Galeria Leme is proud to present, Avesso Espiralado, Jessica Mein’s fourth solo exhibition in its space. The show brings together never-seen-before works from the artist’s most recent production, consisting of three series and a video animation. With an opening on September 23rd at 2 p.m., the exhibition remains open for visitation until October 21st, 2023.
Over the last twenty years, Mein has developed her research around the physicality of images, supports and the limits of language. In her work, the line is a fundamental element with which the artist engages in its most diverse forms and materials. First as a trace, contour, and rifts in her drawings and video animations, and then as materiality in the unraveling of the weaves on cotton canvases, hemp bags, looms, and lace. Through the line, the artist explores contradictions and porosities between support and artwork, intellectual and manual labour, finished and unfinished, artist and artisan.
The exhibited works bear traces of their manufacturing process, which would traditionally be dissociated and discarded from the final object. In Aparecida (2023), Mein incorporates parchment paper and animal feed plastic – temporary supports used in the making of the lace – as a resource to reflect on the passage of time and the marks of manual labour. Resulting from the dialogue between the artist and master artisans and workers, the works present invented lace stitches and new weaving techniques, going beyond tradition and provoking the stretching of material limits, thus creating hybrid languages. Mein’s movement through distinct weaving techniques reflects the geographic shifts the artist has undertaken between Argentina, Brazil, and Guatemala in recent years.
The production process of the animation Entre-linhas (2023) involves drawing, cutting, and collaging over video images captured by the artist herself during a trip to the Argentine northwest. In it, the hands of a craftsperson intertwine threads and patterns on a loom. Fragmented into more than 700 images, the video frames are individually printed and manually intervened by the artist. Once completed, the images are scanned in layers and reanimated. The final video presents interruptions, noise, and collages with reproductions and elements from other works present in this exhibition, establishing an analogous relationship to Mein’s own creative process, which recombines, stretches weaves and techniques, and turns the language itself inside out.
