Ernesto Marenco; THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE OBJECTS
"If it is essential to works to be things, it is not
It is less essential to deny your own cosiness."
-MARTÍN HEIDEGGER
We have been deceived for centuries. When by the folly of knowing the history of things we get into encyclopedias, museums or networks, we do not find anywhere what I would call & "The true history of objects". Surely there are a couple or three of copies written clandestinely, and I'm sure Ernesto Marenco either has one, or is a co-author on those pages. Since I met the first pieces of his authorship I understood that his work went far beyond the simple manipulation of objects and, of course, his candid and apparent perversion. If in a first glance they made a kind of homage to the absurd, it was because those things created by him had entered into a secret conversation with Marenco and had revealed to him in detail his intimacy. Although many cultures have embroidered in the bowels of their stories and abound on animism and how objects can carry certain symbolisms or meanings, they have fallen short when they only cover the objects of veneration with a specific and circumscribed
burden to denote the singularity of a single thought. The versatility here is outside the play leaving those significant things expressing only undivided ideas. Without being exempt from a ludic and playful character, Marenco's works intelligently put the accent on the entrails of the objects that we manipulate on a daily basis. Its existence leaves us in check, rearranging the comfortable references already proven. They even alter even the laws of the most elementary physics. The contradictory is now logical. The vocation of things is still present; a brush remains so, a hammer too and even a rope to jump retains its reason for being and its usefulness. The small alterations and substitutions that have suffered are, nevertheless, in total consonance with some of the seeds that at the time were the seeds of surrealism. And it was not enough to select "things" and carry out modifications on them; It had to be done aesthetically. Marenco has been able to select each of the objects with which
he has worked. They are pieces without time, with total validity and tied to their original origin. Hence, our relationship with them is immediate, although our permanence in exchange, results in a battle to contrast the original functions of the object against the
new attributions that have been granted. If the pieces of Ernesto Marenco were literature, surely they would be succinct and intelligent aphorisms stripped, as it should be, of boastful grandiloquence. Or maybe also a Greguería, where word games and cunning make up, almost always with humor, a new corpus of knowledge and an innovative rereading. What would become of us if we did not know that a cup can have the handle inside it, or that a hammer in an impossible action has nailed the nails to itself? Here the proposal of what could
be the gender diversity of objects is open; if they had it and were in their mandate to defend it, we would vote perhaps for the new diversity, enriched, increased. It is not sculpture, but it is. It is not art-object, but it is also art. They are Ready Made but neither are they.
Let's talk more about a work loaded with references in direct occasions, in other transversal ones that end up forming a body of work at the same time that referential, escaping from the pre-eminent exhibition spaces and staying in a periphery that with its existence marks the
center, but in which it is not. There, in that center that we do not see, the works we now see coexist with uneasiness, as if it were the strange archeology of a parallel world.
Santiago Espinosa de los Monteros
Independent curator
December 2017
Ernesto Marenco: An Artist to Know
While in Teresa Del Conde's office, at the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City, she asked me about a box titled "The Poets and Power." My response was immediate, I found it well structured, with a logical and precise discourse, where the iconographic elements had a direct reading. Some were completely outspoken, while others functioned as a game of opposites. Pleasant color management and understated rhetoric.
After the brief analysis, and knowing my predilection for the three-dimensional object, she suggested that I write these lines. I gladly accepted, despite the fact that -I must confess- I did not know the artist. Furthermore, at this time I still do not know him personally; Contrary to what one might think, I do not feel irresponsible, but free. I can write what I understand, without any kind of prejudice; It is like participating in a jury where one is confronted with the work, often without knowing the artist.
Observing a good number of pieces by Ernesto Marenco, I realized that he must also be free while he produces, since a complacent intention is not manifested neither in the composition nor in the discourse. As an art-objectist that he is, he brings together essential qualities for the genre, I can assume that he is a cultured subject, since his discursive game frequently alludes to poetry and psychoanalysis; I also consider he has a particular sense of humor. It is, I think, an intelligent, agile and well-directed sense of humor, it does not require great narratives to provoke a smile; however, it is not a futile humor, it is ironic and critical (I would dare to suppose that with a strong social conscience).
Although the playful tone is always present, it never exceeds the point of surpassing the concept that supports it, good objectist that it is, the balance is substantial. Compositionally, he does not resort to the saturation of elements, nor to the runaway Kitch, now so in vogue-justification and guilt of so many atrocities-, on the contrary, in his case I think it is clean, beyond what is customary by others of his colleagues. As a resource, it uses the repetition of the motif, to accentuate the discourse, the diversified observation of the same element allows the deepening of the idea, which in turn nuances with the use of strong conceptual counterpoints (almost in the manner of musical dissonances). As you can see from my comments, Ernesto Marenco's work seems worthy of study and follow-up, since it brings together a good discourse and a beautiful aesthetic. So far I don't know him personally, however I wish I could meet his works more often.
