PAN Amsterdam

I’m thrilled to be with Rademakers Gallery presenting new works at PAN Amsterdam. The fair opens this weekend and you can find us at booth 3!

PAN Amsterdam
Rademakers Gallery 
Booth 3 | November 19 – 26 | Rai Amsterdam
www.pan.nl

Enter Art Fair Copenhagen

Jorge Mañes Rubio’s new series of works New Prophets will be exhibited for the first time during Enter Art Fair Copenhagen at Rademakers Gallery, Booth 60, August 24 – 27. These new series of sculptures depict ancient stories, creatures and symbols historically associated with evil or negative forces within European context. But on bejewelled micro-universes, new forms of magical thinking and spirituality are activated through form, colour and space, reflecting on an extensive circulation of ideas, works and people. Perhaps we can see these images no longer as threatening and repressive but as part of an exciting new narrative: a vision that embraces multispecies ecologies and challenges dualistic relationships between human and non-human entities.

Enter Art Fair 2023
24th – 27th August

Opening Hours

Thursday: VIP Preview
Friday: 12.00 – 20.00
Saturday: 11.00 – 19.00
Sunday: 11.00 – 18.00

Lokomotivværkstedet
Otto Busses Vej 5A
2450 Copenhagen SV
Denmark

PAD PARIS 2023

Rademakers Gallery will be at PAD Paris exhibiting for the first time a very special work: Show Me That You Care. Here Jorge Mañes Rubio takes the traditional Andalusian chair to new heights, transforming it into a mythical throne. This unique piece has been decorated with a multitude of intriguing creatures and symbols. The chair has its own feet, as if proclaiming its own nature. Beaded on the backrest, a delicious melon has been split open, reminiscing of a waning crescent moon, while a pair of eyes watch us attentively. On the back, a human face with golden eyes and tongue, framed in a powerful aura, delivers what could be a sacred message, their hands embracing a mystical force. The chair’s seat imitates the traditional Andalusian rope bottoms, but using a rich arrangement of glass beads in color-block patterns instead.

The chair’s frame, finished in a smooth marble-like surface, serves as a whimsical landscape where wolves, bears and ancestral entities seem to dance together in a captivating dream. Four beings at the front and back act as ritual operators, channelling the force of the animals their masks represent: bear, wolf, fish and bird; underworld, earth, water and sky. At the top, overlooking this miniature altar, two votive figures hold small doves in an act of ritual offering. With this work the artist envisions the home as a mythical space, conveying a powerful message of protection and transformation.

BLISS at Rademakers Gallery

Installation view at Rademakers Gallery

I look forward to welcoming you to the opening of BLISS, a new group exhibition at Rademakers Gallery. In this exhibition ancient rituals and symbols are mixed with contemporary stories and techniques, reimagining our relationship with nature and spirituality. The opening will take place on Saturday 18 February 16-18h, hope to see you there!

BLISS 
Opening Saturday 18 February 16-18h

BLISS runs from 16 February till 29 April 2023
Rademakers Gallery
KNSM-Laan 291
1019LE Amsterdam

Moon Paradise by Assouline

Moon Paradise by Assouline is out now. Grateful to see the Moon Temple and Peak of Eternal Light being part of this extraordinary journey. 

For centuries the moon had been synonymous with mystery, an unknown. But over the years, mankind has studied this brilliant satellite and even managed to venture there. Mystery became discovery, which then became possibility. Earth’s moon is a constant—universal to every human, both past and present. A rare, unifying phenomenon. It transcends languages, continents and fields of study. But perhaps, most commonly, it is a source of inspiration. The moon’s influence is not contained in scientific inquiry, but can be found in fashion, art, architecture and film. The moon is more than just a natural satellite—it is a beacon of hope, a pinnacle to strive for.

SOFT! at Rademakers Gallery Amsterdam

I’m happy to announce my new representation with Rademakers Gallery. I look forward to working with this amazing team and couldn’t be more excited about our plans for the future. Some of my works are taking part in SOFT!, a group show unified by a fascination for textile in all kinds of colours, materials, and shapes.


SOFT!
1 September – 26 November 2022
Rademakers Gallery
KNSM-Laan 291
1019LE Amsterdam
Wednesday to Saturday from 11.00 until 18:00

Hair Power at Wereldmuseum Rotterdam

‘Where Do We Go From Here’ is part of HA!R POWER, a new exhibition at Wereldmuseum Rotterdam.

This work explores the ancestral idea of some objects being embedded with a spiritual power. Here, power is represented by a bright blue hair extension flowing out of a portal guarded by four wolves and an anthropomorphic bear holding her cub. This mysterious object speaks to us about circular time, the renovation of life, the fluidity and permeability between different worlds, and the larger-than-human dimension that defines our very existence.

Earth Power! at Montoro12 Gallery 

Curated by Ursula Hawlitschka, Earth Power! brings together ten international contemporary artists exploring nature in the age of the Anthropocene, employing a great variety of techniques to convey the significance of nature. The works I’m contributing to Earth Power! celebrate a world inhabited by a diversity of beings —whether human, non human, material or spiritual. They acknowledge a larger-than-human dimension where past, present and future can happen at the same time, forever linked through a spiritual power present in objects, organisms and places.

