In the first edition of the ArtHouse Project at Casa Versalles, we present a selection of the latest works by Andrea Villalón, Artemio, Marcos Castro, María Conejo, Paula Cortazar and Verónica Palmieri.
Paula Cortazar will also be part of the Curator’s Salon, a curatorship by Alberto Rios de La Rosa focused on contemporary Mexican sculptors.
In these works, Andrea Villalon continues to investigate her own identity through the personal spaces she inhabits and her memory. Her works function as daily records of events that happen to her that are mixed with the books she reads, the food she eats, the city she lives in, her friends and personal belongings in general.
Marcos presents paintings from his latest production where he reflects on the ico- nography of the emoji, placing it as a kind of hieroglyph of the future that interprets this already transforming the narrative possibilities. Castro recognizes in the fact that graphic symbols replace words a fact typical of this generation and of the cultural ruptures that the hyperconnected era in which we live brings with it.
Paula Cortazar presents a piece made of white marble, river stone and metal. Cylindropuntia is part of her new series of works that she develops from the observation of native plants, especially cacti, from her studio in Monterrey. Paula finds in this plant, as in the stones, prehistoric information and a similarity in their materiality since in their life cycles, in some way, the stone becomes a plant and the plant becomes stone. During the pandemic Paula felt accompanied by the cacti that surrounded her and she saw in them an example of resilience and resistance that led her to develop this series of sculptures as a tribute and a morphological investigation of them.
This painting opens a new chapter in the series “Eternal Fire” starring the burning consciences of María Conejo. This chapter is “The Purification” and it takes place a moment before everything turns to ashes. This fire is not a common fire, it is a fire that allows transmutation. It is a fire in which the headless ones burn with pleasure and the spectators are the trees that, in the fulminating heat, germinate flowers of fire that illuminate, extend their branches like arms that caress accomplices of the scorching fire.
“My artistic practice is a constant narrative. I have the feeling that I started a small fire months ago and just like a spark in a bush does, that fire is now an uncontrollable, blazing fire.” – María Conejo
Verónica Palmieri’s works speak of the appropriation of domestic space for personal development and loneliness, as well as the tensions and dangers that exist within these spaces. In each of her works there is an invitation to romance as a symbol of the romantic imaginary that we have in the West. Another of the common threads is the grayish palette, which invites an introspective gaze. There is neither much light nor much shadow, it is an intermediate where the feeling is of driving by intuition.
The work of Artemio (Mexico, 1976) is characterized by reflecting (or not) from humor and irony (or not) around power structures. Currently he is reflecting and deconstructing as he can (or not), the power structures that exist (or not) in the art world.