Ocultismo y barro
February 4–April 3, 2022
Miriam Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Ocultismo y barro
Daniel Barragán
Karla Ekatherine Canseco
Dolores Furtado
Rodrigo Angel Jimenez-Ortega
André Magaña
Andrés Monzón-Aguirre
Tamen Pérez
Adrian Edgard Rivera
Ocultismo y barro presents artworks made with or about clay that embody the medium’s mystical qualities. The title invokes occultism, the broadest sense of supernatural beliefs and spiritual practices, which contrast the scope of science and religion imposed on the Caribbean and Latin America through western imperialism. The artists in the exhibition speak to both the mysticism involved in transforming clay into art and the rendering of ancestral influences across the Americas, often in dialogue with the contemporary mythology of pop cultural iconography.
Barro has been used as a material in Latin America and the Caribbean for over 10,000 years to incarnate spirituality.Through effigies, ceremonial vessels, utilitarian objects, and dwellings, it has persisted as a material known for its malleability, durability, and availability. However, its cultural value has been largely contested. Clay objects from Latin America and the Caribbean have been disregarded in the art sphere as archeological relics that are often only discussed ethnographically. Occultism, as a lens, has additionally been dismissed by many critics for its emphasis on the power of the individual. However, understanding the fuerza of these artists’ works—personal, material, and mystical—through occultism, underscores their spiritual potential and disrupts cyclical deprecations of clay into craft or artifact.
Andrés Monzón-Aguirre, Tamen Pérez, and Daniel Barragán’s practices animate the inherited forms of vessels with restored energy, queering the static nature in which we encounter these traditional forms in the present. Barragán’s hybrid collages such as Water Jug 02 cross objects and eras—from traditional ancient pottery shapes to 70s and 80s rock and pop culture ephemera—drawing parallels of idolatry and vitality. Implicating the colonial violence of western structures, Pérez’ paintings reinstill the internal verve of ceramic objects lost to the vitrines of museology by anthropomorphizing their disposition in works such as Reclining Monkey-form Jar.... Similarly, Monzón-Aguirre, who is based between Brooklyn and Medellín, envelopes replicas of Tumaco-La Tolita objects in their Veiled Alcarraza series to allude to the opaque expressions of that which is subcultural and deviant under traditional frameworks, through gestures of queer, occult care and protection.
Rodrigo Angel Jimenez-Ortega, André Magaña, and Adrian Edgard Rivera parallel historical forms with present-day pop culture iconography to draw connections between devotions. In his work Dogs and Nintendo Switch, Jimenez-Ortega fuses pre-Colombian imagery with fictional characters from popular media, considering video games as forms of occult spirituality for US youth. Rivera’s Goku-Ehecatl parallels a basalt sculpture representing the Aztec god Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl with a 3D-printed copy of a bootleg Dragon Ball Z toy, questioning if transformation mimicking traditional craft is able to fully engulf this foreign media into the local cultural canon through two hero-myth journeys. In his series of jarrones, large vases, Magaña uses digital fabrication tools to render recognizable consumables, such as cazuelas and liter bottles, with imagery inspired by Colima Ceramics to spawn spirituality with the very hyper-capitalist tools designed to eliminate it.
Karla Ekatherine Canseco and Dolores Furtado emphasize the alchemical properties of clay in their work, which harnesses energy as a form of healing. Inspired by ancestral Mexican cultures that would involve clay effigies and vessels in sacred elements and processes, Canseco uses ceramics as performative tools. Bearing witness to the mystical symbols—such as the number 8, infinity, and crowns—that emerge in working with clay and across media, Furtado’s recent works—with titles such as Power, Templo, and Magic—explore the relationship between matter and spirit, creating talismans for new worlds.
The artists in Ocultismo y barro reanimate the material with mystical qualities of clay to breathe life into new possibilities with humor and healing, care and conviction. They join an international discourse of artists—from Ai Weiwei to Roberto Lugo—utilizing clay in anti-imperialist gestures that bridge cultural clashes; together, the works in this exhibition underscore how these themes persist amongst a new generation of Latine makers. By engaging the rhetoric of pop culture, many of these folkloric manifestations of ancestral Latine cultures refute capitalism, the spirit of the modern world whose way of understanding life, reason, and purpose obstructs the mysticism at the heart of the works in the exhibition.
Poster design by Simón Ramirez
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Daniel Barragán (b. 1988, Brooklyn, NY) Barragán’s paintings, sculptures, and artifacts concern the detection ofcultural wealth and cultural mobility. His work is research based in Indigenous and Chicano studies with a regionalscope on the American Southwest—the region of his birth. Barragán has exhibited throughout New York and Texasand has curated several exhibitions including, “Down to Earth”, Head Hi, NY (2019) and “The Watering Hole”, Pfizerbuilding, NY (2018). Barragán was a Smack Mellon - Hot Pick (2020) and was the recipient of the Stutzman FamilyFoundation Fellowship (2019). He received a BFA (2013) and an MFA (2019) in Painting and Drawing from PrattInstitute in Brooklyn, NY
Karla Ekatherine Canseco (b. 1995, San Fernando Valley, California) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles.Her practice explores the nuances of identity through different mediums, particularly clay and performance. Sheinterrogates the body knowledge, such as epigenetics, that she has inherited from her family in her work and asan access point to interpret the body as a vessel with the ability to transform and mimic. She is interested in howmatter carries information that has been passed down and is present; Our corporealities collapse conceptions oftime and hold stories in the same manner clay transcribes its composition and impression. In making she invitesher history within, daydreams, and poetics to materialize into sculptures.
