Scenes with Flat Objects at TRAVESIA CUATRO

Artist: Elena Bajo, Debora Delmar Corp., Donna Huanca, Tania Pérez Córdova, Lucia Elena Prusa, Elena del Rivero

Exhibition title: Scenes with Flat Objects

Curated by: Andrés González

Venue: TRAVESIA CUATRO, Guadalajara, Mexico

Date: January 30 – May 15, 2016

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and TRAVESIA CUATRO

This is a story of weightless facts.

The events that make up this story take place on the limits of diverse objects. These objects are the consequences of past events.

In this story, colors and shapes are actions; contours and silhouettes are deliberate decisions; transparencies and opacities are arguments; glares and shadows are questions; variations on flatness are dialogues.

This story is a sequence of fragile acts that achieved to maintain the necessary degree of permanence to constitute themselves as narrative developments. The staging is set according to a sensitive range in which spatial and temporal dimensions are involved in an emphatic fragmentation. Objects and bodies have come to an arrangement.

1. Accumulation of dust 2. A man flexes his biceps to show off his strength 3. An Internet image is enlarged x100 its original size. 4. A leather jacket is worn regularly in a European city 5. The sunlight is reflected through a north-facing window 6. A portable section of color is shipped by a delivery company 7. Unidentified liquids spill on a surface 8. George Clooney pretends to drink a Fortissio Lungo whilst inside a photo studio 9. A piece of Cinefoil absorbs a moderate amount of light in an interior space 10. Silicon drops are pressed by two sheets of Plexiglas 11. A portable section of color inside a suitcase crosses the Atlantic Ocean 12. George Clooney is photographed while pretending to have a conversation with another person on a Mediterranean island 13. An image showing a small bloodstain is magnified x100 revealing a uniform neon pink hue 14. There are some camera films sat by a window 15. A piece of canvas is mended 16. A leather glove is filled with plaster 17. An amount of soapless paraben-free Avène gel cleanser is poured on a glass surface that has been exposed to the air of Mexico City for a certain period of time.

ELENA BAJO (Madrid, 1976) lives and works in Los Angeles and Berlin. Her concept-generated and research based artist practice is concerned with the social and political dimensions of everyday spaces, the strategies to conceptualize resistance, the poetics of ideologies, and the relationship between temporalities and subjectivities. She works individually and collectively across installation, sculpture, performance, painting, film, text and writing. She received an MA in Fine Arts from Central Saint Martins School of Art, London (UK) in 2005 after obtaining a MA in Architecture from ESARQ, Barcelona in 2002. She was co-founder of the temporary art project EXHIBITION, NY (2009). She has had recent solo exhibitions at D+T Project Gallery, Brussels; Kunsthalle Sao Paulo, Brazil and Annex14, Zurich, and group shows at the Mardin Biennial, Turkey and Trust Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark. Forthcoming her artist’s publication Isle of Innocence (After Fordlandia) will soon be released, published by KSP, Brazil.

DEBORA DELMAR CORP. (Mexico City, 1986) In 2009 Débora Delmar began working under the title Debora Delmar Corp. and produced works with this new identity which reflected on concepts of Capitalist Lifestyles and Aspirational Aesthetics. These projects have explored topics such as online and offline corporate merchandising techniques, class issues created by producer and consumer relationships and the increasing effects of globalization. The media used within her practice varies from web-based projects to video, sculpture and installation. Found objects and images from different sources online are appropriated and recontextualized inside my installations. Works vary in scale and value from large sculptural assemblages and printed matter to small gestures, such as everyday throwaway items including empty coffee cups and receipts. In her installations Debora Delmar Corp. utilizes scents and audio in to further involve the viewer, simulating techniques used in commercial environments to influence consumers.

Past solo exhibitions include Body Blend Trade Culture at the Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico City, Mexico in 2014, Care Concepts at Mon Chèri, Brussels, Belgium and Upward Mobility at Modern Art Oxford, UK in 2015. In 2015 she was also part of The Biennial of the Americas in Denver, US. Debora Delmar Corp. has upcoming exhibitions at DUVE Berlin and ltd los angeles in 2016.

DONNA HUANCA (Chicago, 1980) Donna Huanca’s installations fuse tactile materials, such as clothing and ephemera to create architectural collages that are performative in nature. Working primarily with deconstructed clothing, dipped in paint and solidified, the sculptural gestures pause the once-fluid life of the garment. During Huanca’s durational performances the works interact with the vulnerability of live models, camouflaged and infused into the sculpture, giving life to otherwise static artworks.

