PREVIEW
Adolfo Riestra
Cuerpo de Obra
CURATED BY MAURICIO MARCIN
JULY 11, 2024
  —  
AUGUST 31, 2024
WORKS INDEX
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And how will the artist capture and preserve the fleeting moment?

Adolfo Riestra. Original quote translated into English

This modest effort to exhibit his Body of Work is declared partial. No exhaustive or definitive review was attempted. These signs are offered separately, like a game that allows for the reassembly of another body, the reinvention of another form and another and another. This exhibition is a remembrance.

Excerpt from Curatorial Text for Cuerpo de Obra, Mauricio Marcin
Adolfo Riestra
Suicidas de Jim Jones, 1981
Collage, gouache, and ink on paper
32 x 24 cm
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Adolfo Riestra
Suicidas de Jim Jones, 1981
Collage, gouache, and ink on paper
32 x 24 cm
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Adolfo Riestra
Suicidas de Jim Jones, 1981
Collage, gouache, and ink on paper
32 x 24 cm
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Adolfo Riestra
Mujer, 1977
Ink on paper
27.5 x 21 cm
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Adolfo Riestra
Mujer, 1977
Wax on paper
30.5 x 23 cm
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Adolfo Riestra
Bailarina, ca. 1970
Acrylic and grease pencil on paper
31.5 x 23 cm
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His drawings teem with outlawed bodies; they form a revolutionary somateca*—both for his time, the 80s, and ours—by demanding a disidentification. These beings refuse the construction of a stable ego, resist identity labels, and flee fixation through contradiction: they are immobile inks chasing the lightness and mutability of the wind.  

This somateca is filled with monstrous and beautiful inventions: arms stretching to deformity, twisted torsos, swollen thighs, enlarged genitals, steroidal breasts, falling, delicate buttocks, hermaphroditic creatures. Everything in his drawings is flawed, abject desire, capricious forms. His drawings don’t oppose beauty; they implant it with new standards: his song is that of a bird few understand. 

Excerpt from Curatorial Text for Cuerpo de Obra, Mauricio Marcin

* The term "somateca," coined by Paul B. Preciado, describes how bodies act as living archives shaped by discourses, practices, and power technologies, transforming identity and subjectivity.

Adolfo Riestra
Calavera en bacinica, 1970
Pastel on paper
45.5 x 61 cm
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Adolfo Riestra
Hombre, 1977
Ink on paper
27.5 x 21 cm
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Adolfo Riestra
Sin título, 1980
Ink on paper
25 x 16.5 cm
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Adolfo shares—alongside many others—the recognition of this political and aesthetic operation. His body of work is a cry in the middle of a crater, a crater that becomes a beach, a pleasure that becomes death, a spiral.

Excerpt from Curatorial Text for Cuerpo de Obra, Mauricio Marcin

Adolfo Riestra
La muerte, ca. 1980
Ink, pencil, and watercolor on paper
15 1/2 x 12 3/8 in
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Adolfo Riestra
Niño gritando, 1984
Acrylic on canvas
70 7/8 x 47 1/4 x 1 1/8 in
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Adolfo Riestra
Bañista, 1989
Acrylic on Canvas
63 x 55 1/8 in
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Whenever Adolfo mastered a pictorial style, he abandoned it, rejecting its mastery, as the controllable and predictable ceased to offer him a spectrum of possibilities, as if his desire was satisfied.

Excerpt from Curatorial Text for Cuerpo de Obra, Mauricio Marcin

Adolfo Riestra
Celuta y el caimán, 1989
Acrylic, charcoal, and oil on canvas
551/8 x 66 7/8 x 1 1/8 in
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Adolfo Riestra
Mujer en amarillo, 1984
Acrylic and oil on canvas
39 3/8 x 31 1/2 x 1 1/8 in
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Adolfo Riestra
Los aplicadores, 1988
Oil on canvas
70 7/8 x 55 1/8 x 1 1/8 in
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Adolfo Riestra
Sin título (Pies con zapatos), s.f.
Fired clay
11 x 5 3/4 x 9 5/8 in
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Adolfo Riestra
Sin título (Brazos azules), s.f.
Fired clay
19 1/8 x 4 x 2 3/4 in each
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Adolfo Riestra
Pies blancos separados con calentadores, s.f.
Fired clay
17.5 x 19 x 13 cm
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Working with clay—a tradition deeply rooted in both western and eastern Mexico—has always sparked my curiosity and driven me to explore the essence of fantastical figures emerging from the moist, moldable earth. Like a hollow gourd, the clay is kneaded and shaped, always leaving breathing spaces, surrounded by a delicate, pastry-thin surface. At the same time, its construction is a form of architecture, requiring walls and vaults, tunnels, and spacious halls, where windows, chimneys, and porticoes connect with the outside world.

