X Y Z

Travesía Cuatro is pleased to present XYZ, Mateo López’s first solo exhibition with the gallery in Guadalajara.

With XYZ, Mateo López constructs a space of comings and goings; the bidimensional and tridimensional fields become a path for transit and transformation, which leads to constructive consequences. This exhibition is originated from the publication of a book with the same title, the artist unfolds the pages of the book in the form of objects and architectural environments, respecting the portability and austerity of the initial object that contains them.

These objects maintain a certain ambiguity, they seem to be constructed as prototypes that have been torn off from the sketchbook before time. Simultaneously they are located in the realm of the sculptural but they cancel the contemplative distance through an explicit invitation to be used. However, they are not completely within the field of utility; since they present slippery and porous qualities, their use is not manifested available at first-hand. They are new objects that have been already inhabited by memory, and they even have their own life trajectory, in the pages of a book, in other exhibitions or in past lives as other objects.

With his artistic practice Mateo López creates an interdisciplinary hybrid that merges art with design and architecture. This is reminiscent of different avant-garde art schools from the early twentieth century that postulated artistic forms that were habitable, useful and easily reproducible through industrial processes; design and architecture were disciplines with democratizing intentions, contrary to the contemporary notions of luxury and exclusivity. Mateo López recuperates from these projects the search for austerity and the human body as departure point for the creation of objects and spaces; reminding the viewer that the world before being the world is an extension of the body.

With this exhibition and throughout his entire artistic career, Mateo López has postulated an ethic of materials, which never remain in a final or definitive state as static objects; they always can be re-assembled, unfolded or recycled. The artist looks for a point of equilibrium between manual, artisanal and industrial procedures, in order to eliminate the notion of waste, this is achieved through an understanding of the constructive capacities of drawing.

This exhibition produces a series of architectural expansions that interact directly with the space where they are contained, one of the first residential projects of the Mexican architect Luis Barragán. This highlights the habitable intention of the entire project. XYZ and the architectural language of Luis Barragán converge in the same spatial plane, recuperating the original domestic qualities of the site where the gallery is located.