Artist: RODRÍGUEZ-MÉNDEZ

Space: Capela do Carmen

Project: “Del hijo, la respiración” (“Of the son, the breath”)

“We have chosen Rodríguez-Méndez’s project because of its synthesis of conceptual aspects related to tradition, as well as the understanding of space inherent in its physical manifestation.” 
 

Ángel Calvo Ulloa, member of the jury of the First Annual Connexio Awards.

“Del hijo, la respiración’, by RODRÍGUEZ-MÉNDEZ (Project in Capela do Carmen).

RODRÍGUEZ-MÉNDEZ’s project consists of two 9 x 6 m canvases mounted on stretchers and placed on either side of the Capela do Carme. The canvases have been impregnated with oil donated by members of the Brotherhood of Mount Carmel and deposited in a vessel placed inside the church.

 

In Del hijo, la respiración, this oil was then applied to the top of each canvas, slowly traveling downward as it impregnates the fabric. It speaks of a weight, of a subtle bodily form spreading out across the surface, constructing a paradoxical and vivid plane.

I find it particularly moving that this material (the oil) comes from the intimate, private spaces of the families in the Brotherhood, which are then mixed together in a single “body” inside the vessel, and next, through a slow process devoid of any intervention, come to take over the surfaces of the two canvases. It is a seemingly endless transformation that mirrors the slow, never-ending process that is the pursuit of knowledge. RODRÍGUEZ-MÉNDEZ

RODRÍGUEZ-MÉNDEZ

Rodríguez-Méndez’s projects entail discrete codes that develop beyond the influence of the exhibition space, and which analyze the materials employed in sculpture, as well as mankind’s essential and physical experience. His practice is situated at the confluence of action and sculpture, interrogating the materials and their mutual influence and energy.

 

His use of cylinders, peat, oil, sound, word and body, interpreted as ungraspable form and matter, as elemental and absolute geometry, question and alter the constructive process, and the decision to say when a piece is finished.

 

Rodríguez-Méndez works with the incorporeal aspects of matter, and the openness and latency of his own pieces, in a game of loss and recovery that bears witness to the definitive and essential presence of life and change.