Georgina Bringas, Rodrigo Matheus & Ricardo Rendón: Science so Fair
Georgina Bringas Recorrido lineal (Linear Journey) 2008 Installation view / photo Danny Custodio
The trim look of science sets the tone of an otherwise diverse new group exhibition at Diaz Contemporary. In works by two Mexican artists, Georgina Bringas and Ricardo Rendón, and one Brazilian, Rodrigo Matheus, precision rules, and there’s a sense of wonder at the world that often seems in short supply in our technology-bound society. That’s not to say the works lack complexity. It’s just that here observations about the natural and built environment take such simple forms that they seem to speak of notably clear-minded thinking.
The World We Live In is a big place, but in Matheus’s installation series, the Grand Canyon, the South Pole and the Water Cycle fit in one room. In the former two works, screenshots taken from Google Earth are used to create subtly changing videos accompanied by slowly intensifying musical scores. Between these aesthetic explorations of topography and technology is the centrepiece: nature’s replenishing program represented by a delicate configuration of potted plants, a steam machine, a lamp and a photograph of Niagara Falls. Considering this analytical (but whimsical) display, you might find your appreciation of the earth refreshed, and the future seeming brighter than it tends to be in these dark days of global warming.
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Ricardo Rendón Ventana abierta (Open Window) 2008 Installation view / photo Danny Custodio |
That optimistic sentiment is continued with Bringas’s Linear Journey series. Long interested in the puzzles of distance, time and volume, here the artist embroiders deliberate lengths of thread onto uniform canvases. 25 meters, 50 meters, 100 meters, 125 meters and more are visually represented as black against white, the space between threads necessarily becoming smaller and the “shade” of the canvas thus becoming darker. For Bringas, a bit of magic happens here. Everyday units of measure offer a certain quiet thrill for the curious observer.
Ricardo Rendón’s “woodwork” might have a less practical relation to the world, but the artist versed in carpenter’s tools also works through methodical planning. In a variation on past installation work, Rendón, for Open Window, covered the gallery’s windows with wood panels and sawed a bubbling pattern of circles in it. Rendón stresses the significance of the artistic process, and so the wood shavings are left on the driveway. Still, it’s the unusual view to the outside (and dappled light inside) that seems bound to inspire aesthetic reverence like that reserved for stained glass windows.
Clearly the works address diverse phenomena, but thinking of the way each shows enthusiasm for old themes, you might be reminded of the adage “there is no new thing under the sun.” For there are new ways of looking, at least, and there’s a light, labcoat-hued hope in these articulations of the difference between textbook learning and firsthand sensory experience. (100 Niagara St, Toronto ON)
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Rodrigo Matheus Water Cycle 2008 Installation view / photo Danny Custodio |
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