Identity (2019–20). The constant use of his own portrait serves as the starting point for a narrative of the transformed and meaningful body. The artist employs methods similar to psychic automatism to construct his images. This technique, used by the Surrealists, consists of freeing the unconscious and allowing the line — or in this case, photographic imagery — to flow without constraint or judgment. In these images and this body, we see allusions to imagined feelings, migration, desire, spiritual forces, violence, and even magic. It is a political essay of personal expression.
In her artistic practice, Sofia Yala consistently turns to the use and interpretation of family photographic archives to invite us to retell stories and figures between Angola and Portugal. In the series Type here to Search (2020), through the language of computing and the Microsoft search bar, Yala adds a contemporary layer to the archive, making us realize that, as viewers of these images, we are compelled to mentally investigate. The artist tells us that in these images we also see people who, although present in family albums, remain unknown — emphasizing the importance of photographic archives of Black families. On the other hand, in the series The Body as an Archive (2020–21), Yala shows us history inscribed through archival memories written on the surface of the skin, as if history were marked on the body. As an example, the artist shares the story of her grandfather, who worked in the merchant navy, documenting the family’s transition into the present. Through her use of varied materials and timelines, Sofia Yala’s work gives form to the essence of hybridity.
The surprising sculptural journey of Luís Santos is firmly rooted in the space we, as viewers, physically inhabit. These assemblages, presented at an almost human scale, create a special sense of empathy because they materialize as figures. The three works presented here —Fragments of Being #3 (2023), TV Contraption (2022), Void (2022)— emerge as imaginative and ambiguous figures that evoke the electronic and technological fears we are exposed to, the dismemberment of a body vulnerable to entangling networks, absorbing biological spaces that pull us into the void, or the distant and digital image of nature seen through a screen. In another moment, the glazed ceramic sculpture Anxious (2024) draws us closer to a more personal metaphor of the crossroads. The three crossed feet bring us to a halt… but there is also loose straw and clay bells that sound as we pass, announcing a more peaceful conversation with nature.
The title refers to the solo exhibition by Mozambican artist Luís Santos at the Franco-Mozambican Cultural Center (CCFM) in Maputo, Mozambique (2019), curated by Sara Carneiro.
“Township” is a word rooted in colonial times that has transcended into contemporary Zimbabwe (post-colonial era). At the moment, I hover above like a drone, taking in the current panoramic landscape, which I refer to as “Townshop” (makeshift market stalls on available open spaces). This sight is a familiar trend among developing economies—everyone is trying to survive. Even migrants from developing countries who relocate to Europe often engage in this buying and reselling of trinkets as a means of survival.
The materials chosen for this exhibition mimic the temporary arrangements of urban makeshift markets made from wood, metal scraps, and plastics, adorned with trinkets such as cheap jewelry, locks, hair accessories, cigarettes, and more. These items are arranged in an attractive manner, naturally complementing the hustle and bustle of daily life.
In this exhibition, I have recreated scenes and sounds of prerecorded megaphones mimicking the calls of vendors selling their wares at Bhobho/Gazebo Township. People in all sorts of reflector work suits, customers rushing to grab something to cook for the evening, and Kombi (public transport operators) shouting for passengers all contribute to the atmosphere. The scene is chaotic, yet almost orderly—this is the norm in the Bhobho/Gazebo neighborhood.
Improvised market stalls are dotted on every street corner, mimicking sculpture, performance, and sound (megaphone) art. The landscape, as seen from above, is a mosaic of brown earth, blue, yellow, red, and all sorts of vibrant colors. Whatever one can find is put up for sale—second-hand clothes, bananas in pushing carts. The place is bustling with life and activity.
