MADRID.- Tender is the day the demons go away is Romeo Gómez López’s (Mexico City, 1991) first solo exhibition in Spain and his second project with Travesía Cuatro.
On this occasion, his works move in a different direction from the biting irony and dystopian atmosphere that typically characterize his practice; instead, they explore the possibility of articulating scenes with a certain tenderness and reconciliation — as a last refuge for coping with the present moment, with its indecent corruption and systematic campaigns of disappearance, war, and extermination.
Throughout his career, Romeo Gómez López has drawn on a range of references and phenomena from mass media culture — global celebrities, Hollywood movie characters, toys, and action figures — in order to subvert their original meaning. In his work, these elements or figures are turned upside down, so to speak, in order to articulate unconventional or critical narratives that address various interests or themes, ranging from sexuality to the institution of art.
Looking at the collection of pieces that comprise Tender is the day the demons go away, it feels as though you’re stepping into a playroom. One of the most iconic pieces in this kind of playful space is the dollhouse. Like other artists who have explored the motif of the dollhouse, in this case the artist presents it as a model of interiority. However, in this case, it seems to suggest that, in some instances, the home fails to be a haven.
Travesía Cuatro also announced the opening of El lado caliente, a group show curated by Andrea Celda at Travesía Cuatro Madrid.
El lado caliente brings together the work of Amol K Patil, Felix Shumba, Gabrielle Goliath, Krizia Leon Porta, Paula Santomé and Vivian Caccuri. The title is drawn from a text by Alana S. Portero, who refers to the world of the living as “the side of the world where things remain warm”. From this starting point, the exhibition explores how we inhabit what persists as living in the world and our ways of experiencing it.
The exhibition brings together international artists exhibiting for the first time at Travesía Cuatro, thus reinforcing its position as a space for presenting new voices in contemporary art. Additionally, as part of the public program, on Friday, June 26, at 7:00 p.m., sound artist Jonás de Murias will lead a listening session.
El lado caliente could be interpreted as an intervention, a deliberate action aimed at changing a situation. At a time of radical crisis and paralyzing diagnoses, the practices presented here propose alternative ways of dealing with imposed narratives and imagining other futures. By exposing tensions and applying pressure to the dominant frameworks for interpreting the present, they suggest a shift toward strategies of repair and transformation. The works brought together here disorient everyday experiences and historical milestones to give rise to new reconfigurations. They are gestures that propose different rhythms of attention and knowledge, capable of opening cracks from which to imagine alternative ways of being, remembering, organizing ourselves, and recognizing one another.
