Mónica Escutia y Rubén Méndez

SUBURBIOS ESPECTRALES "Metáforas periféricas de un jardín japonés asturiano" | 2011

Most of the work that Mónica Escutia has developed during these last years, barely involves hand made processes. Acrylic laser-cut pieces in geometric and organic shapes as well as sculptures that have the appearance of rocks covered with automotive paint, remind us of minimalist art. Nevertheless, her work has a unique strength and brightness, which triggers its own qualities as objects in the environment. Unlike minimalist art, Escutia manages to show sensuality, due to the shapes and color application on each of her rock sculptures.

Rubén Méndez centers on painting searching for its different possibilities or potential. The elements in Méndez´s work transcend the limits of the aesthetic canons of representation historically related to this discipline. He creates an iconography constituted by elements that do not correspond each other in a conventional way; this could remind us of some kind of painting dissection, based on the primitive concept of an organism in decay, and everything that implies: dirt, chaos and confusion. The rejection of homogeneous as a premise, a special interest in historic canons and known forms, are some of the elements that remain as a constant in Rubén Méndez´s work.

It was never the intention to tie or converge the work of Mónica Escutia with the one of Ruben Méndez. Actually, one of the attractions of this project lies on the contrasts and different concepts that distinguish their work. The result is similar to the Set Theory in which A and B intersect to create C, a territory of matches that go beyond a formal order of art.

This relationship of coincidences and differences between their work, impregnate this exhibition with regionalism, and seals the idea of contemplation and inherent death of living in the periphery. An Asturian heritage of schizophrenic, old fashion and contemplative people, which live trapped in a Japanese garden that no one visits, repeating the course of the death of art until boredom. Kusama and Kudo at the edge of a half-moon breathing dust.