Goodman Gallery is pleased to present, Disclose, Mateo López’s first solo exhibition on the continent.
Beginning with the idea of drawing as a process through which to think, experiment and animate different ideas, the exhibition brings together works on paper, sculptures as well as a new animation film, Disclose (2022). Drawing, which is foundational in López’s practice, merges with selected materials to bring about different ideas. Employing various tools - the body, pencil, fabric, pixels - López sets a scene for musicality and movement that is at once chaotic and methodical.
Included in the exhibition are twenty-nine collage works presented as a horizontal grid. The verses contained in the collage works are based on a text co-written with partner Yanina Valdivieso originally included in the exhibition, Mateo López: Undo List, at The Drawing Center in New York in 2017. Written partly in response to the political turmoil in Colombia, following the Plebiscite for the Colombian Peace Agreement, the text begins “It happened already” followed by “Be angry” and “Undo” — gesturing towards a call for action, communicating a sense of urgency for change. Seeing the marches on the streets and experiencing protests with residents shouting, singing and carrying banners and flags propelled López to revisit the text and to want to agitate it and make it move.
The film, Disclose takes as its setting off point the twenty-nine collage works presented in the show. Cutouts and fragments from the collage works are digitally rendered with each distinct component moving at its own pace, in conversation with the work’s textual elements. A dancer is filmed interacting with the drawings - a way of bringing performance into the gallery space. The film is scored through an interesting combination of a synthetic sound produced by a professional drum set alongside the soulful sound of the local, Tambora drum, creating a melody that is energetic and charged.
Disclose draws from López’ research on theatre, through the work of Russian theatre producer Vsevolod Meyerhold, who focused on learning gestures and movements as a way of expressing emotion outwardly. Meyerhold sought to connect bodily expressions with specific emotions and popularized principles of biomechanics which proposed that the performer's psychological state was inextricably linked to their physiological state.
In Doodles (2020), drawing gains materiality and becomes three dimensional. López uses metal wire, Balsa wood and enamel paint to arrive at an object that is playful, and thereby reveals a component of the process of his studio. In Helix (2021) paper is reconstructed to take the form of a curving form - two spheres of paper intersect. These works propose ways in which lines on a flat surface can transform into objects with depth and volume.
The improvisational nature of López’s practice can be seen in works such as Allotment (2015). Made with slate and chalk, Allotment is an interactive installation that requires a member of the public to be activated. The same action has the potential to create and destroy as each slate can be shifted to make new drawings and erase old ones.
_Hemispheres_ (2021) is an installation of two aluminium bottle caps carrying a small-scale cartographic ink drawing. Through this work, López gestures towards the classic tradition of sending a message through a bottle. The variations in scale draw attention to different ways in which space can be interacted with.
Made with linen, acrylic and red pencil with a metal tube and rings, _El tiempo es la idea (Time is the idea)_ 2019 - 2021 emphasizes templates used by the artist as collaging tools - colourful forms interact with the numbers one through to nine, creating seriality and provoking thoughts about time — time as a construct, time as fleeting and time as now.
_Disclose_ engages with cartographies, journeys and construction processes while grappling with themes of chance, encounter and time. Read alongside each other, the works redefine the relationship between space, form and the body.
Artworks
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Artist Bio
Mateo López (b. 1978, Bogotá, Colombia) lives and works between Bogotá and New York. He studied architecture for two years at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá before switching to Visual Arts at Bogotá’s Universidad de Los Andes.
López’s work engages with cartographies, journeys and con-struction processes while grappling with themes of chance, encounter and time. His practice traces a conceptual ap-proach, expanding from drawings to installations, architec-ture, films and sculptural choreography. Key international solo exhibitions include 'Sin Principio / Sin Final,' Museo de Arte Universidad Nacional, Bogota, Colombia (2018); 'Undo List,' The Drawing Center, New York, USA (2017); 'A Weed is a Plant Out of Place,' Lismore Castle Arts, Lismore, Ireland (2016), and 'Deriva' at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain (2009). Important group exhibitions include 'United States of Latin America,' curated by Jens Hoffmann, and 'Pab-lo León de la Barra' at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit, USA (2015); 'A Trip from Here to There,' Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (2013) and 'Ha sempre um copo de mar para um homem navegar,' 29 Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2010).
Major awards and residencies include the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. William Kentridge’s Protégé, Geneva Switzerland in 2012 and the Gasworks Residency Program, London, UK in 2010, which was followed by an exhibition.
López’s work can be found in public collections around the world, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; Banco de la Republica, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, Bogotá, Colombia, Inhotim, Minas Gerais, Brazil and Museum of Mod-ern Art (MoMA), New York, NY.
