In Memory focuses on the unique story of Mata Ortiz pottery starting with Mercado’s hallmark vase by Juan Quezada. Valued for its aesthetic qualities, Mata Ortiz pottery has a distinct standing between folk tradition and art objects. Quezada is famous for his reinterpretation of Mogollon pottery from the archaeological site, Casa Grandes. Based on his personal collection of found vessel fractures, he improvised techniques to imitate the clay substrate and surface. His efforts successfully revitalize a prehistoric tradition and rekindled his home town’s heritage.

His pottery has functioned as a progenitor of what we now know to be a Mata Ortiz tradition. Vessels by the Quezada family and Mata Ortiz artists will be featured at the Safe Room and Mercado 369 for viewers to trace the trajectory of this heritage and how each artist honors and reinvents this tradition. These artists find a balance between contemporary society and materials that date as far back as the beginning of civilization. Through pattern, craft has been a way to retain and maintain memory before written history. Telling stories both epic and everyday, craft has an indelible influence on utilitarian and art objects alike.

Cydonia is pleased to exhibit long time collaborator, Alicja Bielawska, for a fifth exhibition. For Bielawska, craft serves as a soft influence for her works. Three drawing series, Patterns, Objects, and Places, provide a counterpoint of how abstraction articulates memory. Patterns, everyday materials and objects anticipate the viewer’s memory to generate a specific – even personal – relationship. A memory of a table is partially subsumed by an imagined graphite form. Constellations of lines loosely define the space of subjects. The familiar surfaces from murky depths akin to how one remembers a distant memory. Bielawska’s drawings allow the viewer apprehend an alternative order to our reality where imagination and memory coexist. Everyday moments and objects gain an abstract dimension.

History and memory are communicated through strategies salient in craft. Pattern establishes historical tradition and cultural practice. The predictability of pattern allows for symbolic efficacy in representing people, beliefs, and the natural world. In Memory articulates how craft and and post minimalist serialism are akin through pattern. Pattern is history’s oldest format and continues to merit reinvestigation, and reutilization in contemporary art.

This exhibition seeks to promote the rich history of Latin America in respect to perspectives integral to the Oak Cliff community. Art and craft, the foreign and familiar, and the past and future all coexist side by side as significant. Geography, craft, and art are all ambassadors for a community’s memories.Memory is what connects us and allows us to remember and interpret the past and move forward towards the future.

Cydonia would like to thank Mercado for their support and collaboration for this exhibition.