Karen Rodríguez

As part of the cycle El dilema de unir los puntos, Proyectos Monclova inaugurates the exhibition El Poeta y el Calígrafo by the Mexican visual artist Karen Rodríguez, who presents her most recent research and artistic production project on white spaces in writing and calligraphy, to find other modes of sculptural creation.

For the conceptualization of this edition, Néstor Jiménez took as a starting point the non-linear narrative of art and cultural and social phenomena. This premise serves as a framework for the work of six artists with similar methodologies and concerns and young professional trajectories. Among the themes addressed by the six artists, the observation and abstraction of visual culture in public space, the dispossession of territories, the complex relationships between humanity and animal-plant life, and institutional criticism stand out.

To do this, he exhibits pieces made in oil pastel, colored pencils and ink on canvas, which arise when imagining and drawing the forms of silence and the pauses given by the negative spaces between letters and words. Subsequently, these two-dimensional pieces are translated into three-dimensional objects, creating ceramic sculptures, respecting elements of calligraphy such as the pointed or rounded shapes of the letters.

These sculptures are made with different types of clays and ceramic materials that, when they come into contact with the high temperatures inside the oven, change their initial color. In such a way that you can see pieces with a vibrant color palette and even iridescence effects.

Karen Rodríguez (Oaxaca, 1993) is a visual artist who graduated from the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving (ENPEG), La Esmeralda. Through drawing, painting and ceramics, the artist works on the textual and visual elements that can be found both in public space, material and visual culture, as well as in the use of language itself. Particularly, she is exploring new forms of sculptural creation through some notions of calligraphy, taking as a starting point the negative spaces or silences that exist when letters are designed; thus imagining how the notions of linguistics or grammar would influence when configuring new sculptural forms.

She was a scholarship recipient of the Young Creators program (2019-2022) in the specialty of painting, she participated in the VI Diploma in Visual Arts (2017) at the San Agustín Arts Center, Oaxaca. She was part of the Cobertizo residence (2023), Jilotepec, in the State of Mexico. She has participated in various exhibitions such as Every shape is line (2023) in Espacio Mirador, Mexico City; Egoistic Heart (2023) at Ache Galería, San Luis Potosí; Final exhibition of the Pocoapoco residency (2022) Pocoapoco, Oaxaca; Creation in Motion of the Young Creators program (2020) at the Image Center, Mexico City; In Captivity, Chameleons (2021) in Support, Mexico City. She participated in the exhibitions Do n’t get 2 close 2 my Fantasy (2020) at the Karen Huber gallery, Mexico City; Primitive failed (2018) Los 14, Mexico City; The saddest memory of Acapulco (2018), Maleza Projects, Bogotá; Re-Constructo (2018) at Zucca project space, Venice; Sanctuary project against the modern world (2017), as part of the sixth diploma at the San Agustín Arts Center, Oaxaca; Gross Construction (2017), in Alternative Space Gallery of the ENPEG La Esmeralda, Mexico City.

— Proyectos Monclova