LA CASA QUE NOS INVENTAMOS: CONTEMPORARY ART FROM GUADALAJARA surveys the work of nineteen artists who respond to their hometown through paintings, sculpture, performance, and more. Now open at Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, the exhibition’s title translates to “the house we invented,” citing Guadalajara’s status as a cultural hub of Mexico and highlighting the artists who have championed the city’s creative qualities over the past decade.
Curated by Viviana Kuri and Oklahoma Contemporary.
Octavio Abúndez
Mixed Media, b. 1981
“My work is about ideas. In that sense, I consider myself a conceptual artist. I write a lot and most of my work is text-based. I let the texts age, and then I often come back to them. I experiment with different ways of presenting those texts in accordance to their nature.”
Gonzalo Lebrija
Sculpture, b. 1972
Gonzalo Lebrija is known for evocative geometric abstraction and recasting everyday objects and activities with a poetic sensibility using sculpture, video, photography, and painting. Lebrija’s symbolic, multi-media approach to the creative process has made him a notable figure in contemporary art.
Hiram Constantino
Mixed Media, b. 1987
“A large part of my exploration starts from a sketch and then creating a narrative around it. I like to use vignettes (like comic strips) as images. Before I start a project I like to think of how can I learn from new techniques and mediums to develop my work and combine it with what I already know.”
Claudia Cisneros
Painting, b. 1991
Claudia Cisneros’ interest in language, images, and physicality have led her to develop a personal and unique art practice. Most of her projects are developed in situ—intersecting the artist with her audience—and unfolding as a collaborative practice. Using the body as primary material, her interdisciplinary practice includes writing, drawing, video, sculpture, sound, and installation.
Gabriel Rico
Sculpture, b. 1980
“I have always been fascinated with philosophical analogies and scientific disciplines. My work has been influenced by the study of form and space. I consider myself a believer in matter, an ontologist with a heuristic methodology; sometimes I use technology tools and scientific models as metaphors for collective memory. My work is a reflection on the nature of the pieces from the materials used to produce them.”
Jose Dávila
Sculpture, b. 1974
“My art-making process is born out of research: books, magazines, art history, interviews, and more. It helps me visualize the path I am pursuing. I keep a lot of materials, images, and graphics [in my studio] waiting for the best moment to use them. Through these materials, I am defining the artistic vocabulary I am going to speak with later on.”
Francisco Ugarte
Mixed Media, b. 1973
Francisco Ugarte’s architecture background is evident in his minimalist, precise artworks. His pieces encompass a range of sculpture, drawing, video, painting, and installations that aim to emphasize their environment—whether a site-specific intervention or within the white walls of a gallery or museum.
Carmen Huízar
Painting, b. 1995
“For the paintings that are part of this exhibition, they come from images that I had access to in my [childhood]. I did not grow up in the city of Guadalajara, but in a town in the north of the state of Jalisco. When I conceived of the series, I thought about the distance of my town from a larger city. I had little access to images considered art, this made me remember the layers of paint and the wear and tear visible on the walls in the town, as the only accessible art for me at that time.”
Daniela Ramirez
Painting, b. 1991
“I build most of my paintings directly on the canvas. I don’t necessarily know what the result is going to be, so it takes time to decide. Sometimes colors and shapes easily appear, other times I erase them over and over again which is part of the process—gaining textures and layers.”
Isa Carrillo
Textile, b. 1982
Isa Carrillo’s interests in hidden or invisible phenomena began to develop at the start of her career. By combining themes referring to the subconscious present in everyday life and through the collection of personal files, photographs, and images, the artist utilizes both the tangible and the intangible as catalysts to develop her projects.
Julieta Beltrán
Painting, b. 1997
“My inspiration begins by searching for material to work from, sometimes it comes from family photos, social media, news outlets, or film stills. Other times, I’ll start with an excerpt from a book or essay, and that becomes the framing device through which I produce my works. I tend to imagine a story behind the images—maybe it links to a previous painting or an experience that connects with a part of my identity. From that, I frame the area of the image I will work with and begin to paint.”
Renata Petersen
Sculpture, b. 1993
Renata Petersen has been interested in community and spiritual dynamics since childhood. She uses ceramics and blown glass to create satirical revisions to subjects such as religious sects, urban legends, gender roles, contemporary sexuality, and the subjectivity implicit in “bad taste.” Her art straddles high and low culture by referencing the mass market through the world of art.
Florencia Guillén
Mixed Media, b. 1978
The themes of Florencia Guillén’s artworks are social observation and narration through the use of different media including video, sound, text, drawing, photograph, and found materials.
Zazil Barba
Video Art, b. 1985
Zazil Barba has a special interest in collection and classification of everyday objects, fragments, phrases, urban remains, and garbage material to create her narratives. She has created work in sculpture, video, performance, collage, and installation. Since 2007 Barba has been part of the art collective La Favorita Colectivo, with Álvaro Ugarte and Alberto López Corcuera, where they develop performative projects.
Alejandro Almanza
Sculpture, b. 1977
By compiling every day materials such as neon light-tubes, rope, and cement into large-scale sculptures, Alejandro Almanza challenges the stability of the objects and explores the culturally specific paradigms of safety, danger, and architecture.
Jorge Méndez Blake
Sculpture, b. 1974
A trained architect, Jorge Méndez Blake is a mixed-media conceptual artist who uses construction materials like bricks, aluminum tubing, and slabs of marble to reference literary icons like Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, and Emily Dickinson. His works seek to explore the dynamics and contradictions in contemporary culture.
Cynthia Gutiérrez
Sculpture, b. 1978
The work of Cynthia Gutiérrez asks, “Is it impossible to generate accurate memories?” By reconfiguring images and objects and manipulating historical elements and materials from a new point of view, her sculptural work challenges the expected and undermines the line between reality and fiction.
Eduardo Sarabia
Mixed Media, b. 1976
“My work comes to life from very personal memories and experiences of living. Also, there is a certain kind of fiction involved in the construction of a story. I’m interested in all the ways my work could be interpreted by an audience. Coming to live and work in Guadalajara gave me the opportunity to be close to local artisan manufacturers. It opened up a world of possibilities in terms of production techniques and collaboration with people who work from artisan knowledge.”
Peach
Mixed Media, b. 1993
Peach, a multidisciplinary artist, investigates the ways we build relationships. The artist’s research emerges from queer theory, feminism, and the millennial experience through participatory projects, installations, video, self-publications, and resources found in cyberspace. Peach currently lives and works in Guadalajara and manages the programming at PAOS GDL, a non-profit association that promotes cultural research and artistic education.