– Gareth Nyandoro
Gareth Nyandoro Bhero vendor
2024
Ink on paper mounted on board
124 x 124 x 5 cm
Gareth Nyandoro TOWNSHOP
2024
Ink on paper mounted on 4 wooden panels
124 x 496 x5 cm
Gareth Nyandoro Baseball cap stall
2024
Ink on paper mounted on board
124 x 247 x 5 cm
RAFAEL GRASSI. INVENTORY
Inventory represents a selection of paintings produced by Rafael Grassi (Switzerland, 1969) over the past three years. All of them belong to thematic cycles that, with irony and a delicate sense of play, revisit some traditional painting genres.
From still life to landscape, including Memento Mori, these works reconcile a commitment to pictorial materiality with a taste for creating an illusion of perspective, a deceptive figuration. The artist embraces an uninhibited and straightforward approach to painting that embodies, as precisely as it does effortlessly, the possibility of continuing to invent images through the enjoyment of the pictorial practice.
A utopian impulse, a homage to the fragile and precarious beauty of flowers, or the acceptance of the finitude of existence are some of the themes that run through these works. Yet beyond the anecdote, the images emancipate themselves on the canvas, reclaiming an autonomy freed from meaning and constituting, each one, a vibrant and powerful celebration of painting.
INTERLUDIO 7: THE CURVATURE OF TIME, JOSÉ OLANO
How does time flow? Do different temporalities exist? How is time related to stability and instability?
When Alice in Wonderland asks the rabbit, “How long is forever?” he replies, “Sometimes, just one second.”
The curvature of time is a proposal that links concepts from physics with subjective interpretations. Three lines of investigation converge in this exhibition: a visual exploration, a corporeal exploration, and an object-based exploration.
The visual exploration seeks to give shape to time, assuming it as a line that flows through space beyond its physical support, creating compositions inspired by themes such as the source, rest, and surface.
The corporeal exploration consists of a video performance titled 24 Minutes. Starting from the idea that during physically demanding activities, the sensation of time becomes more intense, as if it expands, I perform a plank exercise in various public spaces in my city, Cartagena de Indias, next to unsuspecting passersby, for one minute each hour for 24 hours. In doing so, I confront my intense experience of time with the flow of everyday time.
In the object-based exploration, clocks take a central role as the preferred human tool for measuring and tracking the passage of time. Each clock has a unique aesthetic: some are old, large, and heavy, while others are small, delicate, and colorful, among other variations, creating dialogues between different temporalities, as if they were people, groups of people, or families trying to maintain a form of coexistence in balance. But, for how long? These elements are placed in the exhibition space using strategies of pressure, friction, and balance, aiming to convey some of the attributes related to the passage of time, such as the fragility of the moment, the force of gravity, the resistance of matter, rhythm, and entropy.
Taken together, this exhibition allows us to navigate the currents of time, approaching the concept from different perspectives. Time is intrinsic to life itself; it has always been, is, and will be, while we are left to measure and mark its rhythm, constantly asking ourselves: What do we make of it?
– José Olano
José Olano Un cuarto
2024
Paper and thread
47 x 47 cm
In Two Steps Away, Pipo Hernández Rivero challenges traditional notions of displacement and belonging, presenting migration not as a fleeting or burdensome event that will eventually be resolved, but as a fundamental part of the civilizing process—a constant driving force in the history of humanity.
The artist’s paintings, executed with a high level of technical skill, harken back to the tradition of landscape painting, from the frescoes of the Villa of Livia to the landscape of the 19th-century Romantic crisis. This period was characterized by an exacerbation of utopias of abundance. Among them, the utopias of discovery, conquest, and territorial domination coexisted with the passionate anti-rationalist and escapist spirit of Romanticism. These landscapes, devoid of human presence, evoke a sense of virginity, reinforcing the idea of an intimate, individualistic utopia of domination. The artist critiques contemporary art conventions. Without falling into appropriation, Hernández Rivero conceptually complicates and reclaims pre-Cézanne painting, with a critical and combative stance against conventional expectations for what painting could be in the 21st century.
