METAL & MIRRORS
An exhibition featuring works by Miguel Rivera
Opening November 1st
5-8 PM
In my current work, I am visiting my recollection of events and structures that lead one’s daily life such as maps, maps used by Spanish sailors during the conquest, the magic of belief in forces of physics and deep embedded images from Mexican architecture. This work is the result of my current time and place where I am coming to terms with my ideological art discourse. Forms and colors come first to tell my version of my cultural education being an outsider and slowly adapting to my adopted environment. Drawing follows hidden structures as landmarks of experiences that come back or fade away, leaving us with the graphic nature of contour drawing.
My works, as it evolves into layers, it is a progression of manipulated photos and vector drawings that get edited by the destructive nature of laser energy or a CNC router. This act of self-editing comes with a by-product that resembles one questioning our own values thus resulting in a re-birth. Margot Lovejoy used the term Information as Simulation to describe Jean-Francois Lyotard’s ideas to dissolve the basic nature of the object into other states of energy. These works are my proposed evidence of invisible energy from our human paths..
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These works refer to the folk tale in Mexico that Cortés exchanged a mirror for gold during his first encounter with emperor Montezuma. This simple act may have the seed for European greed and a narrative of one culture subjugating the other. The drawings are inspired by intersecting points of nautical maps and the invisible paths of human migration resulting in illustrated energy. The artist uses the layering of color-based imagery as a metaphor for his personal experience living in different environments. He came to Kansas City from Mexico after living in both countries and traveling widely to source his images.
Estos trabajos interpretan una historia popular de que Cortés intercambio espejos por oro con el emperador Moctezuma, siendo este acto el accidente que despertó la avaricia y el deseo de dominar la civilización Azteca. Estos dibujos están inspirados en puntos de intersección de mapas navales y los rastros invisibles de la migración humana resultando estos en energía ilustrada. El artista utiliza imágenes de colores presente en esos viajes como una metáfora de su propia experiencia viviendo en lugares variados. El migró de Guanajuato, México a Kansas City después de haber vivido en varios lugares en los EEUUAA y haber viajado constantemente de donde colecciona imágenes para su referencia.