José Vera Matos »POETICS OF RELATION«

In this group of works, Vera Matos explores the main themes of Édouard Glissant’s The Poetics of Relation. The “stain" is developed out from the artist's reflections on the theme of identity within the source text. Glissant is interested in the alternative model of rhizome, the way in which different roots come into contact, which he calls Relationship. Vera Matos uses syntactic constructions to question the essentialist and single-rooted visions of cultural identities and fuses them into the internal pattern of the composition.

Throughout his work Vera Matos references the processes of construction of identities that are the result of confrontation. His work has visited, from different angles, the trauma of the Spanish conquest of the Tahuantinsuyo and its legacy. The graphic result involves a dialectic between the formal rigidity of the traditional folio and a reconfiguration of the text based on pre-Columbian patterns and exercises of superimposed inscriptions.

His video work Nuevo Absoluto is located in this same universe while its textual reference is the bolero "Solamente una vez". The message is, once again, unintelligible. The melody is intoned by a man, babbling and prostrate, who is haunted by superimposed, allegorical spectres. As in the transcriptions, the semantic layers mix and intertwine, creating a tension-laden sequence that suggests the state of crisis following defeat and the cultural tools with which he has been provided to face it.

• Sebastian Lores Fernandez

José Vera Matos (Lima, 1981) studied at the Edith Sachs Visual Arts Institute and at the Escuela Superior Autónoma de Bellas Artes del Perú. Recent solo exhibitions include: Pellizcar un vidrio, Galerie Nordenhake, Mexico City (2019); 7 ensayos de in- terpretación de la Realidad Peruana de José Carlos Mariátegui, Casa Museo J.C. Mariátegui, Lima (2018); DIENTE DE ORO VUELVE A BRILLAR, Galería Arroniz, Mexico City; and Nuevas Almas Salvajes, MATE, Museo Mario Testino, Lima (2016). Selected group exhibitions include: Southern Geometries, from Mexico to Patagonia, Fondation Cartier, París (2018); After Finitude, curated by Elena Damiani, Galerie Nordenhake, Mexico City (2018); NEXT STOP, Peruvian artists in the Collection Hochschild, Sala Alcala 31, Madrid (2017); Illumination, New Contemorary Art at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copen- hagen (2016); Viajes Evolutivos, Palais de Glace, Buenos Aires (2016); The Pourcurpine in the Room, curated by Gitanjali Dang, The Delfina Foundation, London UK (2015); Constructed Otherness, Chalton Gallery, London (2015); Superreal: Alter- native Realities in Photography and New Media, Museo del Barrio, New York (2013); Color & Unrest, a Survey of Latin Amer- ican video Production, curated by Proyectos Ultravioleta, New York (2012). His work is part of the Collections from the MALI, Museo Lima; the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen; the Hoch- schild Collection, Lima; and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. José Vera Matos currently lives and works in Lima, Peru.