Artist: Daniel Correa Mejía
Exhibition title: Soy hombre: duro poco y es enorme la noche
Venue: Fortnight Institute, New York, US
Date: December 3, 2020 – January 6, 2021
Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Fortnight Institute, New York
Soy hombre: duro poco
y es enorme la noche.
Pero miro hacia arriba:
las estrellas escriben.
Sin entender comprendo:
también soy escritura
y en este mismo instante
alguien me deletrea.
-Octavio Paz
I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.
-Octavio Paz (translation)
Fortnight Institute is pleased to present Soy Hombre: duro poco y es enorme la noche (I am a man: little do I last and the night is enormous), a collection of night scenes, sunsets and dawns, interwoven by Daniel Correa Mejía into meditations on the fleeting aspects of time and life. This will be the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York, titled after Mexican poet Octavio Paz’s poem, Hermandad.
Throughout the mostly textured jute paintings, color moves in a sea of reds, ultramarine blues, yellows, and hints of violet, as symbolic content is evoked through forms and colors: “I am painting a sky, and violet embraces it; the mystery of the sky. I am painting a red body, and a little blue comes up; gender thoughts, gender unions. Yellow comes into the body; we are made of energy, we are sunlight.” Red of blood, earth and feminine power; yellow of sun and light, the only way red and blue can merge; blue for masculine energy, sky and water; unanswered questions provoked through the subleties of violet.
Correa Mejía’s work has “a strange, exotic and semi-incomprehensible allure. It’s as if while you were evading the homicidal wrath of some far right extremist, and their hatred of, well, everything, the latest large-scale natural disaster, and trying not to catch a fatal virus, you suddenly caught a glimpse into a much more interconnected way of being. Initially, it doesn’t make sense, would seem to be little more than the idle past time of more disengaged people– but pause to reflect for a moment and you will be obliged to realize that this is crucial stuff. This is the stuff that prevents enduring the other stuff from being meaningless. For while there are certainly undeniable virtues to survival (ask any animal), they themselves are not necessarily what make life worth living. Here is Daniel Correa Mejia’s modest, but poignant contribution to our collective need and search for meaning. May it offer you a precious moment of relief and increase your belief in the timelessly untimely necessities of life.” – Chris Sharp.
Fortnight Institute is pleased to announce the release of a limited edition artist’s book of Daniel Correa Mejía’s paintings and poems with an epilogue by Chris Sharp to accompany the artist’s solo exhibition.
Daniel Correa Mejía, born in 1986, is a visual artist from Medellin, Colombia. Correa Mejía was raised between Colombia, Brasil, and Mexico. Currently he lives, and works in Berlin. Recent group exhibitions include, Landscapes of the South, Mendes Wood DM, New York and an upcoming group exhibition, El Camino más Largo, Museum MAMM , Medellín, Colombia.
