Found Art; fantastic creations at the Mexican Institute

A Mexican artist is staging an exhibition in Belize as part of an international tour. He uses ordinary and sometimes discarded material such as wood and iron to stimulate reflection of everyday life. It took years for Arturo Valencia to put together the display and it is occupying the entire Mexican Institute. News Five’s Jose Sanchez reports.

Jose Sanchez, Reporting

The Fire’s Rest, is stoked by the hands of Mexican artist Arturo Valencia.

Found art, as the name implies, is a collection of discarded, used material or everyday instruments of nature that we take for granted, forged into thought provoking pieces.

According to the Press Officer for the Embassy, Belize was chosen as the first foreign country for the exhibition’s display.

Marcelino Miranda, Press Officer, Embassy of Mexico

“We have this true conceptual art. The artist, Arturo Valencia, a Mexican artist, is presenting his latest work. This is part of a three year project that he has been wiokign and now it is being presented in Belize.”

Jose Sanchez

“The materials that Valencia uses, why does he use them?”

Marcelino Miranda

Marcelino Miranda

“One of the basic proposals by artist is by using simple materials like wood and iron, you can express art. And the viewers, they are going to see through these different pieces of art that are going to be shown in this exhibition is that with these materials that he choose—actually they are waste materials made of wood and iron—you can communicate with the viewers by different levels and also to provoke reflections about art and about everyday life materials. The visitors are going to have the opportunity to look into these pieces and to have different impressions and ideas about what the artist tries to communicate. But the most important is that the artist is trying to highlight that there are these kinds of everyday life materials that don’t have meaning when they are taken out of their context, but it’s especially the communication between the artist and the viewers that this artist is trying to enhance in the viewers.”

Valencia’s art makes use of the entire display space. On the ceiling, wooden panels of shipping crates settle. On the floor cement blocks balanced by the resting fire in candles; and his centerpiece, a giant nest of found twigs. The red of oxidized metal is adorned with strips of wood from floors; one piece has grassy ropes growing from a burlap sack’s mesh. It is all deliberate; it is all beauty in found items that we quickly throw out. The artist presents and the viewer interprets.

Marcelino Miranda

“He’s trying to reflect on the effects of oxygen and oxide in these kinds of materials especially metal. The artist is proposing that oxide transforms and destroys everyday material as iron and the oxide is acting as fire. So this is one of the subjects that the artist is trying to communicate and to reflect with the viewers. But the most important is for those who love art and those who will visit a contemporary art exhibition for the first time, is that they will have the opportunity to have their own idea and their own impressions about these pieces of art.”

Reporting for News Five, Jose Sanchez.

It opens on Thursday at six p.m. at the Institute of Mexico at the corner of Newtown Barracks and Wilson Street. It will remain open until the May fifteenth.