Artemio "A Requiem for Maria"
Y Gallery (319 Grand St.)
This event has ended.
Y Gallery presents A Requiem for Maria, a visual requiem composed by Artemio (Mexico, 1976) celebrating the life of artist Maria Alos (1973-2011) and the repose of her soul. For the month of March, the gallery converts itself into a temple, with ritual offerings as a memorial to an artist.
As enfants terribles, Artemio and Maria developed a 20 year relationship as accomplices during both the quotidian episodes of life as well as in the uncanny occurrences. They were soul siblings in the act of living. The exposition is an homage from artist to artist. In his visual arrangement, Artemio re-contextualizes the liturgical chants of a requiem, Introitus, Kyrie Eleison, Graduale, Tracto, Dies Irae, Offertorium, Sanctus, Agnus Die, Communio, and Libera me, engraving these manuscripts within the interior of somber walnut cases. It is on behalf of the viewer to open the walnut chest, and to let the chant be read. Dies Irae, the middle poem of the requiem, is the climactic moment of the melodic composition. Artemio embellishes the verses of this poem through silence. Dies Irae expands throughout the gallery space in glass tombstones, while the sound of peace is evoked from the candles that illuminate Artemio’s arrangements. During the last years, Artemio has developed a body of work with a dichotomy between appropriation of weaponry imagery and a recapturing of spiritual symbols. How related are death and life and the need to look for spirituality? Tragic events shape our own sense of being.
New York is a city that finds a diversity of liturgical temples in each neighborhood and an urban scenario where Artemio and Maria rethought their own artistic practices. He embraces the gallery compound as the temple that they both analyzed and criticized. Concurrently, Artemio conceives the gallery as the contemporary house of workship of art, the commonplace for the quotidian offering of the artist’s soul. Artemio finds New York as the right place to offer his own requiem and offer his farewell to his lifelong confidante. Their enduring friendship and intellectual collaboration will forever remain alive. As Artemio quotes, from a favorite popular saying of him and Maria, Death is not the end.
Media
Schedule
from March 09, 2012 to April 08, 2012
Opening Reception on 2012-03-09 from 18:00 to 21:00