GABRIEL RICO

Gabriel Rico is a Mexican artist living and working in Guadalajara whose work is characterized by the interrelation of seemingly disparate objects. A self-proclaimed “ontologist with a heuristic methodology,” Gabriel Rico pairs found, collected, and manufactured materials to create sculptures that invite viewers to reflect on the relationship between humans and our natural environment. Rico frequently uses neon, taxidermy, ceramics, branches and more personal pieces of his past to create an equation or formulation. Ironically and poetically combining natural and unnatural forms, Rico achieves a precise geometry with each of his installations in spite of the roughly hewn character of his materials.

ABOUT THE WORK:

These works begin with the assumption that certain concepts created by humans cannot be applied in the same way in the natural world. The construction of politics, for example, is a direct product of the human fascination with order; however, when applied to nature, the system implies a false hierarchy of certain organic elements above others. In these totemic sculptures, the assemblage of disparate objects fuses a unique relationship between the natural and unnatural in relation to speed and movement: a soccer ball, its geometry mimicking that of the carbon molecule (i.e. the element which supports all life) mingles with the natural world, represented by the animal figures of a hare and a roadrunner that crown the sculptures.