The whole man is waking up.
the island is becoming a sun. Wait by this
Mistletoe bush and you will get the feeling of really
Being out of the world and with it.
– John Ashbery
Galerie Greta Meert is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in Europe of work by Los Angeles-based artist Joe Zorrilla (b.1982).
At the center of the exhibition is a sequence of ceramics produced in Guadalajara, Mexico, which illustrate the event of a triangular tube turning itself inside out. The seemingly successive motion is “trapped” here in eight stages, and as it changes the apex points of the triangular form remain strong, prohibiting the form from completely escaping its underlying structure. The geometric substance is effectually curvaceous, body-like, if not erotic, within the interstitial moments of the series. As ascertained in similar endeavours to document motion, such as the animal locomotion studies done by Eadweard Muybridge, this work triumphs observation and experimentation.
Besides this series, Zorrilla presents recent sculptural and photographic works. Similar to the ceramics, the main consideration is the existence, and at times negation, of the body – the very fleshly and organic condition that wonders and consumes the viewer. While the artist maintains an aphoristic relationship to the formation of works, it resists rational or didactic pretences. With the overarching interest in “being beside of” a thing, place or thought, the work at large takes root in what philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy has variously defined as a corpus: “a list of gleanings, in random order and completeness, an ongoing stammer of bits and pieces, partes extra partes, a juxtaposition without articulation, a variety, a mix that won’t explode or implode, vague in its ordering, always extendable (…)”.