Material - Mexico

Against oblivion
The project brings together Leyla Cardenas (1974, Bogota) and Jorge Rosano Gamboa (1984, Mexico) who, through a conceptual practice, work on forgotten matters to materialize the abstract notion of time.
A mid-career artist, Leyla Cárdenas explores reality in a sculptural gesture that aims to spatialize and materialize time. Her works question urban ruins, demolition sites and abandoned spaces as indications of social transformations and lost memories. Her approach recalls that of the archaeologist who analyzes the different layers of a fragmented reality in a vertical dimension. Considering that textile is made of chains and weft, the artist photographed landscape or endangered buildings, which often retains only the facade. In "Mutual dissolution" the mountain next to Bogota becomes a printed image on a polyester silk whose frame is partially unweaved, revealing the layers of time and the fragility of the process. The gradual disappearance of the place is thus materialized in the support itself of the work.
A new series of works in textile is dedicated to lichens that fascinate the artist because they appear as a whole microcosmos and testify the possibility of life in spite of all the death and destruction all around. In "Interfaz posible" the image was shot besides Bogota, near a very contaminated river attached to a ruin of a wall made of concrete.
Jorge Rosano Gamboa creates works where the absence becomes visible, questioning the relationship between the moment and its representation. Between contemporary art and vernacular, ritual, divine and profane, he composed images that look unfinished because they are only traces of lost memories. A series of masks are emblematic of his practice : made in avocado wood, they are carved by some artisans from Tocuaro, Michoacan and adorned with horsehair, animal ashes and burned in the yakisugi technique. As the mask has served throughout the eyes of the other, there is an operation of re-updating the matter, giving it body and making tactile to traverse the abstraction of memory. Besides a handmade clay tile roof installation from the early 20th century testimonies the journey within the landscape itself and opens the notion of transit and threshold. A special little
house construction is made for Material.
The series "The last shadow of the night" (La última sombra de la noche) refers to the conception of time in prehispanic societies when death was just an extension of life. Rosano Gamboa gives reality to this notion through the use of encaustic technique mixed with ashes from animals.