Ricardo Rendón – Vazio Contido / Contained Emptiness, texts by Paula Braga and David Miranda, Zipper Galeria, Sao Paulo, 2013

In this catalogue, Paula Braga writes: “In his works, Ricardo Rendón proposes a renaissance in reverse, that emphasizes manual work, and exposes the worker face of conceptual art, that which values the process, the singularity of each gesture, which, as we learned with Sisyphus, is a redeeming attitude. Rendón, therefore, joins a school of Latin American artists like Hélio Oiticica who practiced a “cordial conceptualism”, in Marcelo Campos’ apt expression; cosa mentale, no doubt, but smoothened by the appreciation of banal materials.

The obsessive works in which Rendón pierces a felt, card or plaster surface are based on an idea of repetitive procedure that is no stranger to conceptual art. But it is not enough for this Mexican artist to offer the script, the algorithm that defines the repetitions to be executed; it’s necessary to present the object, to scatter on the floor the remains of the repetitive process of piercing the industrial felt, thus exhibiting a dimension of the object called time, even if what remains of the work is more of a void than actually matter; a void that points to the idea of corrosion, wear and tear, disappearing, dematerialization through division into small parts.”

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• Contexts

Artist: Ricardo Rendon

Possible Memory
April 2, 2016 – April 30, 2016
Zipper Galeria
São Paulo, Brazil

Against the backdrop of a social vision that remains very clear in the way that the act of physical labor is understood, the artist seems to once again emphasize the sculptural value of his production. Evidently, the works of Rendón never ceased to be properly sculptural, and thus occupying, in an inescapable way, the exhibition space. But what we see here is a clear concern with specific aspects of the sculpture, notably the treatment of weight, or the way in which the weight of each piece is not an accessory but rather central to the creation of the work. By suspending wooden and stone slab fragments, Rendón brings these questions to light, while suggesting a dialogue with references to the recent history of Western sculpture, such as the series Gravitaciones by Eduardo Chillida, among other possible references, thus justifying his claim for a central role for sculpture in the contemporary art scene.

• Happenings

Artist: Ricardo Rendón

Equilibrio y concentración
November 21 – December 18, 2015
Nueveochenta
Bogotá, Colombia

La obra de Ricardo Rendón se ha mantenido como un comentario constante de las posibilidades espaciales y materiales de la práctica escultórica, en busca de la concepción de atmósferas creadas para la reflexión sensorial de la forma y los materiales que la detonan. Su trabajo discurre en los limites de los formatos industriales y los propios de la práctica artesanal, y propone con su antonimia de producción una plataforma de especulación de lo que podría identificarse como nuestra “actual naturaleza”, cargada de soportes y disciplinas para comprender la materia de manera no científica, sino emocional.

David Miranda

• Happenings

Monochrome Undone
SPACE Collection

Curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill
October 24, 2015 – April 1, 2016
SPACE, Irvine, CA

Artists: Ricardo Alcaide, Alejandra Barreda, Andrés Bedoya*, Emilio Chapela, Eduardo Costa, Danilo Dueñas, Magdalena Fernández, Valentina Liernur, Marco Maggi, Manuel Mérida, Gabriel de la Mora, Miguel Angel Ríos, Lester Rodríguez, Eduardo Santiere, Emilia Azcárate, Marta Chilindrón, Bruno Dubner, Rubén Ortíz-Torres, Fidel Sclavo, Renata Tassinari, Georgina Bringas, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Thomas Glassford, José Luis Landet, Jorge de León, Bernardo Ortiz, Martin Pelenur, Teresa Pereda, Pablo Rasgado, Ricardo Rendón, Santiago Reyes Villaveces, Mariela Scafati, Gabriel Sierra, Jaime Tarazona, Adán Vallecillo, Horacio Zabala.

The monochrome as a focus in the SPACE Collection began in a spontaneous form and soon became a systematic field of research. This exhibition is about the contemporary monochrome in Latin America. The monochrome is one of the most elusive and complex art forms of modern and contemporary art. If we think about its origins or meaning, we find that the monochrome is many contradictory things. The monochrome is neither a movement nor a category; it is not an “ism” or a thing. It may be painting as object, the material surface of the work itself, the denial of perspective or narrative, or anything representational. The monochrome may be a readymade, a found object, or an environment—anything in which a single color dominates. The monochrome can be critical and unstable, especially when it dialogues critically or in tension with modernism. This exhibition is organized into four different themes: The Everyday Monochrome, The White Monochrome, The Elusive Monochrome and The Transparent Monochrome. These themes have been conceived to create context and suggest interpretations that otherwise might be illegible.  These may overlap at times, pointing to the multiplicity of content in many of the works. The unclassifiable and variable nature of the monochrome in Latin America today is borne of self-criticality and from unique Latin contexts, to exist within its own specificity and conceptual urgency.

