What draws me to certain objects is my relationship to them and the meaning they acquire when I change their context and utilize them in a new situation, a situation outside their logic of use.
Gabriel Rico
Perrotin is pleased to present Gabriel Rico’s Nature Loves to Hide. Thirteen works are installed across four gallery spaces, hosting two wall installations, seven assemblages with a strong sculptural element and a mural packed ‘‘formula’’ arranged across a vast wall. Together, these works form an experience of delirium and dialectical tension.
Gabriel Rico, II Mural, from the series –Reducción objetiva orquestada (2016 – 2021), 2020
The II – Mural piece presents a series of commonplace objects and a handful of arrows (similar to the if and only if arrows in positional logic) pictured on the white expanse of the wall. The link between these volumes and the graphite symbols is puzzling. And though we cannot clearly decipher his general codes, they are nonetheless eloquent and intuitively legible. A Husserlian épochè is at play where the material nature and physical force of “things” manifests without intervention. The symbols of if and only if are logical connectives more difficult to assimilate and connect with colloquial language. Here, they serve to make “connections” between the objects, linking these products and suggesting a certain type of value.
Gabriel Rico’s formulas are brief and precise expressions to make, solve or achieve something concrete. Thus, they are processes helping to resolve problems or carry out tasks with a series of symbols and rules. The big difference between mathematical formulas and Rico’s is that our artist’s symbols are “things”; objects steeped in value for being real by their very nature. Therefore, these applications are not intended to be a symbolic or abstract representation of a real being but the synthesis or fusion of things that exist on the material plane. Here, we are reversing the traditional process of representation, experimenting with absurd procedures, then, instead of ignoring reality, taking the physical nature of these objects and combining them to see what happens.
Gabriel Rico, II from the series – Unity & Uniformity (La Mitla des hérétiques), 2020
Works such as Unity & Uniformity (La Mitla de hérétiques) where more than 200 roughly hewn brass plates are arranged in a space approximately three meters in diameter, representing the full-scale feathers of Mesoamerican birds. The structure presents a regular pattern that repeats and multiplies over and over, thus creating a perfect visual texture. Interestingly, of these feathers arranged on the wall, only two are from real birds.
Gabriel Rico (born in 1980 in Lagos de Moreno, Mexico) lives and works in Guadalajara. He studied at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente, Guadalajara. Recent exhibitions have taken place at: The Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, USA (2019), The group exhibition May You Live In Interesting Times, Venice Biennial, Italy (2019), the Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, the Power Station, Dallas (both 2017); Gyeonggi Creation Center, Ansan-do, South Korea, Fundación Calosa, Irapuato, Mexico (both 2016); MAZ Zapopan Art Museum, Mexico, Korea Ceramic Foundation, Seoul, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice (all 2015); and Ex-Escuela de Cristo, Aguascalientes, Mexico (2014).
