Edgar Cobian: Faux Marble

The work of Edgar Cobián has been developed in different media: drawing, sculpture, performance and painting, mainly; his production moves from one medium to another in relation to certain philosophical and aesthetic concerns that are activated or deactivated according to a kind of critical mood. While his series of drawings are inhabited by characters charged with a particular sense of humor, or by incisive texts on the art-work-philosophy relationship, his sculpture is made up of structures in which commercial items and organic materials are interwoven to quote different bodies and socio-political environments. In one way or another, the performative runs through all his practice and his images are always referenced to corporealities that make up his critical universe.

 

Understood as a performative act, his pictorial work represents a moment in which his sharp positioning in the face of political ideologies moves towards a place of joy in which pleasure evokes death, decomposition, disappearance, but above all the body from a highly politicized and dissident place. Influenced by contemporary philosophy, by his music project PEOR AÚN and a very personal perspective of life in which joy is a weapon, the images in Edgar Cobián's painting allude to different references, sometimes poetic, playful, deceptive, coming from different places. Citations to experimental and psychedelic forms from the history of illustration and animation, or contemporary music, appear in Cobián's work to provoke the pictorial tradition from its heteropratiarchal history.

 

The scenes that the artist develops seem to be closely linked to a corporal memory, the load of the pictorial exercise is dislocated to activate itself from a place of reference in which it is at the same time scenography, or a portable result of fashion and luxury. Inhabited by characters that dance and deform themselves, that outside the standards of beauty and gender boast an exacerbated sensuality, in the extension and distension of flesh and bones, it is as if her work were undergoing an eternal metamorphosis back and forth.

 

Edgar Cobián (b. 1978, Guadalajara, Mexico). He lives and works in Guadalajara, Mexico. He studied Visual Arts at the University of Guadalajara, was a Fellow of the Young Creators Program of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts, FONCA (2011-2012). Member of the Colectivo de Acción y Creación Artística (2001-2004) and the collective Gabinete Homo-Extraterrestre, GHE (2015-2016). His solo exhibitions include: Flujo aleatorio, Museo Cabañas, Guadalajara, Mexico, 2024; génesis de nada, guadalajara90210, Guadalajara, Mexico, 2023; Perfumes, CAL, Guadalajara, Mexico, 2022; araña perro, in collaboration with Lucia Vidales, Karen Huber, Mexico City, Mexico, 2022; Hacer sombra, Cuadro22, Chur, Switzerland, 2019; OVERDRESSED, Páramo, Guadalajara, Mexico, 2019; Masaje transverso profundo, Impronta Casa Editora, Guadalajara, Mexico, 2019; Sed de Infinito from the program Doble at Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Mexico, 2017; among others. He has participated in multiple group exhibition projects internationally, among them: Kitchen Debate in collaboration with Rawson Projects, Regina Rex and Site95, New York, 2017; Fábulas sin moraleja, Casa del Lago, Mexico City, Mexico, Mexico, 2017); Destroy All Your Humanity, Gabinete Homo-Extraterrestre collective, The Mistake Room as HUB: Páramo, The Mistake Room, Los Angeles, USA, 2016; La llamada del Dios Extraño #2, Museo de los Pintores Oaxaqueños (MUPO), Oaxaca, Mexico, 2015; Crisis Complex, Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney, Australia, 2012; Manifestly Present, Kasteel Oud-Rekem, Liden, Belgium, 2012; Still Lifes, Diablo Rosso Gallery, Panama, Panama, 2012; La Quebradora, MCCLA, Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, San Francisco, CA, USA, 2012; Alarma! , Death Be Kind Gallery, Melbourne, Australia, 2011; Everything Must Go, Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York, USA, 2011.

As a musician and performer he has developed the projects Peor Aún and Cráneo Verde Humeante.