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El monocromo, como enfoque de SPACE Collection, comenzó de forma espontánea y a poco se convirtió en un campo de investigación sistemático. Esta exposición trata sobre el monocromo contemporáneo en América latina. El monocromo es una de las formas de arte más elusivas y complejas del arte moderno y contemporáneo. Si reflexionamos acerca de sus orígenes o su significado, nos encontramos con que puede albergar muchas cosas contradictorias. El monocromo no es un movimiento ni una categoría; no es un “ismo” ni una cosa. Puede ser la pintura como objeto, la superficie material de la obra, la negación de la perspectiva o de todo lo representativo o narrativo. El monocromo puede ser un readymade, un objeto encontrado, un cuadro o un ambiente: cualquier cosa definida como una superficie cromáticamente uniforme donde un solo color predomina. El monocromo puede ser crítico e inestable, especialmente cuando se dialoga críticamente o en tensión con el modernismo. Esta exposición está organizada en cuatro temas: el monocromo cotidiano, el monocromo blanco, el monocromo elusivo y el monocromo transparente. Estos temas han sido concebidos a fin de crear un contexto y sugerir interpretaciones que de otra manera podrían ser ilegibles. Éstos pueden superponerse a veces, apuntando a la multiplicidad de contenidos en muchas de las obras. La naturaleza indeterminada, inclasificable y variable del monocromo en Latinoamérica hoy en día es producto de la autocrítica y de los contextos propios, para existir dentro de su propia especificidad y urgencia conceptual.

• Projects

Artists: Bas Jan Ader, Carlos Amorales, Joseph Beuys, Monica Bonvicini, Stefan Brüggemann, Jeff Burton, Anne Collier, Jose Dávila, Moyra Davey, Carroll Dunham, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Olafur Eliasson, Tracey Emin, Cerith Wyn Evans, Claire Fontaine, Garea, Gelitin, Liam Gillick, Felix González Torres, Thomas Hirschhorn, Jim Hodges, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Dennis Hopper, On Kawara, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, Gabriel Kuri, Abigail Lane, Gonzalo Lebrija, Jesús León, Robert Longo, Sarah Lucas, David Lynch, John McCraken, Sarah Morris, Ugo Mulas, Luis Felipe Ortega, Jorge Pardo, Liliana Porter, Richard Prince, Tobias Rehberger, Daniela Rossell, Thomas Ruff, Alan Saret, Hedi Slimane, Dash Snow, Mungo Thomson, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Luis Emilio Valdés Rodríguez, John Waters, Ricardo Rendón, and many more.

In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni
July 11 – October 4, 2015
Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo
Mexico City, Mexico

Con más de cien obras de la Colección Jumex, In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni explora varios acercamientos a la curaduría que nos ayudarán a entender las elecciones implícitas en los actos de formar yactivar una colección de arte. Además de participar en la selección de obras para la exposición, los artistas Bernadette Corporation, Nicolas Ceccaldi y Peter Wächtler también fueron comisionados para crear piezas inspiradas en obras de la Colección Jumex.

• Happenings

Artists: Magdalena Atria, Ricardo Rendón, Mariángeles Soto-Díaz, Rubén Ortiz Torres, and Antonio Muñiz.

Multifarious Abstraction
Curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill
June 20 – July 25, 2015
Fabien Castanier Gallery
Culver City, CA, USA

Multifarious Abstraction is an exhibition that questions traditional understanding of the nature of abstraction as a modern field separate from reality. The five artists participating in Multifarious Abstraction present conceptually challenging, loaded and sometimes political explorations of abstract vocabularies in art, which point to unique ways to experience and think on contemporary culture. The five artists are from Latin America, where the division between high and low culture is not as central or as marked as in The United States and Europe. The abstraction proposed here moves away from modernist utopian ideals and pure aesthetics, to dialogue with industrial and popular culture, daily life, inner struggle, politics and gender.

Magdalena Atria is exhibiting free abstract compositions entirely made with plasticine. The artist, who has developed an extensive oeuvre with this material, addresses painting through a material which is malleable, fragile, common and familiar, to produce slowly complicated surfaces that embody “tension between the rational and the emotional, between the personal and the collective, between the existential and the banal, the formal and the symbolic.” Atria attempts to connect the ideal, manifested through abstraction, with the daily and existential dimensions of concrete reality.

