TIJUANA Common objects used in absurd ways. Ancient symbols meshed with modern ones. That's the vision of an international artist whose work is being exhibited for the first time at the border.
Pedro Friedeberg, 75, was born in Italy but grew up and works in Mexico. He's considered one of the most creative artists in that nation, said Virgilio Muñoz, the director of the Centro Cultural Tijuana, which is presenting the exhibit.
"His works radiate a freedom of expression where all worlds are possible and everything is fiction and Utopia at the same time," he said.
Perhaps his most recognized work is "Chair-hand," a gold-colored sculpture he created in 1961 of a hand that serves as a seat, a construction that has been emulated many times. He also made a chair whose back and arms are in the form of butterfly wings.
The exhibit features more than one hundred pieces that include paintings, serigraphs, sculptures uneven baroque objects (suns, shoes, butterflies, trees and decks of cards), and models that use elements of Asian an Pre-Hispanic cultures.
His works, which span five decades, defy a label.
The artists himself tried to explain what drives him.
"In general, my spirit is inclined toward the absurd, possibly derived from surrealism," he wrote in his memoirs.
That spirit is amply captured in "Pedro Friedeberg: The Hypnotic Aesthetic, Obsessive Mania and Utopian Architecture of the 21st Century," which opened Friday and runs to October.
Curator Reyna Henaine said that in the fifty years since Friedeberg's first exhibited in Mexico City, the artist "has invented a fantastic world full of references and symbols of past cultures and religions."
She said that his works have been inexplicably unnoticed for years despite "showing urban views only dreamed of, delirious boxes and rooms, strange sculptures of moons and butterflies and dense compositions of symbolic elements."
Of German descent, Friederberg was born in Florence, Italy, in 1936. When World War II exploded, he immigrated to Mexico with his mother. He eventually studied architecture and was a student of the painter, sculptor and architect Mathias Goeritz.
"The ornament, that in many ancient civilizations served a sacred function, sadly has disappeared from our agnostic, immoral and pragmatic culture," the artist once wrote to describe some of his creations. "I will forever love objects that are Egyptian, Gothic, Baroque, Victorian and even Pre-Hispanic and I have tried to reestablish this affection for the adornment."
Guillermo Osorno, the editor of the Mexican magazine Gatopardo, asked the artist about why he focuses on the absurd. He responded that it comes from "life in general, from the ridiculous. One is born a surrealist. Or not."
[sidebar]Diverse genius
The exhibit "Pedro Friedeberg: The Hypnotic Aesthetic, Obsessive Mania and Utopian Architecture of the 21st century" is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., at El Cubo, the art gallery of the Centro Cultural Tijuana (Cecut). Admission is $4 for adults (46 pesos); $2.20 children (26 pesos); $2.40 (28 pesos) for students, teachers and senior citizens. More information is available in Spanish at www.cecut.gob.mx.
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