Galerie Nordenhake Stockholm presents Argentinian born, Mexico City-based painter, Jerónimo Rüedi. The title of the exhibition, Khōra, is a philosophical term introduced by Plato and explored further by Derrida, Heidegger and Lacan, among others. It defines a receptacle, a space, or an interval and suggests a site of openness and potential.
Rüedi uses an airbrush to create liminal spaces on the surface of his canvases. With the tool he can draw and doodle in the small scale as well as render large swathes of deep tone in gradual transitions.
Despite his virtuosity Rüedi welcomes the unintentional and unexpected. In the tradition of automatic drawing his scribbles are not generated by design. They contain something of the indiscriminate irregularities of William Anastasi’s Subway Drawings, but without the jerky urban intensity, and the subconscious dismantled representation of Joan Miró, less the primitive animism. Teetering on the verge of taking permanent form, Rüedi’s markings are transitory, like bonfire sparks in the dark, or the trail of a meandering snail on a rock and the erratic motion of a glass on an Ouija board.
His process is closely connected to both the philosophy and the practice of meditation. Following John Cage’s dictum of getting oneself out of the way Rüedi aims to allow things to manifest themselves whilst intervening as little as possible. The paintings can be understood as an attempt to observe cognition before it becomes crystallised thought; conception before language.
Following a process of change and impermanence Rüedi’s paintings are in a constant state of coming into being. Each painting is an apparition taking form. Each suggests an attempt to capture smoke.
