I Am Not Your Mexican: New York City

Ruiz-Healy Art is pleased to present I Am Not Your Mexican, two concurrent group exhibitions, at our San Antonio and New York City galleries.The exhibitions are curated by writer Eduardo Egea and feature artists Jesse Amado, Mathias Goeritz, Hersúa, Willy Kautz-Jippies Asquerosos, Fernando Polidura, and Teresa Serrano. The exhibitions will include historical works by Goeritz, Hersúa, and Serrano.

Exhibition curator, Eduardo Egea notes, “Western Art built an artistic canon that influenced the rest of the world. Minimalism is one of the Post-War movements whose influence continues; within this movement the artist Eva Hesse created a Post-Minimalism practice that laid the foundation for its expansion. But how have artists from other latitudes dealt with the overwhelming dominance of Western contemporary art? Assimilating and transforming these influences, México has been, for decades, a rich laboratory to subvert Minimalism through Post-Minimalist practices that seek to give meaning to the timeless but rigid Minimalist geometric forms of which this exhibition gives an account.”

Based on the interaction between the spectator and the work that Mathias Goeritz developed in the monumental public art work "Torres de Satélite," 1957-58, Hersúa implemented a very original interaction between the spectator, geometry, perception of space and color in monumental sculptures such as "Ambiente Circular" and "Ambiente Rectangular" both from 1973, and of which Ruiz-Healy Art exhibits the original models, works that echo the “theatricality” of Minimalism, whose literalness broke the line between reality and art, a criticism raised by Michael Fried in his seminal essay, "Art and Objecthood," 1967

JIPPIES ASQUEROSOS EXPANDS ON GOLD'S SPIRITUAL AND MATERIALISTIC IMPLICATIONS IN HIS WORK, NOLI ME TANGERE."A WELL-KNOWN BIBLICAL THEME FROM THE GOSPEL OF SAINT JOHN, IN WHICH HE NARRATES HOW, AFTER THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST, MARY MAGDALENE RECOGNIZES HIM AND TRIES TO TOUCH HIM. CHRIST ANSWERS HIM: NOLI ME TANGERE (DON’T TOUCH ME). IT IS A CLASSICAL THEME WIDELY REPRESENTED IN THE HISTORY OF ART. I DECIDED TO DO IT IN GOLD TO EXALT THE VALUE ATTRIBUTED TO THE WORK OF ART, A SACRED OBJECT THAT CANNOT BE TOUCHED."

- WILLY KAUTZ - JIPPIES ASQUEROSOS

THE SERPENT’S CAUSEWAy

"Physical development is kind of incremental quota that is initially met with joy until reaching the turning point towards middle adulthood and eventually senescence. First smooth, sumptuous, and moisturized, then folded, dry, and dehydrated, the pieces simulate the maturation of human flesh from birth to old age in a sort of acceleration of events."

- Fernando polidura

CONSTANZA AND FABRIANO
This series emerged as an imperative action in response to the daily life into which the artist was suddenly immersed during the confinement due to the SARS-COV-2 pandemic. In response to this situation, he developed an equally severe and rigorous exercise in which he embroiders human hair on cotton paper, raw materials provided by the immediacy of his environment. The resulting meticulous works arise from the need to generate a placebo that counters the anxiety and constant desire for control caused by obsessive-compulsive disorder, a particular condition that undermines the artist's integrity and, consequently, that of the work.

Anne C. Chave, in the important critical essay on Minimalism: Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power, 1990, discusses the industrial, corporate, military, and therefore patriarchial and macho character of Minimalism with respect to its scale, its potential for mass production, compliance with government regulations, etc. Right at the same time that this essay was published, Serrano produced sculptures in which she subverted the depersonalized coldness of materials such as steel, iron, or other metals common to Minimalism; but confronted these with the feminine seduction of lace, ceramics and mirrors.