 Adrian
Jesus Falcon constructs his life from artistic principles and maintains
a high productivity
without losing the heart of what it means to be human. Falcon has
expressed himself though art since a young age. Pursuing his passion
for art,
he established a contemporary modern art gallery since 1999.
Employing oil paints with wood filler, glue, charcoal along with handmade
materials and found objects. It is his ability to invest his paintings
with many meanings. Therefore, emerging conflicting elements to form an
abstracted environment. Texture is central over detail into the encounter
between viewer and artwork.
The work is about expression and interpretation. Evoking both absence and
presence at the same moment. Distorted forms and dynamic colors seek and
feel the energy of life. Music being the main inspiration for his paintings,
the sounds and moods drive emotions to transform to an aesthetic form of
art. Robust paintings filled almost to the bursting point with rhythm and
movement.
His work has been published in Gallery and Studio Magazine, and ARTnews
Magazine. He has exhibited nationally and internationally and represented
in private collections. Falcon’s work is also represented by Montserrat
Gallery in New
York, NY.
Many of Adrian's pieces are created using the indigenous
Petate, hand-woven mats still made in Mexico
The
petate was fundamental to our ancestors, both in life and in
death. It was used to rest and sleep upon. Children were born
into the world on a petate. Today the petate is considered a
work of art, inheritance of our ancestors and traditions that
are in danger of extinction. The "Petate" is a woven
carpet of palm straw, which was common during the 19th century,
and first decades of the 20th. The "Thrinax Morrissi",
the botanical name of the palm, originally from Europe, where
it grows wild, from whose center radial branches arise and form
a fan. The center of this palm is hauled by hand and it is put
to dry by space of several days, then soon to be dividde and
the pleita or straw be weaved into strips which can measure up
to 25 feet in length, depending on the size of the petate that
is to be made.
In the past the people of limited resources used the petate to sleep. It
was placed directly on the floor and had the quality to maintain freshness.
Once the cot came into use, the petate was occurring other uses. For example,
served as a base to dry coffee. For ancient Mexicans, "petatearse" meant
to die,
to abandon this world we know. Our ancestors prepared to leave this world
through rituals, by preparing their own burial shroud, a funeral petate.
Yesterday's Mexicans had a place of privilege for the petate in their religious
life. From the emperor to the most humble peasant, everyone was wrapped
in a petate for burial. They returned to the earth beneath their mats of
interwoven strands of palm. Petates were tied with bands colored by war
paint, to inspire the dead on their perilous journey through the darkness
of death on their way to Paradise.
For the Mayans and the Aztecs, the woven mat was a symbol of the royal
families because the petates covered the thrones and floors of the palaces.
The petate, or petlatl as it was called in the Náhuatl language,
was admired and adopted for every day use by the conquistadors along with
the hammock, another indigenous invention they found on their arrival.
The Mexican world tumbled with the conquest
of Tenochtitlan by the Spaniards, who imposed European
religion and language and remade the indigenous world.
But, like so many other native customs and beliefs, the
petate survived. During the Mexican Revolution, the peasant
warriors of Zapata and Villa fought with petates on their
backs. They slept and loved on those mats, and when they
fell in battle as heroes, they were buried covered by a
petate. After the Revolution,
the traditional sense of Mexican identity was reborn. It
flourished on canvas and murals painted by Rivera, Orozco,
and Siqueiros. Diego Rivera included the petate in many
of his images of the Mexican people. Rivera alluded to
ancient beliefs, using the image of the petate strapped
to the back of the people, as if this object were the symbol
of their destiny, as if the circle of their existence opened
and closed on a petate.
Artist
Statement
I choose anonymity, in which each piece individually evokes diverse clarification.
Therefore, initiating different interpretations.
|