In ‘Talachas’, Rodrigo Ímaz’s work dialogues with the canon of Western art

The artist Rodrigo Ímaz presents the exhibition Tallahassee at the Academy of San Carlos, in which he confronts the Western canon of art against his own work, without lacking the humor of popular knowledge and the reminiscence of pre-Hispanic roots, in a visual coven in the manner of cabinets of curiosities .

The 42-year-old artist considers that The arts are based on that gesture, in which artists see other teachers in order to learn. In that sense it transcends time and through its representation it allows us to dialogue in some metaphysical and intangible way with those people who no longer have to be here..

And mosaic The exhibition allows the public to observe a stone sculpture of Coatlicue with a mask of the Blue Demon wrestler along with pieces by Francisco Toledo, Diego Rivera, Alberto Durero and José Guadalupe Posada. In the artist’s words, he hopes that this generates a comment or a smile or expels some anger, that it makes one feel something that is useful, human, and appeals to the spirit and emotions.

In the old premises where the first public museum on the American continent was installed, a dialogue began on the works that Ímaz has made in two decades of experience with the collections of Rafael Matos and the Academy of San Carlos, under the curatorship of Fernando Gálvez and Juan Francisco Matos.

In this way, the octopuses perched on vans printed in engravings, the watercolors that criticize the power expressed in Los Pinos, the self-portrait of youth with a gesture of fury, sculptures that recall the ready-made of Duchamp, shark-planes hanging from the ceiling and a passport with the alter ego Rodrigo Maíz are placed in the museum room, almost in camouflage with other important names in the history of art in Mexico.

The combination of pieces is also a tribute and reminiscence of Ímaz in San Carlos, where 12 years ago he was a drawing teacher. “I am very happy to return to this space. This is my alma mater; I was educated at the National School of Plastic Arts, now the Faculty of Arts and Design. “It is a great pride and satisfaction to enter into this dialogue with the artists who accompany the exhibition.”

Some car tires superimposed, with the word tallow Painted in white, it serves as an advertisement at the entrance to the Green Room, to begin the tour of the exhibition. Despite the feint, it is a sculpture made of marble, with which confronts academic aesthetics of the classical figures found in the portals and patio of this building in the Historic Center, located behind the National Palace.

The exhibition is presented as a cabinet of wonders, Well, that was also the widespread museography when in the 18th century these public galleries became the first on the continentGálvez commented.

There was also a discussion about Rodrigo Ímaz’s time at the San Carlos Academy, what he read, saw and knew, as well as about the extended academy of life, of the streets, of the changarros of Mexico, the objects that people make to promote their businesses, that popular culture that entered museum halls a long time ago and is part of contemporary art.

He added that “it is our way of saying that we must return to the artistic object in the face of this evanescent, ephemeral culture of the digital world, in which the tangible, the artistic thing, that object of desire, is lost and diluted in a succession. of reels and clicks, in which they increasingly become a fleeting image of consumption and not a message of political thought and expression. That is what Rodrigo is defending in this exhibition full of a lot of humor.”

The curator Juan Francisco Matos announced that the exhibition Tallahassee It is difficult to repeat, because a union was made between pieces by his father, Rafael Matos (collector, gallery owner and expert appraiser of works of art and antiques), and the work of Rodrigo Ímaz. I predict that you are going to see something very different..

Tallahassee It will be open until October 28 at the Antigua Academia de San Carlos, at Academia 22, Historic Center.