2012

With this diptych, Santiago Borja continues his rereading of the iconic works of Western culture. These two rugs are a response from the Mexican artist to minimal American art, to his abstract language based on the experimentation of an ‘objective’ painting, emptied of all references and deliberately ‘tautological’ – which talks of nothing other than that which is stated  and «where you find nothing other than that which can be seen there» (Franck Stella)

The carpet pattern is directly inspired by celebrated projects from Sol Lewitt (Red square, white letters, 1962) and Franck Stella (Benjamin Moore series of paintings, 1962). It retakes this chromatic and geometric structure; a network of squares with multiple variations, giving rise to a play on logic and rational infinity for the spectator’s spirit.

But Borja refutes the ‘neutrality’ of minimalist language by incorporating traditional pre-Columbian patterns into its composition. From the Mayan cosmogony, these motifs rehabilitate the power of the sign, inseparable from the mental representations and cultural unconscious which are attached to it.

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The choice of textile as a medium is part of this re-evaluation, valuing the work of art in its material and artisanal reality, celebrating the thread that inextricably links hand to thought.