Javier Peláez

Saenger Galería presents the last day of the Blue Lotus exhibition with a talk at 12 noon between Javier Peláez, Anabel Quirarte, Patrick Pettersson and curator Christian Barragán.

The works that make up the Blue Lotus exhibition by Javier Peláez are governed by a principle of metamorphosis. Closer to the capacity for transmutation present in concert music and jazz, or even in poetry that resorts to the free association of images, the artist adopts in the creation of his pictorial and graphic work a motif that progressively shapes it. , fixes, exchanges, divides and dismantles; Sometimes, as is currently the case, that motif (a flower, a virgin, a landscape, an object) reaches its partial or even total disappearance under this premise. “As a result of the Casa Nano art residency that I did in Japan during 2017, I realized that my practice is full of ambivalences, contradictions and simultaneities, and I do not have to define, prioritize or privilege one position exclusively.” Six years later, the Blue Lotus exhibition by Javier Peláez fosters a continuum in which we contemplate the fragments of an uninterrupted and multiple, unrepeatable and cyclical vision.

Javier Peláez was born in Mexico City in 1976. He studied Architecture at La Salle University, and between 2012 and 2015 he was co-director of Diagrama, an independent platform dedicated to promoting contemporary painting in Mexico City. Likewise, he has been a resident artist at Vermont Studio Center (Vermont, USA, 2016), Casa NaNo (Tokyo, Japan, 2017) and Casa Wabi (Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, 2021). Among his individual exhibitions stand out Intervalos (Saenger Gallery, Mexico City, 2022), On the Edge of a Fold (Antonio López Saenz Art Gallery, Culiacán, Sinaloa, 2021), Reconfigurations (Museo de Arte de Sonora, Hermosillo, 2020), Broken Tree (William Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, USA, 2019), Satori (Galería 123, Mexico City, 2018), A Place to Name (Galería Libertad, Querétaro, 2018), Indeterminate Nature (Drexel Galería, Monterrey, Nuevo León , 2015), At the Front Door of a Stone (William Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, USA, 2017), Vanitas (Museo de la Ciudad, Querétaro, Qro., 2013), Sacred Objects (Toca Galería, Mexico City, 2010 ) and Objects and Metaphors (Arcadia Gallery, NY, USA, 2008). Likewise, his work has been present in national and international group exhibitions at the Rufino Tamayo International Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art of Querétaro, Museum of Contemporary Art of Oaxaca, Tijuana Cultural Center, Embassy of Mexico in Berlin, Cultural Institute of Mexico in Miami and George Mason University.

His works are part of the Casa Wabi Foundation collections, Sonora Art Museum, Treasury Secretariat Museum, Chancellery Museum, Bulltick Bank Collection, Bastidores Collection, Gaspar Collection, Baco Collection, Kuroda Collection, Pinto Mazal Collection, Collection S+A, among others. The magazines Art In America, American Art Collector, Art News, Fahrenheit and Punto de Partida have published his work; It has also been collected in the book Pintura: México (Vol. I). In 2020, his first monograph, Javier Peláez: High Performance, appeared under the Saenger Editores label, with texts by Shana Nys Dambrot, Michel Blancsubé and Christian Barragán.

Patrick Pettersson, Mexico City, 1970 Bachelor of Visual Arts from the University of Texas, Austin (1994) and Master of Visual Arts at the National School of Plastic Arts, UNAM (1997). Member of the National System of Art Creators, FONCA on two occasions, 2011 to 2013 and from 2018 to 2021. Scholar of the Young Creators program of FONCA in the 2000 - 2001 generation. His work was awarded at the VIII Monterrey Biennial FEMSA, 2007 In 2014, his work won an acquisition award at the National Biennial of Visual Arts in Tijuana. His work has been selected to be part of the Rufino Tamayo Painting Biennial (2016) and the Yucatán Visual Arts Biennial (2015). His work has been exhibited in important cultural institutions in Mexico such as the National Museum of San Ildefonso, the Museum of Modern Art, the Luis Barragán House, the Tamayo Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Oaxaca, the National Center of the Arts, the José Vasconcelos National Library and the Fundidora Park of Monterrey. He has had individual exhibitions at the Polyforum Siqueiros of CDMX, the Museum of Oaxacan Painters MUPO, the Institute of Mexico in Spain (Madrid) and several private galleries in Mexico and abroad.

Quirarte + Ornelas. Anabel Quirarte (Mexico 1980) and Jorge Ornelas (Mexico 1979). They live and work in Mexico City.

In their work they explore the concept of mentally traversable space, experimenting with the notion of three-dimensionality through the construction of structures, generating bridges between sculpture, installation and the two-dimensional plane. Using different media for the conception and realization of their pieces, the research they carry out in their work presents questions about the preconceived limits in them, extrapolating concepts between them. They studied Fine Arts at the ENPEG “La Esmeralda”, in Mexico, and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, Germany.

His work, created in collaboration since 2004, has been exhibited individually in New York, Frankfurt, Seoul, Monterrey, Guadalajara and Mexico City, and collectively in different cities in America, Europe and Asia. His work is found in art collections of institutions and foundations such as the Würth Museum (Germany), Madeira Foundation (Portugal), KGAL (Germany), Auteide Foundation (Spain), IAGO (Mexico), Chancery Museum (Mexico), Lumen Collection (Mexico) and UNAM (Mexico), among others. Among the supports and recognitions they have obtained are: Scholarship from the Baden-Württemberg exchange program at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe, Germany; Lumen Art Biennial Third Edition Award, mid-career category; Honorable Mention in the XIII Rufino Tamayo Painting Biennial 2006: First place in the Luna Prize, an Artistic Expression (2009); Young Creators, FONCA (2006, 2013 and 2014); Members of the National System of Art Creators (Jorge Ornelas, Sculpture, 2019. Anabel Quirarte, Painting, 2021)

— Saenger Galería