THE FIRE KEEPERS, A PERSPECTIVE ON THE MYTH OF FIRE FROM A MEXICAN CURATORIAL PERSPECTIVE
In an art industry that increasingly advocates following the lines established by cultural policies, it is always comforting to return to thesis themes, to environments that draw from social and historiographic sources, of course, but also from myths and a well-understood anthropology. You can go deeper in subtitles and lines or you can put together a skeleton, but the overview can also be a reward these days.
Curators Lorena Peña Brito (Mexico City, Mexico) and Eduardo Sarabia (Los Angeles, USA, 1976), who doubles for the occasion from his role as artist, have been in charge of giving form to the legends about the origin of fire, its meaning as creation and destruction and the multiple ways in which cultures have approached it. Within the broad imagery, the artists selected in the collective exhibition The Fire Keepers contribute their visions through different techniques, but also entering from different angles and proposals that help to trace synergies between these conceptions.
Although the initial intention of showing the approach and representation by various cultures could be somewhat blurred by the presence only of Mexican artists or those closely related to the country, the result is closer to having been achieved thanks, precisely, to the iconographic variety arranged in the room. Nevertheless, the cultural or anthropological approach can be found in this materialization, a sample of the intrinsic variety of an almost universal myth that has been varnished with a fierce mixture.
Spread out on the walls we can understand the importance of this myth and the representative versatility of its multiple forms, from the language of expressive intensity of the works on paper by Marcel Dzama (Winnipeg, Canada, 1974) to the oil paintings by Mariana Paniagua (Mexico City, Mexico, 1994), more focused on the monochromatic range of fire, identities that also monopolize the exhibited work of Julian Madero Islas (Mexico City, Mexico, 1990). The enormous proposal of Giovanni Fabián (Cherán, Mexico, 1993), representing the cosmological side of the element, or the syncretism of Alejandro García Contreras (Tapachula, Mexico, 1982) who, with his sculpture Pazuzu/María Magdalena manages to confront the myth narrated from mythology and religion, stand out for their expressiveness and impact.
Of course, there is room for other interpretations and techniques that allude to the adaptability of the legend, perfectly expressed in the urban and pop language of Christopher Myers (New York, USA, 1974), the circular arrangement in the wood of the Agüeros series by Circe Irasema (Mexico City, Mexico, 1987), or the distanced chromatism, although perceptible in the figurative, of the works of Lucía Vidales (Mexico City, Mexico, 1986), Felipe Baeza (Guanajuato, Mexico, 1987) or the filmmaker Pablo Aldrete (Guadalajara, Mexico, 1972).
Eduardo Sarabia's contribution, in addition to his own as curator, completes that plane of visions, adding ex profeso pieces, such as the acrylics on paper Fire Keepers or Fire Visions or his celebrated boxes and vases that, without having a perceptible element of union with the exhibition's theory, contribute a certain aesthetic element, perhaps as a reference to that same aesthetic that has taken hold of humanity since the discovery of fire or as guardians of it.
The Fire Keepers can be seen until November 8 at VETA by Fer Francés, Antoñita Jiménez, 37-43, Madrid (Spain).
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