Motlazohtlaliz ayocmo pepetzca
Your love ceased to be iridescent

This proposal aims to alert us to an increasingly evident environmental phenomenon: the scarcity of water. At the same time, it tries to include us in a discourse that is both aesthetic and of social value through objects of domestic use (most of the time associated with the rural world). The use of the comal (hotplate pan), the metate (flat stone), the chair, the water filter as pictorial-sculptural supports and the use of acrylic colors seeks to lead us to this act, where water is not only the motif but also an intrinsic participant in this discussion.

Transcendentally, the artist’s origin directs us to a territory, Milpa Alta, geographical scenario where this dilemma occurs today in an obvious way; Malacachtepec Momoxco. Today Milpa Alta is the second largest delegation in territory in the municipalities that make up Mexico City.

Milpa Alta is a bastion of wealth in natural and cultural resources, of Nahua origin, its inhabitants have preserved this legacy thanks to their knowledge in the management of natural resources. However, today they are at high risk of being lost, the region is in constant tension, resisting the siege by private interests and the state, the growth of the unplanned urban sprawl, among other factors, in addition to the constant struggle for the recognition of communal lands and respect for their community normative systems.

It is in this panorama that the objects mentioned are not only witnesses of a disappearing culture, but active participants in a dilemma in which we are all invited to participate.

This exhibition also invites us to reflect on the search for healing on a global and personal level, on this human need to stop the disaster we have created in the world. It is no coincidence then, that we can notice the resurgence of ancient ideas from Mesoamerica, the Tao and Buddhism as a healing tool; ancient currents that are becoming part of our consciousness since in the West, with its industrial forms and consumerism, we have not been able to find resolution to the condition in which we find ourselves.

Thus, through fables and metaphors, Mexican cosmogony explains to us the origin of the universe. Tláloc, the god of rain; Chicomecóatl, goddess of fertility; Huehuecóyotl, god of the arts; converge in this space where the comal, the metate, the molcajete and the chair become important elements to tell these stories. The images on the comales are born organically from the contact of water with paint; rabbits, butterflies, horses, fish, constellations, the moon, the sea and the earth; all giving texture and inviting us to this discussion.

Fernando Palma Rodríguez (San Pedro Atocpan, Mexico, 1957) lives and works in the agricultural region of Milpa Alta, on the outskirts of Mexico City, where he co-directs Calpulli Tecalco AC, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of the Nahua language and agriculture. Recently, he participated in the 59th Venice Biennale (2022), MoMA PS1, New York (2018); he had a retrospective at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (2017). His work has been included in exhibitions at Centre Pompidou-Metz, France (2021); Gwangju Biennial, Korea (2021); Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City (2021); Taipei Biennial, Taiwan (2020); Ballroom Marfa, USA (2019); FRAC des Pays de la Loire, France (2016); Nottingham Contemporary, England (2015); the Biennial of the Americas, Denver, Colorado (2015); Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City, Mexico (2014); and SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (2014). His work is part of collections of the Tate, London; LACMA, Los Angeles; Kadist, San Francisco; Museo Amparo, Puebla and MUAC, Mexico City.

Gaga is pleased to present the third exhibition by Fernando Palma Rodríguez in the gallery.

The exhibition expands on the works currently on view at MOMA PS1, In Ixtli In Yollotl / We the People and his recent retrospective at the Museo de Arte de Oaxaca, Guex Liu, Kuu ñunro, Totlalhuan / Nuestra Tierra (Our Land). In the same way as in past exhibitions, Fernando takes on and reprograms sculptures made in the last two decades.

Familiar characters reappear again. El Soldado (The Soldier) (2001), red, sentinel of the West and representative of Cihuatampa, who looks to the place of the warrior women and guards the entrance to the temple, marching forwards and backwards, while in the distance his three brothers point to the other three regions of the horizontal world. Mictlampa to the north, Huitlampa to the south and to the east Tlahuiztlampa, governed by Xipetotec.

Climbing up the steps we are greeted by Xipetotec (2018), who rules the region of the rising sun and represents the renewal, the detachment of what is no longer useful, the regeneration of spiritual nature, as well as the transformation of dry soil into fertile soil, covering his face with the skin of a sacrificed young man. He is also the god of craftsmen, tender maize, abundance and wealth and the one who punishes those who steal. He invites us here to witness a dialogue and a dance. Xipe is surrounded by the snakes of the Cuatlicue and a chair dances under his hand.

On the second plane of the gallery, a rather unconscious one, appears Xi mo matlazacan ce cehce (2006), dance of the unripe corn and the weed, country and city, the more “cheerful than cheerful” work the artist has made is a kind of self-portrait of the coyote, his alter ego, which takes us back to the time when Fernando was working at Anthony D’Offay, installing works by other artists up on a ladder.

On one side, three characters, Los Nahuales (2017), discuss the present, past and future. The Nahual is the part of the individual linking us with the sacred, it is our guardian animal and some can even become it. Their layers protect them from water and they will soon cease to exist. Nahual also means to cover oneself with a rebozo. They remind us, says the artist, how in the future only stones will remain while all the rest will disappear. The stones that come from Oaxaca serve to grind the corn, to carve shapes, or those coming from the L.A. River supporting and decorating, “Nation’s property”, hold the soldier as a Sisyphus in reverse to return again and again to the same place.

