Máximo Flórez López: “Obra Negra”

April 20 – May 20, 2006

Young Colombian artist and architect, Máximo Flórez will be presenting his most recent body of work “Obra Negra” (Under Construction) that consists of a video installation, and small and medium sized constructions which like the title suggests, appear to be incomplete.

Art critic and theorist Rosalind Krauss in “The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths”, asserts that sculptural production of the twentieth century greatly departs from its historical model, consequently resulting in the transformation of the definition of the term sculpture; the field has now expanded and become more inclusive of other disciplines.¹ It could be said then, that Flórez’s constructions are sculptures, for they are hybrids of painting, sculpture and drawing. At first glance the pieces may appear two-dimensional as they hang on the wall like a painting, yet they enclose an extremely measured three-dimensional image that constitutes transversal lines made in painted thread, and placed on either a white or black background. In other words, these boxes which have little physical depth enclose thread sculptures, however, the use of painted glass surfaces, and in some instances the use of the mirror, enhance the overall compositions thus increasing their sense of depth.

Flórez’s constructions indeed conform to Krauss’ affirmation of the expansion of the field of sculpture. The heterogeneity of the medium itself points to a seminal theme that recurs in the artist’s oeuvre, that of paradox. The medium, as well as the video installation— that brings to view the constructive process of the work through the use of a “skeleton” or supporting structure that has previously been constructed, on which the image of the artist’s hands is projected— incite the spectator to interpret Flórez’s work in terms of binary oppositions: positive, negative; construction, destruction; black, white.

The pieces exhibited by Flórez are works of art that both embrace and celebrate contradiction in a variety of ways: in the artist’s implicit rejection of rigid genre boundaries that leads him to utilize a heterogeneous medium, in the asceticism of the box like structures which is countered by the delicateness of the thread, and in the artist’s willingness to paint in order to create an image and portray a destroyed or unfinished construction. Flórez’s works show evidence of order, rigor, precision, and harmony, all essential qualities of architecture. In this exhibition, architecture and art interact resulting in works of art that are both aesthetically pleasing and conceptually powerful.

In addition, as part of our Acces-Arte Program, Flórez will also be presenting a video installation titled “Contención” (Restrain), where the artist has taken the artwork outside from the gallery space in an attempt to arouse the passer-by. The piece will be shown from April 20-28, from 5pm-10pm at the Cr. 7 # 62-67.

¹ Rosalind E. Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1985), p. 277.

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