2011.05.06
Every Shout in Budapest / Cada Grito en Budapest
Painting Exhibition.
After seven years planning it, Mary Domart and Jose Rizo finally exhibit their paintings together, in Hungary. For two weeks their works will be shown in Nagykovácsi´s House of Culture (Örégiskola/Közósségi Ház és Könyvtár). Set in a mixed disposition (one and one), the viewer can have a perception of their long and legendary friendship. Even if their paintings are individual, and depict their own separate experiences (Mary and her husband Lewis´s traveler lives in Hungary, Poland, Barcelona and soon Australia, and José´s life in Budapest) one can easily get their so "Mexican-expatriate modus vivendi" of their last decade. The title of the exhibition "Cada Grito in Budapest" refers to the Mexican national celebration of Independence, the 16th of September (1810), that every year the Mexican embassy organizes followed by a party, in which the two artists met for the first time and started talking about their arts; thus, year by year, in these celebrations of "El Grito" (short for El Grito De Independencia) they were meeting along with the Mexican comunity in Hungary and talked about how good it would be to paint/exhibit together one day...
For more information about Nagykovácsi and its House of Culture, you can visit these sites:
2011.04.16
Art Moments
Collective Visual Arts Exhibition.
2011.01.16
SZINESZTÉZIA
Collective Visual Arts Exhibition.
2011.01.13 - 02.22
DRINKING AND LOOKING AT YOU
Painting exhibition.
click on the image to enlarge.
Design: RAAD
Some photos and video about the exhibition vernissage´s night:
For more photos and critics also visit this link: the blog of Calum Ross:
This entire exhibition is another attempt to understand the boundary (if there is one) that divides my work as the author of the paintings from the creative work of the world that surrounds me. Where, or rather what is that thin line that divides what I create from what "others" create in my own mind? I only owe a glass through which I see other´s creation. I paint about the world that inspires me, but in fact, that world is made of music that someone else composed, lyrics that someone else wrote, and all kind of influences of other people´s lives.
If I paint a story, or a feeling, or a sensation that involves -as it often happens- a dark, smoky underground bar, with strange or common people dancing around me, chatting around me, drinking beside me, telling me their stories or keeping them away from me, how can I say that I am the author of that work, when I know I didn´t invent such a place, nor such a music? How would I get the credit when I didn´t create that girl dancing alone with eyes closed crashing against everyone around her? How can I be sure that the inspiration is entirely mine, if it comes from the beautiful girl drinking next to me, fixing her hair with one elbow on the bar?
This is why there is going to be music playing during the vernissage, and there is going to be an after party in a small, dark underground bar, with music that explains my work and my inspiration by itself, better than I do with words. It will be an attempt, and an invitation to "live" instead of only "see" my paintings. I paint with acrylic, but should I say that the technique is rather music, lyrics, beer, smoke, people, nights?
This is why there is going to be music playing during the vernissage, and there is going to be an after party in a small, dark underground bar, with music that explains my work and my inspiration by itself, better than I do with words. It will be an attempt, and an invitation to "live" instead of only "see" my paintings. I paint with acrylic, but should I say that the technique is rather music, lyrics, beer, smoke, people, nights?
2011.01.13
DRINKING AND LOOKING AT YOU
Vernissage & After party.
2010.12.18
ARTROBE DESIGN DAY!
Collective painting exhibition.
2010.11.18
Frida Kahlo and her historical context
at the post-revolution in Mexico.
Dissertation.
The Mexican-Hungarian cultural association Frida, invited me to give a dissertation about the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, seizing the coincidence of her painting exhibition in Vienna, and the celebration of the Mexican Revolution´s centenary in 1910. It took place at the Cervantes Institute of Budapest.
Design: RAAD
Profiting the celebration of the Centenary of the Mexican Revolution, I focused -to talk about Frida Kahlo- not only on her paintings and their particular artistic characteristics, but rather on her context. Thus, a big part of the dissertation covered the war of Mexican Revolution, in which she grew up, and all the political and sociological ideologies of the time, like the vision of José Vasconcelos of rescuing the "mexican identity" and the recovering of "the cosmic race" and therefore, the important role that Diego Rivera (commissioner of Vasconcelos for painting several murals in public buildings) played in her life, being a central and recurrent theme in her paintings, as well as all the new nationalistic movements of that era. I also tried to uncover some "contradictions" of the painter´s life between her works, her political ideologies, her family roots, her personal relationships, etc., that have been so hidden lately under the veil of fame and the simplifier scope of history.
The arguments were mostly based on two essays of Octavio Paz from two of his books: "Los privilegios de la vista" and "Al paso" ("The privileges of sight", and "By the way"). The reason is that I consider his critics incisively objective and basically different from most of the "media rumors" and opinions about Frida Kahlo that have been saturating us in the last decades.
2008.04.25
Prospectivas de la Arquitectura Actual
"Prospectives of Present Architecture"
Conference
Conference at the University of Architecture of Puerto Vallarta, in Jalisco, Mexico. The conference was part of a series of academic events that took place at the campus for one whole week, and since it was directed to students and young graduates, I focused the content to the future of Puerto Vallarta, as an example of many other authentic cities that have unique characteristics, and that unfortunately they are loosing them without even being noticed. I was living at the coast (Puerto Vallarta) for some months, and I was concerned about all the new buildings of all kind and sizes that were being constructed recently. More particularly, I was worried about the quality -in a matter of design- of these constructions. It seemed to me like a wave of styles in fashion in which most of the buildings resemble each other, being all white, all with "green tintex glasses" and other similar characteristics that were followed almost religiously and made the buildings pretentious and alien to the local people as well as to the tourists under the name of "modernism", and misunderstanding and confusing therms like minimalistic, modern, luxurious, etc., showing in the facades the money spent on the buildings, but hiding the architectural researches in the zones, hiding interesting concepts, unique ideas and almost anything that could give identity to the other time very unique Puerto Vallarta. Thus, the focal point of the content sustained questions and answers like: what is architecture? What are the roles and responsibilities of the architects in a city? clearance of concepts and styles throughout history, etc., just to motivate the young architects to always question what they are doing and the reasons behind it, always analyse the social and historical contexts of the cities instead of just parachuting buildings all over, etc. All this documented with clear examples of what to do and what not to do, and how not to do it, and how can it be done...
2007.03.00
"Untitled"
Individual painting exhibition
Design: RAAD
2003.01.03
"Distorsiones en la Soledad"
"Distortions in the solitude"
Individual painting exhibition
Design: RAAD