Antonio Muñiz is an artist who explores by an intuitive method ways to free the mind and perception from predetermined responses. He employs fumage, a technique for producing organic forms with a burning candle at varying angles and distance from the canvas, thus creating an uncontrolled compositional structure. Muñiz pursues the “gray area”, a multidimensional space that is both symbolic and psychological and deconstructs conditioning dualities such as black/white, outsider/insider, and right/wrong. The artist states: “The gray area is a non-judgmental, non-linear space where we allow ourselves to interact with our environment, breaking free of duality and of conditioned responses.”

Ricardo Rendón’s work is informed by his interest in traditional trades and materials, which are for the artist places of “creative learning”. He states: “My work is presented as a system of questioning of the creative practice, of the execution, productive realization and notion of work.” His mediums range from industrial materials, to sand paper, felt and leather; and his techniques from perforating, cutting, nailing, grinding, sanding, gluing, to welding. For Multifarious Abstraction, the artist exhibits work from the two series: Work Area and Lighting Circuits, with materials such as copper and industrial felt. He transforms a plumber’s purposeful and precise procedure for joining copper tubes into the method for creating free standing sculptures which reflect both on traditional knowledge and on contemporary art’s expansive possibilities.

Mariángeles Soto-Díaz uses the language of abstraction as a way to materialize and connect ideas. Her work explores critically the legacies of modernism, echoing the particular modern historical traditions of Venezuela in dialogue with modernity and abstraction in contemporary culture. For this exhibition she will be showing the site-specific installation The Pink Elephant in the Room, to insert into the White Cube the discussion of gender and racial inequality in the art world. As the artist explains: “The Pink Elephant in the Room addresses the ‘invisibility’ of these issues through indulging in the color pink as a feminist statement while also re-signifying upon the language of abstract painting.”

Rubén Ortiz-Torres is a multidisciplinary artist who goes back to the late 1980s. His work, whether it be photographs, paintings, movies or sculptures, is informed by a hybrid and original combination of popular and mass culture. One of the key references in his work is the low rider and car industry cultures. In his recent work, he experiments with the auto industry’s most recent advances in car paint. For example, his piece Womb Envy (2014), is made with urethane and thermochromic paint and high-density foam. This orange piece in the shape of a pregnant tummy, when touched with your fingers, becomes marked temporarily in yellow on the work’s surface. His black Mexican and American flags made with urethane and chromo-luminescent paint, exhibited in the show, refer on the one hand to modern issues of anarchist ideology, and on the other, to how these national symbols, especially in the context of recent events in Mexico and the USA (The Baltimore riots), may allow the political minority standpoints in contemporary society to be embodied.

Cecilia Fajardo-Hill is a British/Venezuelan art historian and curator. Fajardo-Hill specializes in modern and contemporary art with a focus in Latin American art. She has a PhD in Art History from the University of Essex, England, and an MA in 20th Century Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, England. From 2005- 2008, Fajardo-Hill served as Director and Chief Curator for CIFO and the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, and from 2009-2012 served as Chief Curator at the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in Long Beach, CA. Presently, Fajardo-Hill is guest curator at the Hammer Museum, the Chief Curator of the Sayago & Pardon Collection and Abstraction in Action, and a visiting scholar at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. She is currently based in Los Angeles, CA.

• Happenings

Artist: Ricardo Rendón

Límite posible
March 2 – April 18, 2015
Arroniz Arte Contemporáneo
Mexico City, Mexico

• Happenings

Artists: Carlos Aires, Mark Hogensen, Leigh Anne Lester, Rigoberto Luna, Francisco Merel, Ann-Michele Morales, Ricardo Rendón, Ansen Seale, Xochi Solis, and Jason Villegas.

Flatland
July 11 – October 11, 2014
Curated by Patty Ortiz
Museo Guadalupe
San Antonio, TX, USA

In a time of globalization, transcultural movement and the leveling of world commerce, economists believe that today the earth could be perceived as becoming flat. They have used this metaphor to describe the world economy. This condition can also be utilized in describing transcultural movement. With the ease of cross migration, cultures are continuing to collide at a more rapid rate. The globalization of culture, ideas and artistic practice is creating a new balance, interface and flat playing field.  Artists further the notion of “flatness” by the appropriation of popular imagery from their own and other cultures. The exponential growth of digital communication has accelerated this process. The universal presence of the actual flat screen monitor has brought about a flat screen mentality. Yet artists are able to juggle their ethnicity, cultural experience and global views to create works that are multilayered and distinct. The presenting artists of FLATLAND are at the intersection of cultural form, process and meaning in this emerging flat world.