Dolores Furtado (b. 1977, Buenos Aires, Argentina) lives and works in New York. Her latest solo exhibitions include:”Supernatural”, Kingsborough College Museum, Brooklyn (2019), “Lo nube”, Vasari Gallery, Buenos Aires (2018)and “Ultimate Nature”, duo show with Cecilia Biagini, Clemente Soto Cultural Center, New York City (2017). Recentgroups shows include: “Greater New York 2021”, MoMA PS1, Queens (2021); “Ceramics now”, Greenwich HousePottery; “Paper Routes—Women to Watch 2020”, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, (2020);“Human expectations”, Hub Robeson Gallery, Penn State University (2020); “La trama y lo diáfano”(2018), VasariGallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina ; 4th AIM Biennial, Bronx Museum of the Arts (2017); A.I.R. Gallery Biennial, A.I.RGallery, Brooklyn (2017); Epsilon, abstracciones descentradas, MACBA, Museum of Contemporary Art of BuenosAires (2016); Governors Island Art Fair (2015 and 2016); Arcos de Conexión, Museum of Contemporary Art of BahíaBlanca, Argentina (2014); Una persistente forma de estar en el mundo,Casa de la Cultura del Fondo Nacional de lasArtes, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2014); among others. She completed the following residency programs: GreenwichHouse Pottery Residency Program, NYC, USA (2020); Oak Spring Garden Foundation 2019 Artist in ResidenceProgram, Virginia, USA (2019); 2018 FSP/Jerome Fellowship, Franconia Sculpture Park, Minnesota, USA (2018);Bronx Museum of the Arts AIM Program, Bronx, NY, USA (2017); NYFA Immigrant Artist Program, Brooklyn, NY,USA (2016), among others.
André Magaña (b. 1992, Lagunitas, CA) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Recent solo and duet presentations includeKings Leap, New York, NY; Prairie, Chicago, IL; Holding Contemporary, Portland, OR; and American Medium, NewYork, NY. He was a resident at Triangle Arts association in the Fall of 2020. In 2021 he presented new work inSculpture Center’s in “You may go, but this will bring you back” curated by Katherine Simóne Reynolds at SculptureCenter, Queens, NY. Recent group presentations include Magenta Plains (New York), In Lieu (Los Angeles), PUBLICGallery (London, UK). Forthcoming, he will present a solo exhibition of new work at Gallery Kendra Jayne Patrick.
Andrés Monzón-Aguirre (b. 1987, Medellín, Colombia) has exhibited and screened artworks through diverseplatforms including Manifesta 13, Marseille, France; Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Medellin, Colombia;Centrum Voor Fotografie, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Alfred Ceramic Art Museum, Alfred, NY; Capacete, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; dOCUMENTA(13), Kassel, Germany; Fisher Press, Santa Fe, NM; Villegas Editores, Bogotá,Colombia; Museo de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia; and Museo de Arte Moderno, Bucaramanga, Colombia.Monzón-Aguirre received their BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design (2009) and an MFA fromNew York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University (2019). They have been resident artist with the Museo delNorte de Santander, Villa del Rosario, Colombia, and Fundación Casa Tres Patios Medellín, Colombia. Amongst theirrecognitions, Monzón-Aguirre represents Colombia at the International Academy of Ceramics. They are recipientof City Artist Corps Grant, New York, NY, Apoyos Concertados Para el Arte y La Cultura, Medellín, and Prince ClausFund Travel Award. Monzón-Aguirre is Founder Director of Campos de Gutiérrez, an organization of internationalscope that has served diverse audiences since 2011, facilitating educational and artistic projects, cultural exchange,and exhibitions in Medellín.
Rodrigo Angel Jimenez-Ortega (b. 1994, San Diego, CA) received his BFA in Painting from San Diego StateUniversity and his MFA with an emphasis in Painting from Pratt Institute. He has exhibited work in San Diego,Tijuana, Mexico City, and New York City. His paintings position the culture he comes from (Mexico), in relationto the culture he grew up in (United States), in relation to the culture he’s chosen (video games and cartoons).Images, objects, or symbols are removed from their original context and placed in new ones to create compositionsthat mirror the blending of aesthetics and cultures that he experienced throughout his upbringing in both SanDiego and Tijuana.
Tamen Pérez (b. 1987 San José, Costa Rica) lives and works in New York. Her work has been exhibited internationallyin the United States, Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Argentina, Germany, and The Netherlands. Recent exhibitionsinclude solo presentation “Who’s Counting?” at Y2K Gallery in New York City (2021); and group shows Stamped at Horse and Pony Fine Arts, Berlin, DE. (2021), “In Praise of Shadows” curated by Ebony L. Haynes at Lyles andKing, New York (2021), Re-run, at Rootcanal, Amsterdam, NL. (2019), “Emic-Etic” at Between Bridges, Berlin, DE.(2018) and “Host” at Stadium Berlin, DE. (2018). She completed her MFA in Painting at Yale University (2021),participated in the Berlin-based residency Berlin Program for Artists, DE. (2017), and received her BFA in Paintingat Rhode Island School of Design (2010).
Adrian Edgard Rivera (b. 1991, Austin, TX) is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Raisedin Yautepec de Zaragoza in the Mexican state of Morelos, Rivera’s work employs new technologies andsculptural assemblage to explore the manufacturing and reproduction processes of cultural materials suchas archeological relics, mass-produced toys, and folk art objects. Rivera received his BFA in Computer Artfrom Northern Michigan University and is a co-founder of R.I.C.O. R.O.B.O. (The Research Institute On CannibalOpportunism & Repository Of Obsessive Bobo-lutionary Obsolescence).
ABOUT MIRIAM
Miriam is an artist-run gallery and bookshop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Through deeply collaborative relationships with artists and curators, Miriam shares interdisciplinary practices through exhibitions, events and artist books.
LISTEN TO THE CURATORIAL WALKTHROUGH
All Photos by Luis Corzo
