Artist: Felipe Meres
Exhibition title: The Telomeric Cut
Venue: Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo, Brazil
Date: May 5 – July 29, 2017
Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo
Mendes Wood DM is pleased to present The Telomeric Cut, Felipe Meres’s first project in Sao Paulo. Working across media, Meres’s work weaves entanglements between scientific desire and the indeterminate matter that ceaselessly evades its grasp. The exhibition features all new work, including a series of microscopic images that unfurl in the shape of pigment prints and sculptures. Devised around the concept of regeneration, the exhibition brings to light partial connections between immortal beings, non-reproductive sexuality and healing.
The point of departure for the exhibition is the series of electron micrographs in which Meres captures the process of cutting and regenerating hermaphroditic planarian flatworms. The outcome of a one-year experiment that entailed daily care and observation of planarians’ sexual and asexual regenerative patterns, the images abstract and magnify these immortal animals into otherworldly electron landscapes. Meres worked with electrical engineers at Columbia University to produce the images through a microscopic process that deploys electrons, instead of photons, as sources of information, thereby responding to flatworms’ inherent phobia of light.
The ensuing micrographs are rendered in 3D modelling software and materialized in pigment prints on metallic substrates and silk. Framed in polished steel boxes, the metallic prints evoke the authority of scientific display while the silk prints are mounted on biomorphic steel structures that allude to role-playing equipment. Departing from recent findings connecting flatworms’ immortality to the behavior of telomeres (caps at the end of DNA strands that protect genetic material from damage and prevent chromosomes from fusing), Meres’s telomeric cutting experiments work through the dissonant hopes and fears that the quest for the control of regeneration evokes.
Felipe Meres was born in Petrópolis, Brazil in 1988 and currently lives and works in New York. Solo exhibitions include Fsision at Company Gallery, NY (2016) and Subject to Escape Acts at Galeria Ibeu, Rio de Janeiro (2013). His work has been shown in venues such as Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, FL (2016); Shulamit Nazarian, LA (2016) and Lisa Cooley, NY (2016). He was an artist in residency at the ArtCenter/South Florida, FL (2016); SÍM, Reykjavik, Iceland (2012) and Escola de Verão, Capacete, Rio de Janeiro (2012). He holds an MFA from the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College, NY and is currently pursuing a PhD in Anthropology at The New School, NY. He is the recipient of the 2016 Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation Grants & Commissions Award and of the 10th Tom of Finland Foundation Emerging Artist Grand Prize.
Felipe Meres, Weave Weavers Weave, 2017, electron micrograph, pigment print on silk, woven aluminum, polished steel, 119 × 61 × 114 cm, 46.8 × 24.2 × 44.8 in
Felipe Meres, The Telomeric Cut, 2017, exhibition view, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo
Felipe Meres, The Telomeric Cut, 2017, exhibition view, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo
Felipe Meres, The Telomeric Cut, 2017, exhibition view, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo
Felipe Meres, The Telomeric Cut, 2017, exhibition view, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo
Felipe Meres, The Telomeric Cut, 2017, exhibition view, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo
Felipe Meres, The Telomeric Cut, 2017, exhibition view, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo
Felipe Meres, The Telomeric Cut, 2017, exhibition view, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo
Felipe Meres, The Telomeric Cut, 2017, exhibition view, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo
Felipe Meres, Tentata Adventitium, 2017, electron micrograph, pigment print on silk, açaí berry, silicone rubber, polished steel, laboratory hardware, 122 × 65 cm, 48 × 25.5 in
Felipe Meres, Tentata Occulta, 2017, electron micrograph, pigment print on silk, açaí berry, silicone rubber, polished steel, laboratory hardware, 122 × 60 cm, 48 × 23.6 in
Felipe Meres, Tentata Genera, 2017, electron micrograph, pigment print on silk, açaí berry, silicone rubber, polished steel, laboratory hardware, 122 × 40 cm, 48 × 15.7 in
Felipe Meres, The Telomeric Cut – Tail Turns Into Mouth, 2017, electron micrograph, pigment print, polished steel, 172 × 81 cm, 67.7 × 31.8 in
Felipe Meres, The Telomeric Cut – Ectopic Eyes, 2017, electron micrograph, pigment print, polished steel, 172 × 81 cm, 67.7 × 31.8 in
Felipe Meres, The Telomeric Cut – Anterior Wound, 2017, electron micrograph, pigment print, polished steel, 96 × 70,5 cm, 37.8 × 27.7 in
Felipe Meres, The Telomeric Cut – Cyclopic, 2017, electron micrograph, pigment print, polished steel, 172 × 81 cm, 67.7 × 31.8 in
Felipe Meres, The Telomeric Cut – Tail on Tail, 2017, electron micrograph, pigment print, polished steel, 96 × 70,5 cm, 37.8 × 27.7 in
Felipe Meres, Weave Weavers Weave, 2017, electron micrograph, pigment print on silk, woven aluminum, polished steel, 119 × 61 × 114 cm, 46.8 × 24.2 × 44.8 in
Felipe Meres, Weavers Weave We, 2017, electron micrograph, pigment print on silk, woven aluminum, polished steel, 191 × 51 × 99 cm, 75.2 × 20 × 38.9 in
Felipe Meres, Weave We Weavers II, 2016, electron micrograph, pigment print on silk, polyurethane, woven aluminum, polished steel, 158 × 38 cm Ø, 62.2 × 14.9 in Ø
Felipe Meres, Weave We Weavers II, 2016, electron micrograph, pigment print on silk, polyurethane, woven aluminum, polished steel, 158 × 38 cm Ø, 62.2 × 14.9 in Ø
Felipe Meres, Weave We Weavers, 2017, electron micrograph, pigment print on silk, polyurethane, woven aluminum, polished steel, 191 × 51 cm Ø, 75.2 × 20.8 in Ø
Felipe Meres, Weave We Weavers, 2017, electron micrograph, pigment print on silk, polyurethane, woven aluminum, polished steel, 191 × 51 cm Ø, 75.2 × 20.8 in Ø