Archetypes for a New Pagan Mythology
Antonio de la Rosa
from February 25, 2020 to June 23, 2020
Archetypes for a new pagan mythology, perhaps it is only a handful of graphic ideas that blur the fortified structure that sustains us and that, although seemingly merciless, they yearn to reconcile the individual in spite of their own construct.
Each piece, autonomous, works as an interpretative model that, like a tarot card, invites everyone to identify its meaning.
ANTONIO DE LA ROSA (Spain, 1970)
His artistic career is
included within the underground scene, far from the world of galleries and the
art market and closer to independent and alternative spaces. As the artist
himself indicates, "my ideas must walk on controversial ground and I
suppose that some will find it provocative".[1] His drawings and actions His drawings and
actions stand on the threshold between the legal and the illegal, the moral and
the immoral, innocent laughter and acid criticism. This frontier space that his
work occupies has led him to encounter censorship, prohibition and rejection on
various occasions. [2]
In 2004 he carried out
a project, which was part of a festival dedicated to performance, and which was
presented at Casa de América. Antonio de la Rosa, rejecting the protagonism of artists
in performances, decided to turn the public into the centre of the show, making
them face a table with 25 grams of cocaine. The audience was responsible for
the development of the action, which consisted of the consumption of cocaine in
public, recorded by a video camera, which also projected the image in real time
in another room of the Casa de América palace.
In 2005, he
carried out another project in Mexico, entitled 2 tetas y un fracaso (2 tits
and a failure), on the subject of feminicide. Without having been in Mexico
or knowing Ciudad Juárez, Antonio de la Rosa decided to undergo an intervention
to implant silicone prostheses in his chest, thus trying to reverse his male
position and experience the violence in Ciudad Juárez from the female point of
view. The two surgeries were performed in Mexico and he did not undergo the
removal of the prostheses until the project, which lasted six years, was
completed.
According to the
artist himself, "when I decide to introduce drugs into a proposal or
perform a physical transformation, which I have only done on one occasion, it
is motivated by the meanings it condenses and not by the search for hedonistic
self-satisfaction".[4]
A publication by Antonio de la Rosa, edited by CANADA EDITORIAL, will soon be presented at Freijo Gallery. This publication consists of a compilation of drawings that he has done in recent years, some of which have been shared through social media.
2018
Transition
Charts, Nadie Nunca Nada No, Madrid, Spain
ANIMATECNO, rave action, Faculty
of Fine Arts, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain
Huele a Tu Rebaño, Palacio
de los Bursa, Durango, Mexico.
2017
CHUFI-FEST.
Three actions within the Hybrid Art Fair, Madrid, Spain
A
Non-Transcendent Monument, Y Gallery, New York, USA
2016
Me Mola Mogollón, Sala
Julián Camarillo, Radio UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico
2014
Collaboration
with Artemio Narro in the production of the feature film Me quedo contigo
2011
Week-end, Pasage
Souterrain, Paris, France.
Project Juárez, Matadero,
Madrid , Spain
Project Juárez, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, Mexico.
To be or not to be an outlet, Galería Compra Oro, Madrid, Spain.
2008
Xubilee, DF Arte
Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
Intermediate
habitat, Noche en Blanco 2008, Madrid, Spain
2007
Hatsitu, Total
liquidation, Madrid, Spain.
2006
Triple X, Alba
Porn Cinema, Madrid, Spain
2004
No smoking, Casa
de América, Madrid, Spain.
Top-manta at ARCO, Stand The Art Palace ARCO 04, Madrid.
Master Lesson, The Art Palace, Madrid, Spain.
2005-2011
Realization of the
project 2 tetas y un fracaso, Mexico
2003
I
don't love you, solo exhibition at Studio 2, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany.
1998/1999
Two
rhombuses, Garage Pemasa, Madrid, Spain. Installation made after a censorship
by the Community of Madrid, in which he questioned the paradise of childhood
and family.
[2] El País published in 1998 an article on
the censorship of Antonio de la Rosa's work in the Sala de Arte Joven of the
Community of Madrid. https://elpais.com/diario/1998/07/07/madrid/899810675_850215.html