Maisterravalbuena is pleased to present ¨La memoria en las manos¨ with the participation of Lucky DeBellevue, Ann Greene Kelly, Gyan Panchal and Jackson Sprague.
This exhibition might be considered as the continuation of “Transcurso y término”, that was held one year ago. Both exhibitions reflect on the object’s materiality and the different time and space that its surface may cover. While “Transcurso y término” took a look at the print left on materials by different processes throughout a given period of time, “La memoria en las manos” focuses on the object as an independent, living and thinking body, that the artist has activated by means of a tiny action.
In this sense, the title of the exhibition makes reference to a poem of Pedro Salinas, “Memory in my hands”, in which the poet grants feelings and knowledge to different parts of the body as if they could think individually by themselves and they were the source of action.
The artists taking part in the exhibition use materials that resist a previous control; rather than elaborating, they make up their pieces by gathering elements together by means of actions without mediation, such as constructing through the repetition of an image on the object’s surface, as in Lucky DeBellevue’s and Gyan Panchal’s case, or using assembly techniques, as in Ann Greene Kelly’s and Jackson Sprague’s work.
Lucky DeBellevue presents four paintings of the series “Pistachio Paintings”, where he uses pistachio shells and stampings of different geometrical shapes. The different paintings are composed by repeating a mechanical action of the hand; afterwards, DeBellevue sticks the shells one by one on a piece of cloth, creating limits on the color fields previously made by pressing the stamp with a different strength each time, thus generating rhythms in the repetition.
Ann Greene Kelly works on stone as if it were leather, showing its different conditions, polished on one side as if we could see the interior of the body under its rough skin. The artist gathers together daily-use objects around her, in order to form assemblies reminding of anthropomorphic shapes, and creating through those unions a new association system. The different elements of the pieces (a chunk of iron, a stone, a metallic grille, a sock, etc), all keep balanced together. The special characteristics of the materials, the shape and the weight of the object seek to be accommodated within another element, making this union seem natural, not forced out by the artist.
Jackson Sprague presents two wall sculptures made with cardboard and plaster. These pieces bring to mind certain timelessness and a stylistic resemblance with the sculptures from the middle of the 20th Century, considering the materials used and the resulting forms, half way between the figuration and the abstraction. His pieces evoke deconstructed objects and the inside of the human body. In one of the sculptures there is a text saying ¨My tongue in your ear¨, a categorical gesture that adds an extra interpretation to the one represented by the image.
Gyan Panchal, makes works using found industrial materials on which he sticks organic materials: in “La Cuillère”, the artist adds chunks of oyster shells to the surface of a plastic shovel used in the past to pick up grain. In “La Rencontre” we can see sunflower petals on a fiberglass surface; and in “L’huine”, Panchal applied propolis, a substance extracted by bees from the leaf buds, to a found plastic board.
This exhibition could not have taken place without the collaboration of the artists, Marcelle Alix, Paris and Hacienda, Zurich.