Adolfo Riestra. Original quote translated into English.

Adolfo Riestra
Bañista, 1989
Bronze
32 1/2 x 13 3/8 x 18 1/8 in
Adolfo Riestra
Torso esgrafiado con niños, 1989
Bronze
33 5/8 x 21 5/8 x 12 in
Adolfo was an intensely passionate person. Everything in his world held deep meaning, allowing no room for half-measures or lukewarm feelings. He lived, loved, cooked, ate, drew, painted, and sculpted with this fervor—defying all odds, whether we liked it or understood it. His work ethic was the same: intense and relentless.

Adolfo Riestra, Galería OMR, Mexico City, 1994.

Adolfo Riestra
Sin título (Brazo) , s.f.
Fired clay
9 1/4 x 3 3/4 x 14 3/8 in
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Adolfo Riestra
Sin título (Manos con granada), s.f.
Fired clay
5 7/8 x 11 3/4 x 16 3/8 in
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Adolfo Riestra
Sin título (Piernas), s.f.
Fired clay
17 3/8 x 4 7/8 x 8 5/8 in each
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With clay, you can conceal a ruby... The art of working with clay—a long-standing tradition in both western and eastern Mexico—has always piqued my curiosity, driving my desire to uncover the essence of fantastical figures emerging from the moist, moldable earth. Hollow like a gourd, clay is kneaded and shaped, always leaving breathing spaces, surrounded by a surface as thin as pastry. This process resembles architecture, requiring walls and vaults, tunnels and hallways, spacious rooms with windows, chimneys, and porticoes connecting to the outside.

Clay sculpture is an exploration of inner forms, an adventure through infinite expanses, a journey to depths where imagination freely evolves. Unknown individuals' shapes, volumes, and gestures emerge—faces with long, wide noses, hands with slender fingers, and sometimes mysterious, coarse hands forming characters with unique personalities.

—Living inside a figure is more fascinating than seeing it from the outside.

Adolfo Riestra, “Con barro se puede tapar un rubí…”. Original quote translated into English.

Adolfo Riestra
Jarra antropomorfa, 1989
Bronze
22 1/2 x 19 7/8 x 16 1/2 in
Adolfo Riestra
El vampiro, 1980
Ink on paper
37 x 27 cm
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Adolfo Riestra
(Sangre), 1980
Ink and watercolour on paper
37 x 27 cm
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"Since I can remember, my brother was always drawing or painting with whatever was available: he experimented humorously on all kinds of surfaces, creating incredible things like collages or even mixing paint with beans. His works resulted in images that I thought were masterpieces at the time."

Jaime Riestra, Publication "OMR", 2019. Ed. Turner Libros.

Adolfo Riestra
Muscle woman, 1981
Collage, gouache y tinta sobre papel
24 x 16.5 cm
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Adolfo Riestra
Contorsionista, 1981
Collage on paper
28.5 x 19 cm
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Adolfo Riestra
Cantante de opera, 1988
Acrylic on canvas
66 7/8 x 15 3/4 x 1 in
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Adolfo Riestra
La niña del traje rojo, 1989
Ink, lacquer, and watercolor on paper
13 3/4 x 9 7/8 in
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Adolfo Riestra
Jugador de basketball, 1985
Acrylic, charcoal, and ink on paper
27 1/2 x 19 7/8 in
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Adolfo Riestra
Muchacho en Zihuatanejo, 1989
Watercolor on paper
14 5/8 x 10 5/8 in
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Adolfo Riestra
Lechita pa' los gatos, ca. 1984
Acrylic on canvas
57 1/8 x 45 1/8 x 1 3/8 in
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Adolfo Riestra
Sin título, 1988
Oil on canvas
70.5 x 60 x 3.2 cm
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Adolfo had to invent in each drawing what he wished existed in reality; through a symbolic-demiurgic operation, he made each painting lavish consistency on the world and the fact is that to make art is to bring forth the space one wishes to inhabit.

Excerpt from Curatorial Text for Cuerpo de Obra, Mauricio Marcin

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