Burger

Conexión Mexicana

Opening: June 8th, 2018
Duration of the exhibition: 09.06. – 28.07.2018

For the second time, the Michael Sturm gallery is showing works by the Mexican artist Fernando García Correa. Already during his studies, he dedicated himself to abstraction and so his works are a direct examination of the traditions of non-performing arts and a reflection on their potential. Correa works in series but does not see them as self-contained entities, but as a fund from which new works can be generated over and over again. He describes his work as cyclical, as a continuum. Cross references result from the artistic process in which he pauses, returns, tries to build a distance to what has been created in order to develop an openness that is expressed in the diversity of his works. Connections arise between the works of a series or between series, through elements, materials, compositions that the artist takes up again. This is also reflected in the techniques used, including collage. In the new Gambetas Y Concresiones series, for example, he works with dried acrylic forms that are created on the painting palette. Once hardened, Correa applies the organic forms to his works on paper, which oscillate between drawing and painting. The relationship between carrier and material is explored over time in the artistic process, creating a network that is constantly being expanded.

Agustín González comes from a younger generation of Mexican artists for whom the distinction between abstraction and figuration has become obsolete. Both forms of expression meet in the impasto paintings by González, which are in the tradition of figurative, magical-mystical Mexican painting. Figural dream images are confronted with geometric color fields and show us in a specific way the possibilities of this lively painting. It pulsates and wobbles in his pictures, between materiality and composition, between richness of detail and reduction. González pursues personal visions in his pictures or he deals with the ideas of writers. In his latest series, he follows Eduardo Galeano’s thoughts on utopia: “Utopia is on the horizon. I go two steps closer, and it goes two steps further. I walk ten steps and the horizon moves ten steps away. As much as I walk, I will never reach it. Then, what is the use of utopia? For this: to keep on walking. ” (Las palabras andantes, 1993). The small-format works in the corridor and in the skylight room of the gallery show expressions of these thoughts, figures in front of a night sky, often longingly depicted from behind. In his more recent works, González uses the tree as a recurring pictorial motif. The bald cypress, called ahuehuete, is given a special meaning in Mexican culture. The name can be translated as “the old man drinks”. For González, this meaning harbors, in addition to autobiographical elements, general associations with roots, origins, and growth, a fertile moment that he traces in his pictures.

Galerie Sturm_Pressemitteilung_Correa_Gonzalez

Exhibition view Gallery Michael Sturm
Exhibition view Gallery Michael Sturm
Exhibition view Gallery Michael Sturm
Exhibition view Gallery Michael Sturm
Exhibition view Gallery Michael Sturm
Exhibition view Gallery Michael Sturm
Exhibition view Gallery Michael Sturm
Exhibition view Gallery Michael Sturm
Exhibition view Gallery Michael Sturm
Exhibition view Gallery Michael Sturm
Exhibition view Gallery Michael Sturm
Exhibition view Gallery Michael Sturm
Exhibition view Gallery Michael Sturm
Exhibition view Gallery Michael Sturm