Matias Quintero
Bogotá, Colombia
TBD
Sponsored by the Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation
ARTIST STATEMENT
A feather crown around the head, two wings on mercury’s petasos, a feather pillow or a headrest held by Shu, the air, where the skull of the beholder of dreams lies. The visionary man looses the head that takes flight.
An unconquered sun suspended on the horizon between two mountains; the past and the future lurking. A pendulum hanging with its head immobile between two banks of a dried river bed. The newborn silence, covers his mouth with his index finger while clinging to the earth, his wet nurse, while he sucks milk from her breast.
In front of a threshold a secret word, in front of an other threshold a riddle, in front of several thresholds a judgment woven with words. Salvation: the lightness of a vessel lighter than a feather, the pronounced secret names, make way for the reborn.
The spark of a lightbulb that is neither off nor on, but on and off simultaneously, continuous present. Aesthetic ecstasies of the eternal poetic moment in which something stops being that eternally to transform into that other eternally, eternal impermanence.
The symbolic is the source of creation; a contained power which ignites the creative process, which remains preserved occult like an eternal spark: the light of matter. That is capable of producing actual effects and transformations through direct experience. The symbolic is never concluded, is an essential power that flows and transmutes. The symbol is universal, it has the capacity to adapt, transform, and manifest through a diversity of forms. This essential power pulsating under the veil of shape and matter may be catalyzed and condensed through the creative act.
The symbolic can only be experienced through the loss of language.
I conceive my work in two main stages: first, in a centripetal phase, in which I assimilate and interiorize sometimes unknowingly, all sorts of external stimuli from my daily life experiences. Second, in a centrifugal stage, emerging from a central esoteric and intimate point, an axis ☉, spiraling outwardly and intuitively, expanding into material manifestation. Creation happens inside and outside simultaneously.
My work is manifestation, it doesn’t represent. Just like a number can’t be represented: a 0 is a 0.
If I am the furnace, then my work is the residual ash that remains of my art: the sacred fire.
BIO
Quintero was born in the middle of a blizzard in Ajax, ON, in Canada in 1990. He lived there for just a couple of years before traveling with his parents to Spain where he was “baptized” in a Buddhist temple. After living in Spain for a year, his parents took him to Colombia where he now resides and works.
He graduated in 2014 as BFA in plastic arts from the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, where he currently works as a teacher. Quintero has been part of multiple residencies, in 2014 he completed a 3-month residency at Mildred’s Lane, Mark Dion´s and J. Morgan Puett´s space in Narrowsburg NY, in the U.S.A. By the end of August of 2014, after his return to Colombia he started a 10-month residency in Flora ars+natura, in Bogota, Colombia; In November 2016 he completed a 3-month residency in MANA Contemporary in Miami, FL, U.S.A, during which he participated in two group shows in PINTA10 (PintaMiami) during Miami´s ArtBasel week.
In July 2015, Quintero was nominated to the Sara Modiano Price given by the Sara Modiano Foundation for the arts. He has also been granted the Creation Grant for Emerging Artists and the Travelling Grant for Artists given by the Ministry of Culture. His artworks have been exhibited in multiple solo and group shows in diverse museums and galleries, among the most prestigious are: In the Santa Clara Museum (Colombia), where he made a site specific installation involving historical, cultural and ritualistic contexts. In the 45th National Artist’s Hall (Colombia) where he published a series of graphic pieces as the “Editor of Publicity” in El Noir by Victor Laignelet. In PintaMiami (USA), where he showed his work in Ysabel Pinyol’s ManaSeven. In Flora ars+natura (Colombia), with a site specific installation involving an intervention in the outside cabinet of the building. In DOCE CERO CERO Gallery (Colombia), with a series of paintings and sculptures in which he explored Jasper John’s work through his subjective perspective. Among many others.
Parallel to his artistic practice, Quintero also works as professor in the arts faculty of the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University and takes an active role in teaching about Art Theory, perception, symbolism and interpretation to a more general public.