ERNESTO MARENCO
PETITE RETROSPECTIVE
ON VIEW FROM JUNE 24 - SEPTEMBER 2
Since childhood, artist Ernesto Marenco has been surrounded by creatives, painters, and writers. The son of an exiled Nicaraguan poet and politician, Marenco, who was born and raised in Mexico, never identified with the Mexican School of Painting or Mexican popular art. As he came of age in the late 1970s, Marenco instead focused his attention on European modernist movements and currents such as Dada, Surrealism, and Art Povera. It was Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, Méret Oppenheim’s objects, and Man Ray’s assemblage sculptures that spurred Marenco to venture into the world of art making. For years he honed his skills in carpentry, stonework, wood carving, metal casting, welding, and molding plastics. Though he is a self-taught artist, Marenco’s studies in art conservation and restoration, as well as museology, greatly influenced his artistic vision and practice. In his sculpture, Marenco is interested in giving shape and form to words. According to Marenco, “I write with abandoned and uncommon materials and create three-dimensional poetry.” Continual themes in his art, both visual and performative, include faith, death, love, secrets, abandonment, nothingness, and oblivion.
THE GENTLEMAN LIAR
2023
Oil on canvas
5 x 5 x ¾ inches each
$4,500
“Time, poetry and the human condition through the common object as its representative, is the only thing I ever wanted to create. Some people say I make ready-mades, assemblages, sculptures or art objects, but for me, my work is closer to literature, specifically to poetry or short stories. I consider myself a writer or a poet but I don’t write with pencil and paper, I write with abandoned and uncommon materials and create 3-dimensional poetry.”