The frames, important elements in the exhibition, are not mere functional boundaries or decorative conventions. In modernity, the frame was disregarded under the premise of pursuing purity in painting. However, in this exhibition, the frame takes on a deeper meaning, symbolizing territory. It delineates the space of utopia as a fortress, a closed drawing within which the civilizing process occurs and outside of which chaos threatens. The frame thus becomes a symbol of contact phobia, a wall against any contamination that threatens the possibility of mixing.
The framed landscapes, pictorial utopias, are disrupted by cynical elements, such as beach sandals, the cheapest available on the market, representing the humblest form of footwear. Through the use of these seemingly simple, everyday objects, the artist speaks to how the West finds ways to trivialize such a central issue as migration and the development of civilization. The first human migrations occurred 200,000 years ago; Western modernity began with the exploration and conquest of American territories and their immediate colonization. But it was the complex cultural climate of the 19th century, fueled by escapism and rationality, passionate rebellion and sensible conformity, extraordinary scientific curiosity, and intolerant morality, that pushed these two archetypes to the heights we are most familiar with: the explorer, with audacity almost never innocent, who ventured into unknown places, and the settler, who went to the already-discovered lands to settle and try to prosper. Migratory cycles continue and will continue, but with no more virgin territories to explore. Two Steps Away poetizes about territoriality, the feeling of invasion, inevitable mixing, and the cynicism with which the West approaches these issues.
A second additional element in the exhibition is the climbing holds, an object that, according to the author, perfectly embodies the process of “sportification” of human dramas—a socio-ideological defense mechanism that Hernández Rivero critically addresses. These holds symbolize the trivialization of the struggle for survival, the overcoming of obstacles that separate us from an acceptable life. Romantic authors were, in fact, the first to explore a playful dimension of fear—Mary Shelley’s novels are proof of this. This exploration has not ceased to advance to this day. Primal fears and the confrontation with survival threats are now key elements in the entertainment industry, present in video games and virtual experiences. The climbing holds, placed on the ground, a space useless for their function, reflect the irony of how the West processes, through distance and entertainment, what in other contexts is a matter of life and death.
The third invasive element present in the pieces is the wall plug, which affects not only the painted canvas but also the wall that supports it. The grid-like arrangement of these plugs alludes to a democratizing subdivision, a metaphor for equidistance—another of the drives allied with Western self-complacency.
Nothing in this exhibition is neutral: not the walls, the floor, nor the paintings. Pipo Hernández Rivero’s exhibition presents works that explore the crisis of Western utopias, the frameworks of acceptability, and those that rise as guardians of these utopias. Rather than addressing migration as a problem/inevitability dichotomy, Two Steps Away delivers a critical discourse on the contradictions of the tormented Western spirit.
VARIATION/ PERPENDICULAR LANDSCAPE. JOSÉ LUIS LANDET
I think of my work as the place where there are different ways of operating and assimilating cultural processes traversed by social, political and ideological actions. I am interested in investigating some vestiges or socio-cultural wastes, for example: recovering painted landscapes (oil on canvas, produced between 1940 to 1970), with a certain Romantic or Bucolic look, made by amateur painters. A search for a particular notion of paradise, in order to recreate an apocryphal individual.
These images (paintings) and other symbolic elements such as everyday objects, photographs, letters, postcards, super 8 films, slides, writings, magazines and books are part of the materials with which I work, in a material and conceptual deconstruction.
When I find these objects, they have a thick background composed by memories, time and use. It is important for me to analyse each one of them, take a photographic record, classify and, later on, manipulate them according to the needs of the project in turn.
Usually these actions have to do with filing, cutting, breaking, covering, forging, submerging, fragmenting, simulating, getting them out of the shadows and resignifying them. These are metaphoric and poetic actions.
Public and private
The Utopian Past
The dystopic present
The Universal History
– José Luis Landet
VARIATION is a collaborative project between the galleries Sator and NF/ NIEVES FERNÁNDEZ aimed at increasing the international visibility of the artists from both galleries through the presentation of individual exhibition projects in Paris and Madrid.