Images: Installation view, courtesy of the artist.

• Happenings

In the work process, in the process of shaping and changing the nature exterior to him, man is shaped and changes himself: My work is presented as a system of questioning of the creative practice, of the execution, productive realization and notion of work. A search of meaning in the activity that makes possible not only locate its motive, the why of creating, but that would also allow to establish a critical vision of the role that the subject plays in the work environment.  Revalue the creative practice and find meaning in the work through the experience in the continuous making: To determine my reality through the experience and practice of my creative abilities, whose activation allows the emergence of forms of subjectivity and one’s own knowledge. Therefore, experience, comprised of the development and accumulation of moments of execution and site-specific plastic exercise, allows me to establish a strategic and perspective relation from where to position facing that which surrounds us.

I recognize from the creative making my position as subject result of the possibilities, events, dialogue and interpretation. Place of continuous transformation, determined by the creative activity within the physical limitations of space and the materials. A scenario of action and experience.

My work is designed as a system of inquiry into creative practice. It is a search for meaning that not only uncovers motivation, answering the question of why to create, but also permits a critical appraisal of the role of the subject who performs personal work. Reassessing the creative process allows me to make sense of making art through experiencing its continual realization.

It consists of determining my subjective reality and setting in motion my creative faculties, which enable the emergence of new understandings. In this way, experience, consisting of the development and accumulation of moments of creation, informs my strategic orientation towards my surroundings.

Accordingly, I recognize that as the subject of creative doing, I am shaped by possibilities, events, dialogues and interpretations in a place of continual transformation, a setting of action and experience in which creative activity is restricted only by the physical limits of workspace and materials.

En el proceso del trabajo, en el proceso de moldear y cambiar la naturaleza exterior a él, el hombre se moldea y se cambia a sí mismo: Mi obra se presenta como un sistema de cuestionamiento de la práctica y del quehacer creativo, de la ejecución, realización productiva y la noción del trabajo. Una búsqueda de sentido en la actividad que posibilite no solo ubicar su motivación, el por qué crear, sino que también permita establecer una visión crítica del papel que desempeña el sujeto en el ambiente laboral.

Revalorizar la práctica creativa y encontrar sentido en el trabajo por medio de la experiencia en el hecho continuo de su realización: Determinar mi realidad por medio de la experiencia y puesta en marcha de mis facultades creativas, cuyo accionar permiten la emergencia de formas de subjetividad y conocimientos propios. Es así que la experiencia, constituida por el desarrollo y acumulación de momentos de ejecución y ejercicio plástico in situ, me permite el establecimiento de una relación estratégica y perspectiva desde donde situarse frente aquello que me rodea.

Reconozco desde el hacer creativo mi posición como sujeto fruto de lo eventual, el acontecimiento, el dialogo y la interpretación. Lugar de continua transformación, determinado por la actividad creativa dentro de los límites físicos del espacio y los materiales de trabajo. Un escenario de acción y experiencia.

Selected Biographical Information

Education / Training

• 2004: National Arts School “La Esmeralda”, CENART, BFA, Mexico City, Mexico.
• 1992: Metropolitan University-Xochimilco, BFA, Major in Graphic Communication & Design, Mexico City, Mexico.

Prizes / Fellowships

• 2010: Production grant. La Colección JUMEX. México D.F., Mexico.
• 2010: Production grant. National System of Creators Grant (SNC). FONCA. Mexico City, Mexico.
• 2009: CIFO production grant. Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation CIFO. Miami USA.
• 2008: Artist Pension Trust. New York, USA.
• 2008: XIV Bienal Rufino Tamayo. Museo Tamayo. Mexico City, Mexico.
• 2007: Bienal FEMSA 2007. Monterrey México.
• 2006: Production grant. National System of Creators Grant (SNC). FONCA. Mexico City, Mexico.
• 2006: Production grant & residency.Triangle Art Trust Artist’s Workshop – New York. New York USA.
• 2006: Production grant & residency. Drake International Artist Residency Program. Toronto, Canada.
• 2006: Sociedad de Valores de Arte Mexicano SIVAM Artes Visuales Premio 2006. Mexico City, Mexico.
• 2006: Production grant. La Colección JUMEX. México D.F. Production grant.
• 2005: Production grant & residency Triangle Art Trust – KM.0 URBANO Art Residency. Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

