RODRÍGUEZ-MÉNDEZ. HUMOURS AND THICKNESSES

Curated by Ángel Calvo Ulloa.

Rodríguez-Méndez’s work (As Neves, Pontevedra, 1968) comes from the language of sculpture, from which it has evolved in directions that connect it with materiality, semantics, temporality and physicality to shape a slippery sculpture oeuvre that is difficult to classify and highly provocative. It has gradually dematerialised over almost thirty years until now absence, hollowness and the omitted find it a structure to reclaim themselves, rise and be sustained.

Humours and Thicknesses is an exhibition project that will occupy the first floor and atrium of the CA2M Museum in Móstoles starting 1 March 2025. It is a proposal that unfolds in two ways, first by presenting a succinct survey of his oeuvre, reviving different works that have somehow been his hallmarks since the 2000s. At the same time, coexisting with this survey, a series of new works are being presented which coalesce around an extremely personal vision of the sculptural language and materialise in spatially specific installations, new pieces, performative actions and series that join some of the ones he has done in recent years.

The installations readapted for the CA2M Museum spaces include Aceite. Peso [Oil. Weight] (2013), presented in 2014 as part of the 20th Itineraries at the Fundación Botín (Santander). It was the resolution of a working process with plant oil which he had started several years earlier with the exhibitions Agua caliente [Hot Water], made specifically for S.M.A.K. (Ghent, 2011), and later with the installation Congelar aceite [Freezing Oil], included in the Active Presence programme, MARCO (Vigo, 2012) and LABoral (Gijón, 2013). Another work that Humours and Thicknesses will revisit is Hombres sentados [Seated Men], a double screening presented in 2011 as part of the now-defunct Abierto X Obras programme at Matadero (Madrid), in which monumental proportions were given to a working process with elderly men that had emerged earlier within his family, and later in specific works like Horizontal en mujeres [Horizontal in Women], presented in Before Anything, CA2M (Madrid, 2010); Posición.Permear III [Position. Permeate III], showed at Learning how to Fall, La Casa Encendida (Madrid, 2014); and La memoria, la fruta [Memory, Fruit], made for Under the Surface (fears, monsters, shadows) at the CCC Conde Duque (Madrid, 2020). Also worth noting is the reactivation of Batir saliva [Beat Saliva], an action performed during the opening of the 2011 exhibition Agua caliente [Hot Water] at S.M.A.K. in Ghent (Belgium). Performative action is one of the fields which Rodríguez-Méndez has investigated from the beginning of his artistic career. The presence of his and others’ bodies, often chosen based on physical features that distinguish them from his, mark this type of action, in which the people involved perform a mechanical action disassociated from the event in which they are held.

Humours and Densities emerged from the desire to split, which distinguishes to two ways of approaching artistic creation. First, humour alludes to the set of fluids in a living organism, as well as the willingness to do something, while it is also identified with a series of works made in serial fashion, often with photographs but also with drawing, actions performed and impossible, which belong more to the terrain of the desirable and operate as allusions to what has already been done. Density, in turn, evokes qualities like the denseness or condensation of substances in different conditions, as well as the thickness of solid bodies. Here, density is associated with the physical nature of the sculptural matter and installation, which also form of the core of Rodríguez-Méndez’s work.

RODRÍGUEZ-MÉNDEZ 

(As Neves, Pontevedra, 1968) has a bachelor’s in Fine Arts from the UCM.
His works have been displayed at institutions like S.M.A.K. (Ghent), MARCO (Vigo), Matadero (Madrid), Instituto Cervantes (Madrid), Yaddo Foundation (New York), Ateliê Fidalga (São Paulo) and Espacio SVT (Vigo) and the galleries Formato Cómodo (Madrid), Paula Alonso (Madrid) and Vilaseco (A Coruña), among others.

He has participated in group projects at the CGAC (Santiago de Compostela), Artos Foundation (Nicosia), IVAM (Valencia), CaixaForum (Barcelona), Centro Cultural Montehermoso (Vitoria-Gasteiz), Contemporary Arts Center (Ohio), CCC Conde Duque (Madrid), S.M.A.K. and Vooruit Arts Centre (Ghent), MAC (A Coruña), Casal Solleric (Palma de Mallorca), CCCC (Valencia) and the Korjaamo Gallery (Helsinki).
He has participated in the residency programmes at the Yaddo Foundation (New York), Kiosko (Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia) and Ateliê Fidalga (São Paulo).

He has received grants from the production programmes of the Fundación Botín, Iniciarte, Fundación Bilbao Arte and Matadero, and creation grants from the Ministry of Culture, the Xunta de Galicia and the Community of Madrid. He received a lifetime achievement award in 2022 as part of the Festival Plataforma (Santiago de Compostela), and he was given the Connexio award (Lugo) in 2020.
He has recently published the books La Puerta Natural (libros de la resistencia) and Antes, la fatiga (Ediciones Vilaseco). His work is part of collections like S.M.A.K., CGAC, DKV and MICA. He is currently a professor of Sculpture at the University of Salamanca (USAL).

ÁNGEL CALVO ULLOA

(Lalín, Pontevedra, 1984) holds a bachelor’s in Art History from the USC and a master’s in Contemporary Art: Creation and Investigation from the UVigo. A curator and writer, he lives and works in Galicia and Madrid.

In 2024, he and Marta Mestre were the curators of the 5th Coimbra Biennial. His latest institutional projects include El sueño de la cólcedra [The Dream of the Quilt] by Teresa Lanceta at the Museo Patio Herreriano (Valladolid); Habitación. El Archivo F.X., las chekas psicotécnicas de Laurencic y la función del art [Room. The F.X. Archive, the psycho-technical Chekas by Laurencic and its function in the art], by Pedro G. Romero, co-curated with Nuria Enguita for the el CA2M (Madrid), MNAC (Barcelona) and La Nau (Valencia); Autoconstrucción Piezas sueltas. Juego y experiencia [Self-Construction. Loose Parts. Play and Experience] by Antonio Ballester Moreno at Artium (Vitoria-Gasteiz); Siron Franco: Pensamento insubordinado Trabalhos, 1961–2023 [Siron Franco: Insubordinate Thinking (Works 1960–2023)] at the MAC Goiàs (Brazil); Complexo Colosso, CIAJG (Guimarães) [Complex Colossus, CIAJG (Guimarães)]; and Anidar en el gesto: unas estanterías de Alberto [Nesting in the Gesture: Alberto’s Shelves] at the Fundación Cerezales Antonio y Cinia (Cerezales del Condado, León). Since 2011, he has also curated shows at institutions like La Casa Encendida (Madrid), Caixaforum (Barcelona), MARCO (Vigo), CCEMx (Mexico City), Fundación Luis Seoane (A Coruña), Tabacalera (Madrid), Centro Párraga (Murcia) and EACC (Castellón), among others.

In 2020, he and Juan Canela co-authored the book Desde lo curatorial. Conversaciones, experiencias y afectos as part of the Colección Paper issued by Consonni.

He is currently preparing projects for institutions like MNCARS (Madrid), MAC-USP (São Paulo) and Sala Alcalá 31 (Madrid).