Perpendicular Landscape by José Luis Landet is its fifth edition and will take place at the Sator gallery in Romainville, from October 13 to October 26, 2023.
Sunday, October 13 / OPENING 3 PM – 7 PM
From October 13 to October 26, 2024
Wednesday to Saturday from 10 AM to 6 PM
galerie Sator
43 rue de la commune de Paris
93230 ROMAINVILLE
JORDI ALCARAZ. PENTAGRAMAS
Jordi Alcaraz’s discourse begins with the classical traditions of painting and sculpture, evolving into a reflection on volume, language, and time through the use of diverse materials such as methacrylate, pigment, stone, glass, and more. His artistic language is characterized by visual transgression, a play of various perspectives, and the combination of transparencies and holes that allow glimpses into hidden, magical spaces. Through his works, Alcaraz establishes a unique and metaphorical relationship with the world.
Drawing and gesture serve as the starting points in Alcaraz’s recent works, where he delves into an almost obsessive exploration of the artist’s work: drawing, sculpting, painting—always through his peculiar treatment of materials and the playful nature of his art. He focuses more on the act of creation rather than the finished work itself.
Alcaraz breaks materials in various evocative or piercing ways. Layers of materials overlap like protective shields, gradually building up complex layers of meanings. This layering technique not only adds depth to his works but also invites viewers to uncover the hidden narratives and interpretations embedded within.
Jordi Alcaraz’s approach to art is not just about the final product but about the process and the interaction between materials, gestures, and the passage of time. Through his innovative use of materials and the creation of metaphorical spaces, he challenges traditional notions of art and offers a fresh perspective on the artistic experience.
NO PLACE TOUR 2024. MADRID
no place world tour 2024. Madrid
Curator: Pipo Hernández Rivero
Artists – Galleries:
Omar Barquet – Arróniz, MX
Rafael Grassi – NF/NIEVES FERNANDEZ
Vanessa Henn – Galerie Michael Sturm
Hayoun Kwon – galerie Sator
Kevin Mancera – Nueveochenta
Promoted jointly by five galleries, Nueveochenta (Colombia), Arróniz (Mexico), Sturm Schober (Germany & Austria)
NF/NIEVES FERNÁNDEZ (Spain), and Galerie Sator (France) no place world tour, the 4th edition of no place, will occur from January till august 2024, with curated exhibitions in Madrid, Bogota, Ciudad de México, Wien and Paris, Romainville.
no place is an experimental platform for the exhibition of contemporary art. It aims to generate new experiences for the public via an alternative production model. Emphasizing the fundamental role of promotion carried out by the galleries, no place operates under a collaborative system, so that the tools, teams and resources of each member are available to others, in a collective effort to produce and finance events where the focus of attention rests completely on the artists’ work, while the galleries benefit from the exchange of intangible assets.
In this sense, it is an unprecedented experiment, and one with which the galleries seek to contribute to the transformation of an established reality as typically sought by all agents linked to the art world.
Taking its name from Thomas More’s utopian “no place”, into which he projects the organization of an ideal society, no place adopts a gesture of radical imagination to pursue the realization of a space in which the experience of art and the commercial potential of the event balance one another. At the same time, it is a nomadic project, since each edition will be held in a different city and space.
For the 4th edition, no place will celebrate its more ambitious project: no place world tour.
no place world tour:
Galerie Sator, Paris, Romainville
Curated by Raphael Denis. January 14th, 2024
lise@galeriesator.com
NF/ NIEVES FERNANDEZ, Madrid
Curated by Pipo Hernández Rivero. April 18th, 2024
info@nfgaleria.com
Nueveochenta, Bogotá
Curated by Fernando Uhía. June 13th, 2024
info@nueveochenta.com
Arróniz, Ciudad de México
Curated by Mauro Giaconi. July 6th, 2024
info@arroniz-arte.com
Sturm & Schober, Wien
Curated by Thomas Gänszler. September 13th. 2024
galerie@sturmschober.com