Born in Chicago, Huanca received a BFA in Painting from the University of Houston, Texas, USA, and studied at the Städelschule, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Frankfurt, Germany. Recent exhibitions include: Polystrene Braces at Kim?, Riga, Latvia (Art in General NY New Commission) (2015), Water Scars at Chez Valentin, Paris, France (2015); Muscle Memory, Peres Projects, Berlin, Germany (2015); Sade Room (formerly reclusive), MoMA PS1, New York, NY (2014); Seeing Auras at ltd, Los Angeles, CA (2014); and Raw Material at Malmö Konsthalle, Malmö, Sweden (2013). Awards and residencies include Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY (Van Lier Fellowship (2015); Access Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (2013); Fulbright Scholarship (2012); Art Matters Grant (2010); and Swing Space, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York, NY (2009); Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture (2006).

TANIA PÉREZ CÓRDOVA (Mexico City, 1979) Through a research encompassing a variety of media – from sculpture to photography, from installation to writing – the practice of Mexican artist Tania Pérez Córdova focuses on the seemingly paradoxical relationship between the materiality of making and its inherent narrativity. Her work looks at objects as ciphers for abstract situations, still remaining faithful to their formal and conceptual coordinates. In Perez Córdova’s practice, the clashing between an object’s temporality and its physical appearance reveals the unexpected emerging of personal narratives, interrupted stories, fragments of dialogues or simple abstract moods, transforming her sculpturally-rich vocabulary into a quasi-performative approach to object-making.

Recent solo exhibitions include Between March twenty-sixth and May ninth at Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City (2015) and For, and, nor, but, or, yet, so at Meessen De Clercq in Brussels (2014). Amongst others, her work has been included in the 2015 New Museum Triennial: Surround Audience, New York (2015); Biennial of the Americas: NOW!, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Denver (2015); The Lulennial: A Slight Gestuary, Lulu Mexico City (2015); A mousse drowned in a honey pot, Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna, Austria (2014); Goldfish, P!, New York, (2014); 9th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2013); How to Work and How To Work (more for) less, Kunsthalle Basel (2011), amongst others. She lives and works in Mexico City.

LUCIA ELENA PRUSA (Germany, 1985) studied graphic design and sculpture (material and spatial concepts also involving new media) at the Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart in Germany. Since 2012 she is studying textual sculpture with Heimo Zobernig at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in Austria. She has held solo exhibitions at Archiv fьr Gegenwart and Vesch.org in Vienna. She has been included in group exhibitions with i.a. Galerie Kunstbuero, Vienna; Running Residency, London or Kennst du Chagrall…?, Vienna. In 2012 she founded the collective pcnc_bay together with Anna Holtz, Manuel Scheiwiller and Simon Speiser. pcnc_bay organized and took part in shows i.a. at wellwellwell, Vienna; Kunsthalle, Vienna; Toves Galleri, Copenhagen; Bar du Bois, Vienna and in many public places.

ELENA DEL RIVERO (Valencia, 1949) “I have lived in New York since 1991. My focus is on painting and works on paper. I draw inspiration from experience, and what is at hand. Inspired by the passage of time, I seek the double entendre to uncover a subtle, if aesthetic, potential concealed within the discarded object and the transformation of decay. I contemplate a utopian idea of mending: actions that I take whenever the opportunity arises when the works get damaged, intentionally or not, during the process of making them; in this manner I suture their “wounds”. The kitchen, historically, has been the “female grid”. This paradoxical place, the symbol par excellence of domesticity where stories and life gather force, all from a single center of operations: the table, has also been a laboratory of ideas for most of my projects.”

Major grants include: Grant for young Spanish artists, (Spanish Ministry of Culture) 1983; Prix de Rome (Spanish Academy of Fine Arts, Rome), 1988; Pollock-Krasner Foundationt, 1991; Creative Capital Foundation, 2001; The New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, 2001,2002; The Rockefeller Foundation (The Bellagio Residence Center), Italy, 2005; and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, 2015, among others. Major collections include: The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Baltimore Art Museum, Baltimore; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME; Pollock Gallery at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX; Birmingahm Museum of Art, Alabama; Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia; Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela; Museo Patio Herreriano, Valladolid; Caixa de Pensions, Barcelona; Fundacion Caja Burgos, Burgos; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, among others.