In yesterday's post we looked at an artist featured in the 60th International Art Exhibition in Venice, employing geometries and colors to convey powerful messages. Let’s continue the thread, but take a break from the main pavilions at the Biennale to look at just one work on display in the Central pavilion of the Giardini, Eduardo Terrazas's "11.91".
Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1936, and currently residing in Mexico City, Terrazas is a multifaceted artist, he is indeed an architect, designer, and painter.
Terrazas gained early recognition as an architect when he was chosen as the co-designer of the logo and design elements for the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. His iconic Olympic logo, featuring black and white concentric circles emanating from the letters MEXICO and colorful interlinked Olympic rings with the numbers 68, was inspired by the yarn panels of the Huichol (or Wixárika) people, where yarn is pressed onto wax-covered boards in parallel lines.
In the 1970s, Terrazas began exploring the relationships between geometric elements, combining them with elements from Mexican folk art to develop a unique visual language. He adopted the Huichol technique of arranging colored wool thread on wooden boards covered with Campeche wax, not only for its aesthetic qualities but also for the meditative process it requires and for the fact that craftsmanship can calm the mind.
Terrazas further refined his technique through the series "Possibilities of a Structure," started in the 1960s, exploring concepts of repetition and difference. "Possibilities of a Structure" includes the subseries "Cosmos," "Diagonals," "Grid," and "Tables".
According to Terrazas you have to think with your hands and the process behind these series allows him to do so since it requires special concentration and implies tactile exploration.
"11.91" is on display in the first room of the Central Pavilion: in this work made with colored yarns, Terrazas blurs the boundary between two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality, creating a geometric composition illuminated by threads that serve as both brushes and lines. In this single piece there is mathematics, geometry and cosmology, plus there is a joyful passion for bright colors.
Through bold geometric shapes and vibrant colors, Terrazas also references modernist discussions on abstraction in art history, Indigenous traditions, and working-class aesthetics in Latin America. This work reflects Terrazas's thoughts on the contrast between local and global influences, traditional and modern aesthetics.
Between February and March this year, an exhibition entirely dedicated to him, entitled "To Weave the Possibility", took place at Proyectos Monclova, in Mexico City, showcasing works from his "Possibilities of a Structure" series and also reproducing his “Globos” (Balloons) installation, the first monumental soft sculpture in the history of art in Mexico. Terrazas's works may prove inspiring, especially for graphic or fashion designers, and particularly for knitwear designers (fashion design students, as usual, take note).
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