Jorge Méndez Blake
6150 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90048
Thursday, June 1 at 5:00 PM 7:00 PM
Ends Jul 29, 2023
1301PE is pleased to present its fourth solo exhibition with Mexican artist Jorge Méndez Blake titled “I remember it was raining…” The exhibition centers around Méndez Blake’s dismantling of American poet Elizabeth Bishop’s (1911-1971) novel Dimensions for a Novel, and poems The Flood, Electric Storm and Rain Towards Morning. These component parts will coalesce as paintings and a ceiling mural. Two additional large paintings using the form of the famous calligrammes by Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) will continue his Il Pleut Fort paintings. “...writing is itself a kind of construction and reading is a way of creation.” -Jorge Méndez Blake For more than twenty years, Méndez Blake’s use of structure, both literary and physical, has always been of paramount importance. His use of the concrete poetic form becomes an important focal point, concentrating and distilling the artist’s varied interests around language, form, meaning-making and our relationship to life. Jorge Méndez Blake (b. 1974) has work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in museums, including a commission for the Bass Museum in Miami (2022); Museo Tamayo (2020); Museo de Arte Moderno (2019); MARFA Contemporary (2017); Kunsthalle Mulhouse (2015); Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2014); Museo D'Arte Contemporanea Villa Croce (2012); Museum of Latin American Art, Los Angeles (2010). His work has been part of group shows NGV Triennial, National Gallery of Victoria (2017); Overburden, Hessel Museum of Art (2016); Requiem for the Bibliophile, Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (2014); Mom, Am I A Barbarian?, the 13th Istanbul Biennial (2013); My Third Land, Frankendael Foundation (2013); Earth and elsewhere, Queensland Art Gallery, Australia (2013); Itinerarios XVIII, Fundación Marcelino Botin (2012); Block, Pillar, Slab, Beam, Aspen Art Museum (2012); Resisting the Present, Museé d’Art Moderne (2011); Library Science, Artspace (2011); Where Do We Go From Here?, Bass Museum (2009); Mexico: Expected-Unexpected, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (2009) and Mexicanos, Casa Encendida (2005). Méndez Blake’s work will be part of Art Basel Unlimited in Basel this June. For more information contact Tate Smith at info@1301pe.com or (323) 938-5822.