FERIA MATERIAL VOL.10

Maria Conejo, Alejandro García Contreras, Isabella Mellado

February 8 - 11th, 2024

Expo Reforma, CDMX - Booth A05

This three person presentation of works by Mexico City-based María Conejo, Guadalajara-based artist Alejandro García Contreras, and Puerto Rican-born, Chicago-based Isabella Mellado brings together a powerful ensemble of primordial energies, ancestral symbologies and alternative spiritualities.

Indefinitely haunted or possibly enchanted, these works embrace a similar contemporary esotericism that strives to answer the mysteries of the Universe. Between life and death, fire and water, these artists’ work calls attention to the interconnectivity weaving individual bodies and universal energies.

“We can predict the future,” Carl Jung stated, “when we know how the present moment evolved from the past.” According to Jung, the evolution of the present is linked to the past, just as the conscious mind is subjected to the unconscious. Recurring symbols and archetypes throughout different cultures are a visible manifestation of this connection and synchronicity that forces timeless existential truths of human nature and psyche to rise to come to light.

Following these thoughtlines, by sampling thousands of years of human artifacts in his masterfully made ceramics works, Alejandro García Contreras blends the ancient with the contemporary, across cultures, geography, and religions. Drawing from the rich heritage of spirituality, rituals, symbols, and nature of his homeland of Chiapas, he mixes these historic elements with mainstream culture and Japanese anime bringing together a dense and intercultural narrative that channels a divine quality to freely confront erotism and the timeless existential dilemma.

Working with the magically-charged medium of the Tarot, Isabella Mellado explores universal elements of the human condition and experience, embracing this restless attraction for the unknown that finds solace in ancient divine archetypes, rooted in collective consciousness. In her practice, she scavenges the depths of occultism, myths, and ancient rituals, staging each of her paintings with sets, props, costumes, and herself as the subject. She invokes a lived experience through her works while also using the means of technology intertwining the use of photography

In counterpart, María Conejo explores universal elements of the human experience facing the complexities of the representation of the female body. By embracing ancient and divine archetypes, her works challenge taboos and stigmas on women’s sexuality, aiming to liberate it from the chains of patriarchy.

Connecting with women before her, Conejo explores how erotism morphed over time, questioning the constraints that prevent a natural relation between bodies in participating in the contemplation of the creation of life.

Using thoughts as infinite waves of transmission reconnecting with ancient legacies, Mellado, Contreras and Conejo release a holistic magmatic accumulation of secret symbologies to reveal the primordial essence of our human existence in this Universe.

A joyful erotism is incarnated in the sensorial quality of these paintings and ceramic works. It illuminates the profound meanings embedded in human instincts and the cyclical patterns found in nature, freely and wildly engaging sensuality as a means to express the inner self.

Resisting against repression and control on individual lives and the objectification of female bodies, these works celebrate a primordial universality, while addressing existential questions that have characterized humanity globally, between the opposing forces of eros and thanatos, life and death, generation and destruction, male and female, highlighting how these contrasts dialectically shift evolution.

The three artists deliver a presentation of singular mystic force for Material, casting light on new possibilities of truths, while simultaneously returning to paganism beginning with a genuine rediscovery of the Latinx ancestral wisdom of their homelands.

BIO

María Conejo (b. 1988, Cuautla, Morelos) lives and works in Mexico City. Her creative practice extends over many areas like drawing, painting, illustration, design, large scale murals, ceramics and tattoos. Her artistic practice portrays the relationship with her own body and it is nourished by an ongoing research into the body, sexuality and the iconography that has been generated throughout history to represent and address these issues. Twice awarded with the national grant Jóvenes Creadores, a program run by the Secretary of Culture, in 2014 and 2016 in the category of Printing. María Conejo is co-founder and art director of Pussypedia.net. a sex education website awarded with first place in the 10th National Biennial of Design in Mexico and a Webby award in 2020. She is the illustrator of Pussypedia, a Comprehensive Guide, published in 2021 in New York by Hachette Books. She is the art director and illustrator of the animated short film It rains that among several awards, was part of the official selection in the 61st Semaine de la Critique in Cannes Festival in 2022. Her work has been featured internationally at What Design Can Do, Amsterdam, at the Mexican Pavillion at SWAB Contemporary Art Fair, Barcelona, De Kooning Studio, NY, at Volcom Garden, Austin, TX and was also included in Juxtapoz Club House at Art Basel Miami 2018, at Galerie LJ, Paris, la Galería de Arte Mexicano, Machete Galeria, CDMX, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (MACO) and Museo Cabañas, Guadalajara, among the others.

Alejandro García Contreras (b. 1982, Tapachula Chiapas, MX) characterizes his creative work by experimentation and dialogue between different materials and technical resources, making his work a mix between various media such as painting, sculpture, photography, video and graphics. The themes of his work are linked to his personality, and through his artistic projects, he explores topics and themes inspired by contemporary popular culture, Mexican folklore, myth, occultism and religion.He holds a bachelor's degree in Visual Arts from the National Institute of Fine Arts (Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes) in Mexico City, Mexico. His work was the winning acquisition of the 2006 Artfest WTC, and he is a two-time recipient of the FONCA / Young Creators Scholarship. Contreras has held solo exhibitions at Proyecto NASAL, Gamma Galleria, David Castillo, Albertz Benda, House of Gaga, Travesia Cuatro, Saenger Galeria, and Eito Eiko among others. He has been included in art fairs such as NADA, New York and Miami with Swivel Gallery and ArtOsaka with Eito Eiko.

Isabella Mellado (b. 1996, San Juan, Puerto Rico) received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2018 and her Masters in Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2023. Mellado is best known for her magical realist paintings won latinidad, queer identity and tarot. She works in a wide range of media including painting, photography, costume design, digital collage and sculpture. Her work has been featured at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago, IL; MoMA PS1 in New York, NY, Walter Otero Contemporary Art in San Juan, PR; Pulse Contemporary Art Fair in Miami, FL; The Ponce Biennial in Ponce, PR and MECA Art Fair in San Juan, PR, among others. Mellado has also completed residency at Ox-Bow in Saugatuck, MI, the Studios at Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA and the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT. Mellado just had a solo show at YoungArts, Miami, FL