Solo Exhibitions

• 2013: “Todo es Vacío”, Galería Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, Mexico.
• 2013: “Vazio Contido”, Zipper Galeria, São Paulo Brazil. Curator Paula Braga.
• 2013: “Bosque Desnudo”, Museo de Arte Moderno, México City. Curator Graciela Kasep.
• 2012: “Open Works”, VickyDavid Gallery, New York USA.
• 2012: “Principios de Afirmación”, Galería Espacio Mínimo, Madrid Spain.
• 2012: “Cumulative Act Effect”, MULTIPLESPACINGS, PROGR Zentrum fur Kulturproduction, Bern, Switzerland
• 2011: “Hacia una arquitectura posible”, CENTRAL Art Projects, México City, Mexico.
• 2010: “Espacios de Concentración”, Galería Enrique Guerrero, México City, Mexico.
• 2010: “Making Evidence”, JGM Galérie, Paris, France.
• 2010: “La Suite Bollard”, Galería Nueveochenta, Bogotá, Colombia.
• 2008: “Zona en Construcción”, Museo Experimental El Eco UNAM, Curator Guillermo Santamarina & David Miranda, Mexico City, Mexico.

Group Exhibitions

• 2013: “FORMAS Y PASAJES”, Escultura Contemporánea, Centro de las Artes Monterrey. Curator Graciela Kasep.
• 2012: “VISUAL RYTHM”, BMOCA Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Colorado USA. Curator David Dadone & Petra Sertic
• 2012: “MEXICO: EXPECTED/UNEXPECTED”, Collection Agustin & Isabel Coppel: Katzen Art Center, American University Washington D.C. Curator Carlos Basualdo.
• 2011: “NOW”, Fundación colección JUMEX, Mexico. Curator Victor Samudio.
• 2011: “Salons de Lecture”, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse, France. Curator Mélanie Kiry.
• 2011: “Transurbaniac”, Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo MUAC UNAM. México D.F. Curator Guillermo Santamarina.
• 2010: “Cimbra”, Museo de Arte Moderno Mexico City. Curator Osvaldo Sánchez.
• 2010: “Constante”, La Nueva Babiloni, Zapopan Museo de Arte MAZ, Zapopan Jalisco. Curator Guillermo Santamarina.
• 2009: “Shifting Constructs”, Grants & Commissions exhibition, The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO). Miami USA.
• 2008: “Narrative / Non-Narrative”, The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO). Miami USA.

Publications

• VAZIO CONTIDO / Contained Emptiness. Zipper Galeria. 2013. ISBN: 978-85-66065-03-9
• OPEN WORKS, Ricardo Rendón. VickyDavid Gallery. New York USA. 2012
• MANUAL DE OPERACION. Ricardo Rendón. Ed. Vainilla Planifolia. Mexico City. 2011. ISBN 978-607-95650-0-8
• NOW. Fundación Colección JUMEX. Mexico. 2012. ISBN 978-607-95037-9-6
• CARGA UTIL. MAM Museo de Arte Moderno. Mexico City. 2012.
• Entre chien et loup: obras de la colección Meana Larrucea. Spain. 2011. ISBN: 8469431293, 9788469431290
• TRANSURBANIAC. MUAC Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo. UNAM Mexico City 2010. ISBN 978-607-02-1328-1
• MEXICO Expected/Unexpected. TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes. Tenerife España. 2009. ISBN 978-84-937103-1-6
• MEXICO Expected/Unexpected. Collection Isabel & Agustin Coppel. Maison Rouge. Paris France 2008. ISBN 978-2-84975-146-6
• ESQUIADOR EN EL FONDO DE UN POZO. Fundación Colección JUMEX. Mexico. 2006. ISBN: 9685867011, 9789685867016
• ART NEXUS. No. 63 Vol. 6 2007.
• ART NEXUS. No. 83 Vol. 10 2011. p. 117.

Collections

• Sayago & Pardon, CA USA.
• Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation CIFO, Miami USA.
• Bank of America, NY USA.
• MUAC Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo UNAM, Mexico City.
• MAM Museo de Arte Moderno, INBA Mexico City.
• Isabel & Agustin Coppel Collection, Mexico City.
• The JUMEX Collection, México City.
• Museo Laboratorio de Arte Alameda, México City.
• Fondation Daniel Langlois, Quebec, Canadá.,
• Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santa Cruz Bolivia.
• Lacoste, Paris, France.
• Colección Meana-Larrucea, Spain.
• Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango – Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Santafé de Bogota, Colombia.

Links

• Arte-Sur
• Bamboo
• Museo de Arte Moderno
• Art Daily
• Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
• Zipper Galeria
• Bosque Desnudo
• TODO ES VACÍO

• Artists