Jimena Mendoza: Materia Negruzca

We are inviting you to the exhibition Materia Negruzca by Jimena Mendoza, curated by Šárka Koudelová.

opening of the exhibition: 06/04/2024 at 6 p.m.
exhibition: 06/05 – 06/25/2024

Jimena Mendoza’s long-standing interest in clothing and its relationship to our identity resulted in a free exhibition series, named Cuerpo and accompanied by a Roman numeral in each case. The colorful modifications of the exhibition spaces and the compositional games played out within them with the individual objects, some of which are multiplied as a vanguard of pawns, while others are given an almost altar-like hierarchy, feel like exaggerated intimate details of the process of dressing and decorating the body before the atavistic celebration of a forgotten culture, when all the components of the ceremonial garment must be correctly placed. At the same time, Jimena also addresses in them a kind of figurative ergonomics of each work – despite the formal reduction, based on post-modern morphology and the symbolism of ancient civilizations, we feel from each work a physicality that is at once their own integrity and a memory of the warmth of their wearer. It is clear, however, that the deeper Jimena delves into the subject matter, the more she addresses the “cuerpo”, or the body of the exhibition itself, which thus becomes a message about the division of space, the tension between the external and the internal, and the landscape with its own light and rhythm.

Materia Negruzca, which would read “Blackened Matter” in Czech, is an unconscious continuation of this reasoning with the stripes of dark shade colours running through the space. Jimena understands the gallery as an abstract, hollow space of natural origin, a kind of fissure of which we may not even be aware. The elements it contains and the events that take place within it, exist without the condition of our attention or recognition. This does not prevent them from having anthropomorphic shapes or even behaviors. They cluster in groups, stare out from the walls or, on the contrary, remind us of the esthetics of the bygone era preserved in the niches. Despite the many associations that the individual objects evoke, their appearance and configuration is shrouded in their materiality – as if, like the entire space, they become more abstract the more we try to describe them. The exhibition could be read as a metaphorical materialization of human emotions, an analogy to the feeling of emptiness. However, it is an undiscovered abyss right under our feet, a topographical study of a living space that just exists there.

The project is implemented with financial support from City of Prague and the State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic, International Ceramics Symposium in Bechyně and the Sistema de Apoyos a la Creación y Proyectos Culturales.