Two paintings are part of the exhibition and continue the exploration and theories Palma Rodríguez has developed on prehispanic codexes. The cat bullying the mouse, Michin huan quimichtin (2016), image that resonates with the enormous amount of abuses of power in Mexico and Tetzahualiztli (2016) or spectrum, parts from a dream imagining the way back to the village, premonition of commitment with the ancestral land.

Fernando Palma Rodríguez (San Pedro Atocpan, Mexico, 1957) lives and works in the agricultural region of Milpa Alta outside Mexico City, where he runs Calpulli Tecalco AC, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of Nahua language and agriculture. He was the subject of a retrospective at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (2017). His work has been included in exhibitions at FRAC des Pays de la Loire, France (2016); Parallel Oaxaca, Mexico (2016); Nottingham Contemporary, England (2015); the Biennial of the Americas, Denver, Colorado (2015); Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City, Mexico (2014); and SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (2014).

Totlalhuan, Mictlantecuhtli, Chak-ek, Kan or ‘Our land, Lord of the Underworld, Venus, Sky’. This title is somewhat a code name, abstract, but to my understanding adjoins sentiments of the times we’re living in Mexico: the land where we live and the fearful and turbulent air which, according to ancient peoples, were generated at the moment when Venus entered its phase of appearing in the evening sky. Nevertheless, the manifestation of the force which in our eyes is destruction, it’s also a form of creation, that is to say, in the complexity of life it’s also a time of change and rebirth.

The first two words, Totlahuan and Mictlantecuhtli are Nahuatl, Chak-ek and Kan are Maya and Yucatec, respectively. They’re represented by the hieroglyph Totlahuan, the rest of the pieces are in some way represented metaphorically. The works presented in this show are not pessimistic but rather full of hope.

Fernando Palma

It exists in this land an animal named cóyotl, which some Spaniards call fox, some others wolf, according to its properties to my see, its neither a fox nor a wolf, but an animal of this land. Its hairy of long wool, its tail its long and hairy too, its ears are small and pointy and its snout its long and not thick; it has ribbed legs, curved and black nails and feels a lot, it is demure to hunt and when it wants to attack its pray he first throws its breath against it to infect and discourage it.

This animal is diabolical; if anyone takes it pray from it, he notes it, and waits till he gets his revenge, killing its chickens or other animals in his home if he does not have such where he can avenge, he waits him in the road and starts barking, as if it wanted to devour him, some he gets together with three or four companions to scare him, and they do such both night and day.

Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún

Press release (second draft) Mexico City, April the 5th. SOME CONSIDERATIONS

1- This press release should not continue for the language in which it should be written cannot be translated. In Nahatul neither the verb to be does not exist, nor the word trash or waste. This language and all its words such as Tlan (the earth / the abundance) are in risk of disappearing and together with it a very important way of relate and interact with our environment

2- The Fifth sun, the sun in movement, the sun of our cosmic era, that one of earthquakes. (Ollin Tonatiuh)

3- The machine is supposed to transform or re direct energy. Fernando’s machines are supposed (?) to be seen .The way this machines work is not foreign to the artists as it is to the non initiated, Fernando has put together each of its parts and programmed every movement.

4- There will always be the possibility that the machines won’t work, or that they stop working, this is contemplated; also they could always work better. Then one is forced to explain what they should be doing or how they could be better, but more than anything else the aim of the artist is to humanize the electronic, to discuss it understands.

Gaga is pleased to present in calli in tlacualli from the Mexican artist Fernando Palma Rodriguez. After 11 years of absence in the Mexican scene is for us a true honor to host this exhibition.

Fernando Palma works with machines he develops, builds and programs himself . This artifacts are often activated by the viewer and react and to its movements trough litgth and presence detectors . Having the idea of drawing parallels between Nahuatl , the original language of the community he was born, and that of electronics, Palma feeds with the myths and philosophy of this endangered language his sculptures.

The results are primitive machines that sometimes do not even work properly, a conversation between a family of spoons, a dying horse or a trickster coyote who prays.

Fernando Palma Rodriguez Milpa Alta, Mexico 1959, lives and works in London. He studied, Industrial design in the Politécnico Nacional (77-88) , Mexico city, a BA in Art History in Goldsmiths Collage London (88-91) a Post grade in Art history in the Slade School of Fine Art, (91-93), and Electonics in Twickenham collegue .In 92 he recieved the Rijksakademie grant for programmed based sculpture . His work absent for 11 years in Mexico city was recently shownd in Gaga 2011. Selected group exhibitions include High Hoch Times Zeiten, Wiener Secession, Vienna Austria, 5th inIVA aniversary Royal Collage of Art, London UK, These epic islands Vilma Gold Gallery, London UK, Moving Parts Kunsthaus Graz. Graz, Austria and Tinguely Museu. Basel, Switzerland and Heide Museum of Modern Art Melbourne, Australia.

For videos – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWY_MyZSTnE