Details
Gabriel RICO
VII - Mural, from the series –Reducción objetiva orquestada (2016 - 2021)–, 2021
Mixed media, neon
330 × 520 × 90 cm | 129 15/16 × 204 3/4 × 35 7/16 inch
Unique
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“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.


“VII Mural” 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 epoch is at play where the material nature and physical force of ‘things’ manifests without intervention. “

- Patrick Charpenel, Executive Director, El Museo del Barrio, New York


A work from this series is represented in the collection of the Voorlinden Museum, Wassenaar, Netherlands and in the Colección Jumex in Mexico City, Mexico.