Derrumbe by Pablo Rasgado, Iván Trueta, Javier Peáez

“Derrumbe” is a group show of an active collaboration and intervened architecture, bringing together the work of Pablo Rasgado, Iván Trueta, and Javier Peláez in an exercise of material, conceptual, and spatial feedback. This exhibition is part of the program held by Saenger Galería in partnership with Casa Limantour, located in the historic site it occupies in the former Plazuela de San Fernando, at the boundary between Mexico City’s Historic Center and the Guerrero neighborhood.

The title of the exhibition also works as the discursive ground on which two distinct notions of derrumbre—collapse—are established: one as ruin or breakdown, the other as structural possibility. By articulating these two concepts, derrumbar (to collapse or demolish) becomes not only a direct action upon physical space, altering it, but also implies dismantling and overturning the traditional hierarchy between the finished state of an artwork and the process that led to that condition. As a consequence Derrumbe explores a system between the concrete—the exposed (both the works and the house that hosts them)—and the latent, which emerges through the interventions and the network of relationships between the artists, the public, the surroundings, and the context of the exhibition

In this sense, the exhibited works adopt various statuses: from fragments and studies to residues and formally completed objects. At the same time, each work or gesture functions as an architectural test pit—wich means, a small opening on the surface of a discourse that reveals what lies beneath. It acts as an active archaeology of artistic practice, one that allows for the recovery of forgotten methods, the visibility of previously paused inquiries, and the resonance of ephemeral works.

Throughout this process, a material common to all three artists is dust: charcoal dust, graphite dust, everyday domestic dust, or dust as a result of the passage of time—time transformed into dust. In all cases, this element acts in Derrumbe as both a symbolic and physical agent. It is at once a material for creation, as in drawing, and a residue of erosion, as in sculpture. And while its presence is subtle, it can permeate the exhibition space, dispersing its fine matter throughout. Dust dirties, but it also connects; it is pollution, and its draws maps a terrain where the different crossings, overlaps, paths, and deviations brought together by the works and artists can be traced.

At the end, Derrumbe proposes an open territory where forms of collaboration and reflection are tested in reciprocity around a fundamental idea: space. More specifically, inhabited space—the kind that emerged with the dolmen and encolsing both its construction and eventual collapse. In sync, the Saenger–Limantour program is, in itself, a porous curatorial structure in constant reconfiguration.

— Eduardo Luque / Christian Barragán