Ángulo Cero was born ten years ago with the purpose of generating crossroads between art and contemporary Mexican design. During this period our interest has been to position the most outstanding in the local scene on an international level, as well as to create spaces in which experimental and research projects can be developed, which nurture and broaden the creative panorama.
In this new stage we celebrate our past and our present in a new space that is aligned with the multidisciplinary and collaborative purposes of the gallery. "PUNTOYCOMA," is a special anniversary program that, through a series of exhibitions, revisits the different chapters of our history and connects them with what we are today and what we want to be.
This first exhibition, "Capítulo I: Mapas y Trazos", addresses the work of Karla Sotres and María García Ibáñez, who have found through ceramics a means to explore and develop cartographies. Their maps do not have the function of orienting, but rather are abstractions of memories, subjective landscapes and territorial deconstructions.
"Personal maps" by Sotres is a project that refers both to the trips made in different periods of her life to various places in Mexico, as well as to unexplored territories, only imagined. The lines drawn on the white ceramic create geographic formations and paths that emerge from the designer's memories.
In some of her other series, such as "Botánica", "Guajes", "Conchiglie" and "Arquetípica", she approaches geography from another angle, from the clay itself, which comes from different soils and materializes in objects that carry fragments of territory with them, turning them into living maps. Sotres also resorts to the ancestral Japanese techniques of kintsugi and gintsugi, used to repair cracks in ceramics with resins mixed with gold or silver dust, thus creating new landscapes that harmonize with existing geographies.
On the other hand, García Ibáñez's pieces are the result of a research process of several years in which she has delved into the possibilities of line, space and matter. In the series Aquellos ecos, aquellos indicios" the artist draws with her fingers topographies using fresh ceramics as a canvas. The solidified and textured tactile traces refer to mountain ranges, geological grooves or irregular roads. From the relationship between the corporeal and the geological, tangible ceramic territories emerge in the form of murals formed by tiles.
In "Paramentos" she develops the idea of inhabiting and the nomadic body. Inspired by zenithal images of archaeological ruins of towns or abandoned residences, she makes drawings following the linear forms formed by them, which she then translates into ceramics.The result are geometric compositions, reminiscent of the shapes of architectural plans, where timeframes and collective memories are preserved.
For both artists, the processes of their particular approaches to maps and geographies are a crucial part of their work; this is what creates open works that can be continuously revisited and can continue to explore the endless possibilities of the relationships between ceramics, territory, memory and body.