Entre contrastes, paralelismos is a dual exhibition that brings together the artistic production of Karian Amaya and Raúl Rebolledo not with the desire to draw analogies or correspondences, but to produce a meeting point —beyond the immediate concordances or their notorious contrasts— between two artists active in the contemporary art scene who work abroad from the city of Guadalajara.

   The predilection for copper, marble and minerals configure in Amaya's practice a series of works that evoke the forms of the natural and desert landscape, present in her production from ruptures, fragments and remains. The Chihuahua native artist focuses on metals and precious stones to infer their poetic materiality, whose very material condition allows her to explore the layers of time, the endurance of words and the stories of the earth.

Its production orbits around the mineral extractive industries in Mexico, exploring the history of mining exploitation and extraction in the country. Its medium, the matter that makes itself in the course of time, becomes meta-sculptural forms. Often taking the form of a pendulum, homage to the wind (Ode al aire, 2021); haiku poems that ensure their remembrance inscribed on copper (Invisible poems, 2021); works that crave cave paintings (Vestigios, 2021); and in photographs that recover the materiality of the sea and the wind (The Beauty of the Passage of Time, 2021).

   Symbols linked to systemic violence, crime, and repressive policies that emerge from the capitalist social system constitute cannon fodder in Rebolledo's practice. In his body of work a series of critical experiences are legislated while criticizing the state of crisis and moments of agony, in contexts of job insecurity, financial speculation and crime, thus deploying a series of conceptual strategies and tactics that in many ways disrupt and they challenge the spirit and the collective indifference.

   Works such as Cocaine, Bullet & Minumun Wage (2015-2019) - a triptych that ties cocaine, bullets and the minimum wage into figures - reveals a war machine through the subtle and imperceptible. The body-merchandise in the fabric of the globalized world is exposed in both volume, weight and shape (Unkowns, 2021); their silhouettes in the landscape are outlined in gold leaves, to expose a new account, an act of familiarity and estrangement, bodies found in bags; while Secula Seculorum 10.533 (2021) works with the evaporating and latent image, disconcerting images that can only be assimilated under the magnifying glass of fury.

Both artistic practices operate in opposition: Amaya's works, hard; firm; Heavy, they address fragility, subjectivity and inconsistency. Meanwhile, Rebolledo's works, light; volatile; Flawless, they explore the ominous, death and abject.

​

Marco Valtierra October 2021