In its most intense state,
movement is transformed into heat

Nobody knows how to handle reality. The exercise of living is based on a strange system of synaptic implications that complicate existential acts and our naive way of "seeing things."

Culturally, we take for granted that being as we are is already an act of stability and harmony, that "we are fine."
But no.

The crudeness of physical phenomena and the natural force of the earth and its organic structures make it clear that we are not much; we are neither stable nor harmonious. Our chaotic "personal" composition is a mixture of substances and energies in constant tension; in dispute.
As bodies, we are containers-packaged. Because we live in a borderline, cosmic dimension; also composed of substances and energies that fight to –physically– survive.
At least, we are part of what we inhabit. We are made of the same thing that contains us. We are and will return to dust...
The space we inhabit is finite. Only conceptuality and emotions free us from this confinement. Even if we wanted to, we could not escape our bodies to other dimensions. The earth-terrestrial holds us captive; locked up, limited and above all: conditioned.
To what?

-to consume us.

enrique minjares transgresses-because-he-explores. his work has always been the documentation and the plastic record of personal dangers; of those darknesses that we all carry like pets in our unknown "personal interiors". he knows them, and he constantly observes them. he contemplates them. thus, in absolute dedication to the inner phenomena of the human "B side", minjares turns his work into a sharp vehicle of meaning, evocative yes, but never naive. his pieces vibrate, because they describe us. they blame us.
through his compositions it is possible to measure the gravity of our existential pain, or to reflect ourselves in that dual agony: because we are flesh and spirit we hesitate at the moment of deciding between good and evil, between what I want to be and what I can have.

This exhibition tests –from a visual study– the crudeness of the combustible state, through real portraits (documentary appropriations) that perpetrate the peak moment of the fire. the personnel and the material. But Enrique does not seek to fatalize or make the spectator suffer. As in a temple, a hymn or a religion, his pieces pay homage to the power of material transformation and the inevitable surrender to nothingness, which is technically caloric, it is fleeting.

We all, absolutely all, live in a state of combustion, of aging. More or less slow, more or less painful, but not as spontaneous and immoral as that of the fire.
The fire is –only– a fast forward of what is happening to us. Let us pay homage to the inevitable, because it is sacred.

We are cooking.

Luis Ramaggio, curator.