2 FEB – 10 JUN 2018 7102. Fantasma Semiótico (S)cituacionista
Museo Carrillo Gil, Ciudad de México.
Curated: Guillermo Santamarina.
Museo Carrillo Gil, Ciudad de México.
Curated: Guillermo Santamarina.
By Guillermo Santamarina
Roque investigates the landscape, literally and physically. He takes it, atomized, in bodies in semi-liquid or semi-solid state, related to a process that combines the advantages of foundry and forging, but outside the conventional workshop, and directly in and on emblematic perimeters.
A strategy that serves him, paradoxically, as a model, alike experience, analysis, knowledge, and denial, or overcoming, of his immanent reality, not very different from that imposed by the obsessive civil logic.
The exercise is reminiscent of an archaeological cove method (one of the sculptures presented in this exhibition was tempered on a step of the Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacán, another on a step of a street market) as well as the voids of Yves Klein, and the pours of Robert Smithson, the main protagonist of the current Land Art who would say:
“Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments seem to cause us to forget the future. Instead of being made of natural materials, such as marble, granite, and other kinds of rock, the new monuments are made of artificial materials, such as plastic, chrome, and electric light. They are not built for the ages, but rather against the ages. Rather than in representing the long spaces of centuries, they are involved in a systematic reduction of time down to fractions of seconds.
“In the limits that set the pattern of a precise time-free space, that of cryptic or evicted monuments in history, with the cultures of Sebatian Roque, could subscribe these words of the poet Paul Valery: “The impressions and sense perceptions of man, considered in themselves, belong in the category of surprises; they are evidence of an insufficiency in man. Recollection… is an elemental phenomenon which aims at giving us the time for organizing the reception of stimuli which we initially lacked”
Roque investigates the landscape, literally and physically. He takes it, atomized, in bodies in semi-liquid or semi-solid state, related to a process that combines the advantages of foundry and forging, but outside the conventional workshop, and directly in and on emblematic perimeters.
A strategy that serves him, paradoxically, as a model, alike experience, analysis, knowledge, and denial, or overcoming, of his immanent reality, not very different from that imposed by the obsessive civil logic.
The exercise is reminiscent of an archaeological cove method (one of the sculptures presented in this exhibition was tempered on a step of the Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacán, another on a step of a street market) as well as the voids of Yves Klein, and the pours of Robert Smithson, the main protagonist of the current Land Art who would say:
“Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments seem to cause us to forget the future. Instead of being made of natural materials, such as marble, granite, and other kinds of rock, the new monuments are made of artificial materials, such as plastic, chrome, and electric light. They are not built for the ages, but rather against the ages. Rather than in representing the long spaces of centuries, they are involved in a systematic reduction of time down to fractions of seconds.
“In the limits that set the pattern of a precise time-free space, that of cryptic or evicted monuments in history, with the cultures of Sebatian Roque, could subscribe these words of the poet Paul Valery: “The impressions and sense perceptions of man, considered in themselves, belong in the category of surprises; they are evidence of an insufficiency in man. Recollection… is an elemental phenomenon which aims at giving us the time for organizing the reception of stimuli which we initially lacked”
¨Organic alloys¨ departs from the idea of a star
collapsing from its core. In the stages prior to the fusion, the 26 elements
that make the periodic table are generated. Then its core becomes pure iron,
its last state. When the core turns into pure iron and does not fuse anymore,
the next step is the explosion of the star. The meteorite, as a result of the
explosion, reaches earth with all the enzymes and bacteria necessary to create
life. For this this specific reason I decide to work with metal foundry from
everyday discarded mass consumption products or scheduled obsolescence such as:
car engines and beer cans. All these contemporary these metals were originated
in these cosmic explosions. In order to create a miniature replica of
these fusions, I created a portable foundry oven to use in the public
space. In my quest of adding another quality to metal, I merged them with
vitamins and minerals from organic matter (discarded fruit collected in
the street markets in Mexico City). Some of the other substances I have added
to the merging: precious stones, tree resin, tobacco, myrrh, storax, anise,
dandelion, palo santo, dehydrated fish, cinnamon. There is an interest in
transforming the spirit of the material I work with. Most of the foundries were
made in the full moon and in the eclipse of the sun of August 21, 2017.
Immediate contact with the earth is part of the fusion as a sculptural gesture.
The resulting sculptures are unique to the earths quality of the specific
site.