48 x 36 x 1 3/4 inches frame
Heather Gaudio Fine Art PROJECTS is delighted to present “Re-inventing the Every-day,” a new exhibition featuring works by Gabriel de la Mora, Martín Soto Climent and Eduardo Terrazas. This show was made possible in collaboration with Proyectos Monclova in Mexico City.
The artists in the exhibition celebrate the aestheticization of ordinary objects through a diverse set of interrogational approaches. They are concerned with a non-hierarchical discourse and formal aspects of artmaking, selecting ready-made or discarded materials as metaphors for cultural commentary. Theirs is a meticulous, processed-based approach that seeks to balance the rival goals of formalism and conceptualism.
Gabriel de la Mora’s artistic preoccupation focuses on reappropriating a broad range of discarded materials. Akin to a scientist, de la Mora carefully selects, classifies, catalogues, categorizes and re-contextualizes them into new artforms. His investigation into the nature and definition of painting and sculpture is fluid and multi-layered, and his visual language harkens to a Minimalist aesthetic. On view is a new series of works the artist created with vintage glass Christmas ornaments he collected during the pandemic. Between What I Reflect and What I See consists of ornaments broken down into tiny reflective specks arranged so precisely they become monochromatic, mirror-like tessellations. The curved nature of the spheres augments their reflective effect, and they are framed in a small scale to further enhance the intimate viewing experience.
Other works featured in the exhibition come from de la Mora’s ongoing Offset MC and Offset PA series. As the titles suggest, these works are created with the use of discarded rubber mats and aluminum plates sourced from process printing houses. De la Mora separates, categorizes and rearranges the mats and plaques according to material, color, and wear. The Offset MCcylinder blankets have absorbed copious amounts of printing inks over time, becoming saturated with color in varying degrees of vibrancy. The artist reorganizes them into large color blocks reminiscent of meditative Rothko color field paintings. In the case of the Offset PA works, aluminum plates reduced in size over time during the printing process are transformed into silvered paintings with hints of color. These are fragmented into rigid geometric arrangements, while others are presented with more random patterns. These works are but a few examples of the artist turning the obsolete into an artistic enquiry.
Above: Gabriel de la Mora, 11,249 1, from the series Between what I Reflect and What I See, 2021
11,249 fragments of blown glass tinted with aluminum, aniline on museum board, 12 x 12 inches
Martin Soto Climent transforms ordinary utilitarian materials into sculptural works that can take on an anthropomorphic visual character. While his works also address formal investigations, they touch on notions of the ephemeral, consumption, desire, and destruction. His artistic practice also repurposes a broad range of materials such as beer cans, venetian blinds, shoes, etc., and his probes include performance and site-specific installations.
On view are paintings created with Soto Climent’s favored manufactured material, female stockings. The artist displaces the tights from their intended purpose and stretches and twists them across canvases, creating articulated gestures that would traditionally be assigned to paint. Their elasticity generates bands and ovals of different widths and depths which at times suggest vortexes to spaces beyond the surface. Others are so tightly pulled they seem as if they will snap out of place. For Soto Climent, the tights offer a way to reverse the artistic gesture that could not occur with the use of pigment. Acting as a record of movement, the mark making can be reversed when the stockings are removed, and the canvas can return to its original pristine condition. While there are fetishistic undertones with the selection of material, these paintings also speak to minimal intervention and impermanence.
Eduardo Terrazas is a prominent member of the Mexican contemporary art scene who formally trained as an architect in the early 1960s. He has had a lifelong career dedicated to architecture, design, urban planning, museography and the fine arts. For Terrazas, beauty, order and technique are interconnected, and his investigations strive to understand and re-interpret our ever-changing world. Terrazas rose to fame when he co-created the logo and design elements for the 1968 Olympics. The concentric circles in the seminal logo were inspired by artisan techniques employed by the Huichol, an indigenous people who live in Jalisco, Durango and Nayarit. This association led Terrazas to combine his formal examinations of architecture, geometry and drawing with Mexican folk-art traditions.
Terrazas uses the labor-intensive Huichol yarn technique which arranges colored yarn onto wax-covered boards. Creating relationships between color, line, and form, he has developed a visual language that is uniquely his own. The artist’s material of choice is also a visual magnet for memory and association. The show will feature poetic geometric arrangements from his Toscana series inspired by the landscape facades in Tuscany, Italy. Also showcased are abstractions from his Everyday Museum, a body of work that uses quotidian objects sold at markets and by street vendors that become re-contextualized into new geometric constructions.
Heather Gaudio Fine Art PROJECTS, is a new venue designed to display artworks outside the scope of the gallery’s program. Through collaborations with artists, private dealers, and galleries in New York City and beyond, PROJECTS exhibits blue-chip, contemporary masters and site-specific installations. The aim is to diversify the art landscape and conversation, presenting collectors and the community with alternative engaging experiences and acquisition opportunities. For more information and/or high-res images, please contact Rachael Palacios, rachael@heathergaudiofineart.com.