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Ricardo Rendón.
  

  Solo Show
Ricardo Rendón
Galería Nueveochenta
Issue #77
01/06/2010

Colombia, Bogotá
Institution:
Nueveochenta - Arte Contemporaneo

Diana Marcela Cardenas


A visit to one of the famous flea markets in downtown Bogotá and an encounter with an alleged series of engravings by Pablo Picasso that belongs to his Suite Vollard series comprised the point of departure for Mexican artist Ricardo Rendón that led to his own version of work entitled Suite Bollard. Here, Rendón decided to create a visual reflection about authorship in art and to explore and question the complicated debate concerning copyrights.
Rendón chanced upon twelve engravings by Picasso at a flea market in downtown Bogotá, and despite knowing that these offers were false, the Mexican artist was surprised to find this type of engraving and the amount of detail in them attesting to their supposed ¿originality.¿ They not only had Picasso¿s signature, but also the correct numbers and seals from the D¿Orsay Museum in Paris, and on the back, those of Christie¿s auction house. There was just one small detail that betrayed the subtle forgery: Its title, Suite Bollard, was misspelled with a ¿B¿ instead of the ¿V¿ that is correctly used in the original work.
The original work, Suite Vollard, is one of the most important and comprehensive graphic works in the engraving genre. It is a series of 100 works created with several techniques and different themes such as the Sculptor¿s Studio and the Model, the Minotaur, the Battle of Love, Rembrandt, and the Portrait of Vollard ¿ the merchant who commissioned these series from Picasso. According to the research done by Ricardo Rendón, a part of this series was exhibited at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá. This could explain the origin of these engravings found at the flea market.
With this fortuitous and lucky encounter, the Mexican artist is afforded an opportunity to delve in issues of authenticity, authorship, and appropriation, themes that are relevant to the contemporary world, not only as they pertain to art, but also to many other disciplines. Rendón ¿ who enjoys taking advantage of the themes and materials that originate in the place where he works ¿ decides here to question what is real and what is false by relying on a casual encounter with the works by someone who had appropriated Picasso¿s engravings. Thus, Rendón uses these forgeries to create his own work.
The exhibition Suite Bollard presents twelve engravings by Rendón that intervene Picasso¿s Suit Vollard series. Picasso¿s consecrated engravings were appropriated by Rendón and have now been transformed ¿ through manipulation of the material and alteration of the image ¿ into something totally new and original. By making perforations with a die-stamp of different sizes and forms, Rendón creates his own original works and places them in golden frames as if they were very important artworks. He also leaves inside the frame the material taken from the interfered engravings as evidence of the appropriation process. Because he did not intend to add any additional elements to the engravings, he decided to perforate them in order to play with the visual, to deconstruct and establish a dialogue with a new image; in other words, he creates a work over another that was already created.
The mounting of the exhibition is thought to create the effect of being the presence of an exhibition of a grand museum in possession of the most famous works of art. It is for this reason that the engravings are accompanied by details such as a dark-red velvet curtain that frames the entrance to the exhibition, that each work has its own information label as in works in a museum, and that are accompanied by a space with books and information on Picasso, which have been equally intervened by Rendón. The objective is to inquire about and reflect upon the various spaces that the work has inhabited, namely the street ¿ the flea market ¿ the museum, and the gallery. Thus, through an exercise of appropriation, the exhibition by this Mexican artist achieves a transformation from the unoriginal to the original.

Diana Marcela Cárdenas
 


 

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