Rodríguez-Méndez | Proposición. Permear II, 2022
3 available issues of 1/3, out of a series of about 25 issues, made on 3 copies each.
50x70 cm inkjet print on Hahnemuhle fine art photo rag ultra smooth paper, 305 gr, framed in ramin wood with art glass 99% anti-UV.The work comes with a certificate signed by the artist.
Price: 825 euro | 750 euro (members)
Book your copy via info@vriendensmak.be. Images of the work can be requested via the same e-mail address.
The Spanish artist Rodríguez-Méndez (b. 1968, Pontevedra) exhibited in S.M.A.K. in 2011. Through the use of sober, everyday materials and minimalist imagery, the work of Rodríguez-Méndez is positioned between arte povera (1970s) and minimalism (1960s).
The artist created an edition for the Friends based on the performance Proposición Permear II, which he commissioned in 2013 for the exhibition Diálogos Improbables, curated by Ángel Calvo Ulloa, in the municipality of Lalín in Pontevedra. During the performance, a geometrician lay on the floor and gently bit down on fruit seeds, which he spat out one by one towards the ceiling. The seeds on the floor increased the volume of the body and at the same time gradually reduced the public space where the geometrist was.
The seeds were each photographed separately and placed in a series of six on paper. From each series of 6 seeds, 3 numbers were made. The artist donated a few numbers to the Friends of S.M.A.K. to sell. One of them goes to our collection.
The edition is on display in the room of the Friends, in S.M.A.K.
installation view Agua Caliente/Hot Water, S.M.A.K., 2011
The artist exhibited in S.M.A.K. in 2011. For his exhibition Agua Caliente/Hot Water, he made a gigantic minimal sculpture. The sculpture consisted of thirty-nine giant white PVC tubes, each thirty-five metres long, which were literally crammed into the space. Each tube was filled with five litres of vegetable oil, which began to leak little by little during the exhibition.
Through the use of sober, everyday materials, such as earth and peat or, in this case, plastic, and by employing a minimalist visual language, the work of Rodríguez-Méndez places itself between arte povera (1970s) and minimalism (1960s). But there is more to it. The 'scars' that the tubes left on the presentation space during the installation remained visible and tangible for the viewer. As a result, the work invalidates the typical discourse of minimalism, because instead of striving for a balanced relationship, it becomes a sculptural investigation of the (inflated) scale relationship between body, sculpture and space. The leaking oil also typifies Rodríguez-Méndez' strongly physical approach to sculpture and can be interpreted as body fluid slowly seeping out of the 'body' that is the sculpture. In this way the sculpture, although 'minimalist' in appearance, becomes more like a living body that has injured itself through its aggressive desire to penetrate the space around it at all costs. The many performances Rodríguez-Méndez carries out - or has carried out - and which function as a sort of 'performative sketch' for his sculptures, also illustrate this strongly physical, almost sexual view of minimal sculpture, although there he seems to want to take the opposite route.
