Goodman Gallery is pleased to present Disclose, Mateo López’s first solo exhibition on the continent.
Beginning with the idea of drawing as a process through which to think, experiment and animate different ideas, the exhibition brings together works on paper, sculptures as well as a new animation film, Disclose (2022). Drawing, which is foundational in López’s practice, merges with selected materials to bring about different ideas. Employing various tools - the body, pencil, fabric, pixels - López sets a scene for musicality and movement that is at once chaotic and methodical.
Made with linen, acrylic, and red pencil, El tiempo es la idea (Time is the idea) builds on the cutout collaging process central to López’ practice. In this context the cutouts become templates and stencils for paint and pencil to be applied to two sheets of linen. The result is a concert of colourful forms which interact with the numbers one...through to nine. With this combination of movement and time in mind the composition can be read as sort of choreography. Yet these numbers also evoke thoughts on the concept of time itself — time as a construct, time as fleeting and time as now.
The film Disclose takes as its setting off point the twenty-nine collage works presented in the show. Cutouts and fragments from the collage works are digitally rendered with each distinct component moving at its own pace, in conversation with the work’s textual elements. A dancer is filmed interacting with the drawings - a way of bringing performance into the gallery space. The film is scored through an interesting combination of a synthetic sound produced by a professional drum set alongside the soulful sound of the local Tambora drum, creating a melody that is energetic and charged.
Disclose draws from López’ research on theatre, through the work of Russian theatre producer Vsevolod Meyerhold, who focused on learning gestures and movements as a way of expressing emotion outwardly. Meyerhold sought to connect bodily expressions with specific emotions and popularized principles of biomechanics which proposed that the performer’s psychological state was inextricably linked to their physiological state.
In Doodles (2020), drawing gains materiality and becomes three dimensional. López uses metal wire, Balsa wood and enamel paint to arrive at an object that is playful, and thereby reveals a component of the process of his studio.
In this work two paper circles are made to intersect and take a form reminiscent of a helix. They are anchored by a wooden half-sphere which serves as its base but also allows it to rotate and wobble. Helix continues López’ ongoing exploration into the ways in which lines on a flat surface can transform into objects with depth and volume.
The improvisational nature of López’ practice is exemplified by the work Allotment. Made with slate and activated by drawing with chalk, Allotment is an interactive installation that requires a member of the public to draw with its interlocking blocks of squares and rectangles. The work references the sometimes- arbitrary systems of property and land division especially in the rural areas of the world. Beneath each piece of stone is a piece of felt - reminiscent of a chalk duster - which has the potential to create new lines and erase old ones much like new maps of the land are drawn
Hope and Despair (Masks) builds on the cutout collaging process central to López’ practice. Here the collage itself transformed and is lifted into the 3 dimensional plane in the form a mask or as the artist describes it “a second skin”. The mask invites viewers to think of themselves as performers in the world, wearing different masks in a quest to find a balance between hope and despair.
Included in the exhibition are twenty-nine collage works presented as a horizontal grid. The work was created during the 2021 Colombian protests during which thousands of residents took to the streets to protest increased taxes, corruption, and health care reform proposed by the government. The verses contained in the collage works are based on a text co-written with partner Yanina Valdivieso originally included in the exhibition Mateo López: Undo List, at The Drawing Center in New York in 2017. Written partly in response to the political turmoil in Colombia, following the Plebiscite for the Colombian Peace Agreement, the text begins “It happened already” followed by “Be angry” and “Undo” — gesturing towards a call for action, communicating a sense of urgency for change. Seeing the marches on the streets and experiencing protests with residents shouting, singing and carrying banners and flags propelled López to revisit the text and to want to agitate it and make it move.
Entrada actualizada el el 08 mar de 2022
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