Pablo Arredondo y Rodrigo Echeverría

JO-HS invites to the talk around ¡Qué cholulada! between Pablo Arellano and the artist Rodrigo Echeverría.

Rodrigo Echeverría (Mexico, 1988) is a self-taught painter who, as Nicolás Medina Mora states, “follows a set of formal laws very different from those that govern much of contemporary Mexican art. His work is too diverse and too original to fit comfortably into one school or another, and the omnivorous curiosity that nourishes his sensibility could well be described as [that of a] neo-baroque painter.” Echeverría began painting at an early age in the context of a conservative, Catholic society. After graduating from college he saw firsthand that the most effective learning occurs outside of institutions. As Medina Mora observes, Echeverría “collects gestures, colors and styles that he then makes his own, not through disrespectful appropriation, but rather by drinking from the innumerable sources of human diversity. The fundamental effect that Echeverría's canvases induce in the viewer is a kind of confusion that is sometimes joyful, sometimes disturbing, but always productive. Each successive viewing reveals new possibilities, new references, new readings”. His paintings are divided into figurative, portraits and landscapes. He has had important portrait commissions, including a portrait of the second chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, and his collections cover all levels of society.

Pablo Arredondo (Mexico 1988) studied History at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the Specialty and Master in Anthropological Sciences at UAM-Iztapalapa. His research has focused on landscape, the commercialization of culture and touristification. He was awarded the University Merit Medal from the UAM for his Master's studies and has published a joint book in the DEBATE publishing house entitled Cultura en Venta, coordinated by Ricardo Pérez Montfort. He was curatorial assistant at Museo Kaluz and associate curator of the International Contemporary Art Festival Hacer Noche: Promised Land in Oaxaca. He has curated exhibitions in Mexico City of artists such as Romeo Gómez López and Wendy Cabrera Rubio, as well as at MACBA in Barcelona, among others. He served as producer and writer of the 4 seasons of the television program Los 41 tropiezos de la heteronorma en México, broadcasted by TVUNAM.

— JO-HS