Science and spirituality in Mayan visual arts

Featuring sculptor Gerardo K’ulej, accompanied by additional works from his fellow artists.

Contemporary art places great emphasis on research. The artist investigates how the materials they use can deepen the exploration and play of their ideas. These ideas themselves are developed and made more complex through shared research dialogue with other artists. This defines the scope of this exhibition of 13 sculptures by Gerardo K’ulej, in dialogue with works he has selected by artists who have influenced him or with whom he shares an ongoing conversation about Maya and universal art.

Gerardo K’ulej is a scientist trained as a biochemical engineer. His artistic research also focuses on elemental life. K’ulej reveals his genius for engineering structures in highly conceptualized forms, whose beauty opens us to joy, intuition, and our freedom to perceive poetry in things.

It’s clear why this young artist—born in 1988 and dedicated to his art for more than six years—found his medium in sculpture. K’ulej is a researcher of dimensions. Not content with the three at hand, nor the fourth, time—as this exhibition outlines—K’ulej dives through sculpture into representing dimensions like a string theorist: unnamed, yet full of sensation and meaning.

Viewers can read K’ulej’s texts and appreciate the multiple levels of his research, including cosmology and worldview, with both evocative and explanatory power. As part of the installation, the video (by Humberto Gómez incorporating material by Francisco de Pares) gives a reference point: his upbringing in the community of Chilil, Huixtán; his studies of Western/universal science at the Tuxtla Institute of Technology; his urge to move from the garden he worked in to the studio of sculptor Federico Burkha; and his “return” to Maya culture through his art.

As a Tsotsil speaker, he set out to investigate the journeys across mysterious dimensions of a j’ilol (healer/sage) from Chilil. In both academic and artistic research, he draws from classical Maya math and science—astronomy and architecture—and also contemporary knowledge, especially the wisdom of bioland engineers (rural farmers). All of this informs K’ulej’s sculptural work.

K’ulej does not seek to invent alone; on the contrary, his artistic practice is profoundly dialogical with his mentors and peers. We see the pieces he has selected from sculptor and healer Maruch Méndez, who adds legends to her clay creations of lum or “bioland.” We see sculptures by Federico Burkha, who originally inspired K’ulej, as well as his teacher and friend Kees Grootenboer, whose technique links archaeology with Maya culture. And we enjoy a selection of recent sculptural work by master artist Juan Chawuk, featuring “strange” assemblages (the artist’s own description, with a smile) brought together in symphonic harmony.

K’ulej is an artist of both Maya identity and universal community, dialogical and communicative. This is evident in his incorporation of text into his artistic practice and in the inclusion of works by other important sculptors in this investigation of contemporary Maya sculpture. Finally, his desire to “communitize” sculpture led him beyond the boundaries of the gallery to create a piece of field art now located in the municipal center of Zinacantán.

To our visitors at Galería MUY: welcome to this artistic conversation on Maya visual arts!

Artist Profiles:

Gerardo K’ulej (Ch’ilil, Huixtán, 1988), one of the most modest and talented artists in recent times, studied formally in the field of science and math education (a graduate of the Tuxtla Gutiérrez Institute of Technology and former teacher at the American School Foundation of Chiapas in Tuxtla). He is currently completing a diploma in mathematics education and research on the milpa (agroecosystem) using Maya science. He is interested in introducing contemporary art to contemporary Maya communities, using Maya art in education, and fostering dialogue with visual artists and the global art world across the irregularly curved dimensions of this planet.

Maruch Méndez (K’atixtik, Chamula, 1957), multimedia artist, has worked with paper, textiles, and especially low-temperature ceramics, combining narrative and song. She has had a long trajectory with Taller Leñateros and poet Ámbar Past. She has performed and exhibited in Mexico City, the U.S., and Paris, France. In the community of Santa Rosa, she is often sought after to guide Chamula rituals.

Kees Grootenboer (Mexico City, 1942), sculptor and painter, worked as an archaeological illustrator at sites such as Toniná, Lagartello, and several in Yucatán. A resident of San Cristóbal de Las Casas for 45 years, his sculptural genius has transformed local architecture with his distinctive use of curvature in building design, as well as in painting and sculpture.

Federico Burkha (Switzerland, 1965), sculptor with long residence in San Cristóbal and his native Switzerland, recipient of the European Prize for Artistic and Cultural Activity (2012). His work has been shown especially in Europe (Grands et Jeunes d’Aujourd’hui, Paris) and in Chiapas.

Juan Chawuk (Las Margaritas, 1971), Tojolabal speaker, studied at La Esmeralda and is largely self-taught. His multidisciplinary practice is based in painting and sculpture, with performance and photography. His work is part of major collections, including the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, and he has recently exhibited in Kansas City, USA; Paris, France; Barcelona, Spain; and multiple times in Mexico City.

Curator: J. Burstein

August 2017