Geopoemas
OPENING:
Saturday, April 28, 2018, 6 to 9 pm
EXHIBITION DATA:
April 28 to May 25, 2018
Kristoffer Ardeña: Geopoemas
April 28 – May 25, 2018
Geopoemas is Kristoffer Ardeña's first solo exhibition at 1335MABINI. The show focuses on Ardeña's ongoing experiments in painting in relation to the notion of tropicality within the Philippine context, specifically, within the framework of the island of Negros as a point of departure. He explores the poetic potentials of the exotic by using banal surfaces, such as tarpaulin and fabric that are intrinsic to the material experience of the intimate spaces of everyday life.
Kristoffer Ardeña’s work deals with locality but it neither takes an anthropological turn nor does it exoticize the local and it does so by focusing on the materiality of the locality instead of focusing on tropicality thematically. The concept of tropicality in relation to materiality deals with the fast pace of changes manifested in surfaces of the built environment: sunlight and rain cracks the skin of buildings and whatever is pasted on its surfaces (e.g. election posters).
For Kristoffer Ardeña, architecture is a means in which the concept of tropicality is revealed and manifested. Our body encounters the architecture of the everyday, specifically the skins of the built environment, which leaves imprints on the skin of the body. And body as space is in this exhibition made present by the use of everyday materials such as used textile and clothing to paint on. The space of the exhibition, in turn, is then essential for the body to experience sensually the exhibition in general and the works of art in particular.
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Kristoffer Ardeña (1976) lives between Negros island (Philippines) and Madrid (Spain). Ardeña works with various formats ranging from ready-mades, photography, installation, sculpture, video, painting, performance and others. He also curates through the platform Moving Images Lab Filipinas and he is the co-founder of Photoma (photoma.info), the latter organized a group show at MABINI Projects, 6 April – 5 May, 2018)
He is the recipient of various awards and scholarships: a full undergraduate scholarship at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, California (USA), scholarship awarded by the Ministry of Culture from Luxembourg, the Academy in Rome award and the Cajamadrid Generaciones in Spain.
He has done projects at Museo Carrillo Gil (Mexico), Selesar Sunaryo Art Space, Ruang MES56 and Cemeti Art House (Indonesia), Vargas Museum and the Cultural Center of the Philippines in Manila (Philippines), Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo Museum (Madrid), La Conservera Centro de Arte Contemporáneo (Murcia, Spain).
He has also participated in various collective projects, among them the 3rd Bucharest Biennale (Romania), 3rd Guangzhou Triennale (China), Konstholl C in Stockholm (Sweden), Caixa Forum (Barcelona), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), MUSAC (León, Spain), Casino Forum d’Art Contemporain (Luxembourg), Apexart (New York, USA), Museo Ex Teresa Arte Actual (Mexico) and the Museo de Arte Moderno in Medellin (Colombia).
