Joshua Jobb

On the occasion of its sixth anniversary to be celebrated this spring, Saenger Galería reaffirms its program in collaboration with young artists of the international contemporary art scene, continuing this year with the individual presentation in the Sala de Proyectos of artist Joshua Jobb (Mexico City, 1984). For this occasion, Jobb, who lives in the outskirts of the city of Oaxaca, has prepared the exhibition Ludus Naturae in which he integrates a heterogeneous group of works that show two fundamental fields of action in his practice, wandering and contemplation. Composed of a fingerprint drawing made with charcoal stain, vertical sculptures made with pencil shavings, fire prints on drywall, wall and ceiling installations with recovered materials such as branches and drink stirrers, as well as a selection of images from the extensive photographic archive that the artist has been adding throughout his practice, Joshua Jobb's exhibition focuses on the daily intersection of people in the landscape. Whether it is a walk through the valleys of Oaxaca or a stroll through the streets of the metropolis, Jobb traverses the landscape on the lookout for those encounters that, because they are unexpected, have for him a significant potential in their incalculable astonishment.

An example of this singular practice, in which the artist meditates on his walk and his being on earth, is the photographic archive that the artist has compiled with a playful sense in his wanderings through the world and where the discovery of the human footprint is persistent through buildings, machinery, automobiles and all kinds of artificial objects that coexist with the living and profuse presence of nature, in a state of superposition and indeterminacy. In this sense, Joshua Jobb's exhibition Ludus Naturae evidences a creative system that derives from the naturalistic log and the city chronicle that allows him to build a story about the artistic work inserted in the daily life of his immediate environment, in that “way of being”, in the artist's words, that “is to transit”.

–Christian Barragán