Dr. Agustin Artega
Director of the Dallas Museum of Art
ERNESTO MARENCO; THE PARADOX WITHOUT ABSURDITY
Let us commence with a term: new. Let us raise an eyebrow: there is nothing truly new. Let us adopt an ironic stance: nothing compares to the new. Let us acknowledge: nothing ages as swiftly as the new. Let us engage in discussion: there is no novelty, only innovation. Let us differentiate: one concept is new, while another is novelty. Let us conclude: oh, what novelty! Let us wipe the slate clean: let us begin anew.
After this brief exploration of the world, it is evident that the concept of the new has become one of our most entrenched clichés. Since when has the new become synonymous with the old? Tristan Tzara, while reflecting on the origins of Dadaism, could not refrain from stating, "We wanted to look at the world with new eyes. " Can such a cliché still be accepted today? Nevertheless, what Tzara intended to express with this phrase was markedly different from the sentimentality it conveys to contemporary ears: Dadaism sought to start afresh and adopted as its motto a phrase from René Descartes: "I do not even want to know if there were other men before me.
" The new was not envisioned as a means of transcendence, novelty, or originality, but rather as a form of negation. Thus, in the name of the new, Dadaism rejected established aesthetic values. The phrase "to look at the world with new eyes" has diminished in significance. Those who endeavor to perceive with fresh perspectives would not contemplate the destruction of what endures. Reduced to a banal cliché, this expression appears to be merely awaiting a moment of cessation from its repetition. We inhabit an era in which a broad contemplation of language has permeated the realm of art. A transition has occurred from action to concept, from the tangible work to the underlying idea. Commonplaces have become exceptions, subjected to deconstruction and re-semanticization. The critique of place stands as a pivotal endeavor of our time. Commonplace: the museum. Commonplace: painting. Commonplace: the artist. Commonplace: the collection. Commonplace: the exhibition. Commonplace: criticism.
Commonplace: originality. The domain that contemporary art navigates through objects, installations, and performances is defined by the dynamic interplay of what is out of place, what lacks a designated place, what claims its own place, or what represents an absolute and singular location. This is precisely where Ernesto Marenco's art finds its place. His foundation typically lies in words: the universal realm to which we all inevitably return, yet from which poets create unparalleled spaces and unveil expansive avenues for our existence and mobility.
Dada rebelled against established uniformity and all forms of repetition. This was articulated in the automatic writing of Raoul Hausmann: “Regularity is contingent upon a bourgeois conception of space; a door signifies the onset or eruption of the solid into the atmosphere.” Antecedent of the renowned postmodern adage: "All that is solid melts into air." To transcend the establishment, it was essential to create avenues that would alleviate the burdens of reality through a sense of lightness.
Boxes, or "Poesianographies" —a term coined by Marenco—unlock similar possibilities. Through their interplay of light and shadow, the intimacy of an imagined room seeks to render a space livable through poetry, suggesting that the poetic word possesses its own rooms, architecture, and spatiality. In the visual arts, the symbolic significance of doors and windows has been pivotal: art cannot exist without a wall. (This consideration extends to the performing arts and cinema.) Painting emerges from the wall like an aperture, while sculpture confronts the wall's two-dimensionality. If the wall serves as a harbinger of the threshold, the box-object fundamentally opens the "fourth wall," allowing for an immediate transcendence of space.
What lies on the other side— and I am not alluding to death— once we cross the threshold? There exists another realm, one that we can only share to the degree that it is not replicated, that it is not homogeneous, that it is not standardized. Ernesto Marenco's manifestations of objects frequently delineate, in a profound manner, spaces for us. They resonate with our condition in the world and compel us to shift from our current position.
To reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable, the alien form and function, and to elicit alternative meanings, is the enduring approach of Ernesto Marenco: a fusion of paradoxes and ironies. Ernesto Marenco salvages objects from a state where, having conveyed the same meaning repeatedly, they cease to resonate. He enables them, akin to found objects revitalized through radical proximity, to rediscover themselves, selectively amalgamate, and procreate.
Ernesto Marenco explores the sole viable justification of the new: introspectively and in a state of helplessness; not as a trend or a passing fancy, nor as a precursor to a future art, but rather in the realm of nothingness, in the minutiae of the residual, where one can embark anew with the fundamental impetus of laughter.
If Dadaism sought to render chaos a means of perceiving the world anew, its material legacy beckons us today toward a different novelty. This new perspective assigns a different value to the commonplace: the essential dismantling of our relationship with reality. Objects and things have ceased to embody the certainties we once relied upon. The ultimate conclusion is that the commonplace is, at present, unstable. This is both alarming and profoundly pleasurable.
