- Curated by Cuauhtemoc Medina y Maco Sanchez Blanco as associate curator, in collaboration with the University Museum of Contemporary Art, MUAC UNAM
- this exposure reviews the trajectory of Jan Hendrix, a Dutch artist who, since his arrival in Mexico in the 1970s, has set out to make graphics a contemporary medium.
- The exhibition will remain until September 18, 2022 in the Luis García Guerrero Room.
León, Guanajuato, May 23, 2022. Last Thursday 19, the Museum of Art and History of Guanajuato of the Cultural Forum, inaugurated its new temporary exhibition Jan Hendrix. Mainlandin collaboration with the Contemporary Art University Museum, MUAC UNAM, as part of the commemorative program for International Museum Day 2022: The power of museums.
Mainland reviews the trajectory of Jan Hendrix (Maasbree, 1949), an artist who, since his arrival in Mexico in the 1970s, has set out to make graphics a contemporary medium. According to curator Cuauhtémoc Medina: “Both in his collaborations with writers and in his more analytical series, Hendrix’s art investigates the conceptual implications of graphically transferring the imagery of ‘the natural’ to paper.” Maco Sánchez Blanco is the associate curator of this exhibition project.
The exhibition, the first retrospective of the Dutch creator, took place as at the MUAC from May 4 to September 22, 2019, to later travel to the Bonnefantem Museum, Mastricht in the Netherlands, from November 26, 2019 to April 26, 2020.
Hendrix works with the landscape. He is a born observer and a creative naturalistic researcher that he produces from drawings and models that he later concretizes in photographs, serigraphs, engravings, sculptures, facades, tapestries and books. He is a traveling artist who explores territories, which later work as references for him to build his visual narratives.
Mainland It is structured in five cores —Postcards Between Continents, The Golden Branch, Drawing the Distance, Paradise Lost, Aeneid Book IV—, it seeks to affirm the logic of work research and rediscover Hendrix with the contemporary art circuit.
The exhibition includes around 50 pieces —although Script is integrated into a polyptych of more than 3,000 lithographs—, recorded in various techniques (aquatint, xylography, serigraphy), watercolor, collage, artist’s book, video, installation, textile, photography. The incorporation of three new pieces with respect to its previous headquarters stands out.
Museographically, the Luis García Guerrero Room of the MAHG, in the city of León, was rethought as a room divided into rooms to house the amount of graphic work, generate tension between the sizes of the pieces, to take the visitor on a pilgrimage of Hendrix’s production in a non-chronological way, towards a grand finale, in a hidden room, with a different color to generate the feeling of being in an ancient museum.
Jan Hendrix (Maasbree, Holland, 1949) studied at Ateliers 63, in Haarlem, and the Jan van Eyck Akademie, in Maastricht. In the 1970s he spent long stays in France, Portugal, Norway, Iceland and Mexico, where he finally settled in 1978. Since 1990 he has made research trips to Kenya, Egypt, China and Australia, among others. Between 1983 and 1986, he was a visiting professor at the Jan van Eyck Akademie. Some of his most recent projects include research on the Joseph Banks Herbarium at the Natural History Museum, London, and production residencies at the Bundanon Trust, Australia; The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, Italy; The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, Pasadena; the Center for the Arts of San Agustín, Oaxaca and the César Manrique Foundation, Lanzarote. He has had various solo exhibitions in France, Spain, England, Switzerland and China.
He frequently collaborates on public and private projects with architects such as Teodoro González de León, Legorreta + Legorreta, Ten Arquitectos, in cities such as Aguascalientes, Mexico City, Puebla, Madrid, London and Qatar. She received the International Prize for Innovations in Graphic Art in 2008 convened by the National Chalcography of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid, Spain. His work is part of important national and international collections. In 2012 he received the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle granted by the Mexican State.
Cuauhtemoc Medina (Mexico City, 1965.) is a critic, curator and art historian. He has a doctorate in History and Art Theory from the University of Essex and a BA in History from the UAM. He has been a researcher at the UNAM Institute for Aesthetic Research since 1993, and between 2002 and 2008 he was the first Associate Curator of Latin American Art in the Tate Modern Collections. Since 2013 he has been the Chief Curator of the MUAC, UNAM where he has curated exhibitions by artists such as Andrea Fraser, Carlos Amorales, Harun Farocki, Jill Magid, Jeremy Deller, Vicente Rojo, Jan Hendrix, Ai Weiwei and the Raqs Media Collective, among others.
Maco Sanchez Blanco (Madrid, Spain), arrived in Mexico in 1994. Trained as an anthropologist at the Complutense University of Madrid (1986-1991), she completed a master’s degree in museology at Harvard University, Boston, thanks to the support of the scholarship program of the Fundación Jumex (2002-2005). Since her arrival in Mexico, she has managed various cultural projects such as the association of critics and curators Curare, AC (1993-1997) and the civil association Abel Quezada (2007-2012); She has also been manager of the Jan Hendrix (1997-2000) and Francis Alÿs (2016-2020) studios. Among her most recent projects, in addition to being associate curator of Jan Hendrix. Mainlandhas just finished co-curating, with Jaime González Solís, the exhibition Curare. Poisons, remedies and critical strategies, 1991-2010, which will open this coming June at the MUAC; as well as the edition of a book about the Mexican artist and curator Guillermo Santamarina, which, published by Alias Editorial, will be published in the near future.
As each time exposure, Mainland, It is accompanied by a public program of activities that integrate talks, activations and workshops. The artist and the curator will offer a talk on Thursday, July 28, 2022 at 6:00 p.m. in the upper lobby of the Museum.
The exhibition catalogue, in co-edition with MUAC UNAM, is on sale at the MAHG. Includes texts by Cuauhtémoc Medina, Seamus Heaney, Pura López Colomé, Miquel Adrià, Jerry Brotton, Adam Lowe and Jan Hendrix. The edition is bilingual —Spanish/English—. 288 pages Its price is $600.00. From 5 copies of this title or different ones from Editorial Forum, a 20% discount is offered. Consult the Catalog of publications: 📲https://bit.ly/EditorialForum
Jan Hendrix. Mainland, It will be on display from May 20 to September 18, 2022 in the Luis García Guerrero Room of the Museum of Art and History of Guanajuato. Hours: Tuesday to Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Free of charge.