Jaime Moreno Villarreal,
Independent Curator
Let us commence with a term: new. Let us raise an eyebrow: there is nothing truly new. Let us adopt an ironic stance: nothing compares to the new. Let us acknowledge: nothing ages as swiftly as the new. Let us engage in discussion: there is no novelty, only innovation. Let us differentiate: one concept is new, while another is novelty. Let us conclude: oh, what novelty! Let us wipe the slate clean: let us begin anew.
After this brief exploration of the world, it is evident that the concept of the new has become one of our most entrenched clichés. Since when has the new become synonymous with the old? Tristan Tzara, while reflecting on the origins of Dadaism, could not refrain from stating, "We wanted to look at the world with new eyes. " Can such a cliché still be accepted today? Nevertheless, what Tzara intended to express with this phrase was markedly different from the sentimentality it conveys to contemporary ears: Dadaism sought to start afresh and adopted as its motto a phrase from René Descartes: "I do not even want to know if there were other men before me.
" The new was not envisioned as a means of transcendence, novelty, or originality, but rather as a form of negation. Thus, in the name of the new, Dadaism rejected established aesthetic values. The phrase "to look at the world with new eyes" has diminished in significance. Those who endeavor to perceive with fresh perspectives would not contemplate the destruction of what endures. Reduced to a banal cliché, this expression appears to be merely awaiting a moment of cessation from its repetition. We inhabit an era in which a broad contemplation of language has permeated the realm of art. A transition has occurred from action to concept, from the tangible work to the underlying idea. Commonplaces have become exceptions, subjected to deconstruction and re-semanticization. The critique of place stands as a pivotal endeavor of our time. Commonplace: the museum. Commonplace: painting. Commonplace: the artist. Commonplace: the collection. Commonplace: the exhibition. Commonplace: criticism.
Commonplace: originality. The domain that contemporary art navigates through objects, installations, and performances is defined by the dynamic interplay of what is out of place, what lacks a designated place, what claims its own place, or what represents an absolute and singular location. This is precisely where Ernesto Marenco's art finds its place. His foundation typically lies in words: the universal realm to which we all inevitably return, yet from which poets create unparalleled spaces and unveil expansive avenues for our existence and mobility.
Dada rebelled against established uniformity and all forms of repetition. This was articulated in the automatic writing of Raoul Hausmann: “Regularity is contingent upon a bourgeois conception of space; a door signifies the onset or eruption of the solid into the atmosphere.” Antecedent of the renowned postmodern adage: "All that is solid melts into air." To transcend the establishment, it was essential to create avenues that would alleviate the burdens of reality through a sense of lightness.
Boxes, or "Poesianographies" —a term coined by Marenco—unlock similar possibilities. Through their interplay of light and shadow, the intimacy of an imagined room seeks to render a space livable through poetry, suggesting that the poetic word possesses its own rooms, architecture, and spatiality. In the visual arts, the symbolic significance of doors and windows has been pivotal: art cannot exist without a wall. (This consideration extends to the performing arts and cinema.) Painting emerges from the wall like an aperture, while sculpture confronts the wall's two-dimensionality. If the wall serves as a harbinger of the threshold, the box-object fundamentally opens the "fourth wall," allowing for an immediate transcendence of space.
What lies on the other side— and I am not alluding to death— once we cross the threshold? There exists another realm, one that we can only share to the degree that it is not replicated, that it is not homogeneous, that it is not standardized. Ernesto Marenco's manifestations of objects frequently delineate, in a profound manner, spaces for us. They resonate with our condition in the world and compel us to shift from our current position.
To reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable, the alien form and function, and to elicit alternative meanings, is the enduring approach of Ernesto Marenco: a fusion of paradoxes and ironies. Ernesto Marenco salvages objects from a state where, having conveyed the same meaning repeatedly, they cease to resonate. He enables them, akin to found objects revitalized through radical proximity, to rediscover themselves, selectively amalgamate, and procreate.
Ernesto Marenco explores the sole viable justification of the new: introspectively and in a state of helplessness; not as a trend or a passing fancy, nor as a precursor to a future art, but rather in the realm of nothingness, in the minutiae of the residual, where one can embark anew with the fundamental impetus of laughter.
If Dadaism sought to render chaos a means of perceiving the world anew, its material legacy beckons us today toward a different novelty. This new perspective assigns a different value to the commonplace: the essential dismantling of our relationship with reality. Objects and things have ceased to embody the certainties we once relied upon. The ultimate conclusion is that the commonplace is, at present, unstable. This is both alarming and profoundly pleasurable.
Jaime Moreno Villarreal,
Independent Curator