Montoro12 Gallery
Avenue Van Volxem, 316 – 1190 Brussels
Opening: Tuesday, April 26, 2pm-8pm
Exhibition dates: April 26 – June 11, 2022
Special Art Brussels opening hours:
Wednesday, April 27 – Sunday, May 1 from 10am to 8pm

New public art commission SOL now completed

SOL, a public art commission created by Jorge Mañes Rubio for Gwangmyeong’s “Today’s Weather”, is now completed. SOL is located on the public garden above U PLANET’s five stories high building. This public art project was planned by Team Factory Seoul, with Design Firm as collaborative partners.

Today’s Weather is a public art project as part of the architectural art project in the U PLANET complex near Gwangmyeong Station. The close collaboration with Taeyoung Construction, the planning team, Team Factory, participating artists, and other stakeholders over the past three years has been a new attempt in process and method that is different from the conventional approach to architectural artworks.

SOL
Size: Glass stela 100cm(W) x 20cm(D) x 300cm(H) / Grass hill 16m(W) x 15m(D) x 0,7m(H).⁣
Material: triple laminated glass panel, soil, grass.⁣

Historically, tracking the movement of the sun and its exact location at sunrise and sunset was amongst the first bodies of astronomical knowledge, a universal metaphor for a perpetual promise of a new beginning. Today, we rarely look up the sky, and any myths or mysteries seem to have been removed from the heavens. This project aims to partly restore that connection through a new public art installation where people can slow down, get together, contemplate, and reconnect with the sky and each other. ⁣

On May 19th, 2005, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured a stunning view as the Sun sank below the rim of Gusev crater on Mars. Mars is known as the Red Planet, but this spectacular Martian sunset was surprisingly blue. ⁣

On an urban location where the horizon is blocked by high-rise buildings, with SOL we want not just to reflect the sky and recreate the coloured lights from a martian sunset, but more importantly, bring back the idea of awe and ritual around weather phenomenons. Rather than a static work of art, SOL can be better described as an experience that acknowledges the power and importance of the cultural production of space.⁣

El Tajín at Fotofestival Naarden

I’m honoured to bring the Totonac nation and its ancestral wisdom to the Fotofestival Naarden, invited by curator Guinevere Ras. El Tajín is a series of 4 artworks I created after visiting the Centro de Artes Indígenas CAI, a unique arts centre in Mexico that has been awarded by UNESCO as one of the best practices for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage. Here, all year long, several school-houses preserve and teach indigenous ways-of-knowing to the future generations, from traditional healing to pottery, weaving, dancing or the ‘flowery word’, Totonac’s native tongue.

I feel indebted to Humberto García, CAI’s director, for blessing this exhibition and allowing us to share these works in Naarden.

Fotofestival Naarden opens on 3 July and you can find El Tajín by the water on the walls of the Vestingmuseum and at the tuincentrum Van der Roest.

Healing Power at Tropenmusuem Amsterdam

On June 5 the new exhibition Healing Powers was unveiled at the Tropenmuseum Amsterdam, a very special date as museums reopened all across the Netherlands. I’m honoured to participate in this exhibition with several works, including 4 photographs from On Distant Objects and Hungry Gods. These portraits provide an intimate view of Korean shamans and the vital role these women still play in today’s Korea.

The exhibition also features my work ‘Untitled #11 (Mediator)’, a large lunar shamanic cloth made with aerospace materials and a technique I learnt from Korean shaman Jo Seong-Yeon while living in Seoul. With these works at the Tropenmuseum I reflect on the role that shamanism could play in challenging the processes of exploitation and alienation that currently characterise humanity’s relationship with the universe.

Healing Powers presents healing and animistic traditions across the world. It includes spiritually charged objects in combination with several works from artists including Marina Abramovic, Joseph Beuys, Remy Jungerman, Simon Tookoome and Edouard Duval Carrié. The underlying principle for both perspectives is the same: the belief that there is more than we can explain with our (Western) science, that we live in a world inhabited by a diversity of beings —whether human, non human, material or spiritual.

Healing Powers is on display until June 6, 2022.
Tropenmuseum
Linnaeusstraat 2
1092 CK Amsterdam

TED talk now online


My 2020 TED talk is now online! Thrilled to be part of SHAPE YOUR FUTURE, a groundbreaking selection of new talks and an amazing moment for the TED Fellows program taking over TED.

Filmed in my studio in Amsterdam during lockdown, in this talk I celebrate the ancient knowledge I’ve been introduced to in the past few years, reimagining space exploration as a unique chance to bring together science, art and ritual.

Filmed, directed and edited: Jeremy Flohr/Beyond Walls
Production: Suzanne Rastovac/Beyond Walls

Artists in Support of Human Rights Watch – Benefit Auction now open on ARTSY

For the past year, unprecedented challenges have exposed the deep fault lines of our society. Artists are so often at the forefront of movements for change seeking to repair these fault lines: truth-tellers grappling with society’s most prescient challenges, injustices, hopes, and joys. Artists in Support of Human Rights Watch 20 21 is an online benefit auction featuring 41 works from established and emerging artists commenting on the current state of the world. A truly global, diverse group of artists deploy a variety of mediums, including photography, textile, sculpture, and more.

Jorge Mañes Rubio is part of Artists in Support of Human Rights Watch 20 21 with his work ‘I Need You to Know That Even Though You’re Not Here, You’re Here (Juanita)’. This sculpture was made over several months of lockdown in his atelier in Amsterdam, depicting a world inhabited by a diversity of beings —whether human, non human, material and spiritual. “I’m currently changing my approach to art, reframing it as active matter; something that can be handled, experienced, and ultimately activated. I’m focused on new ways of understanding agency, intimacy and awareness in relation to my practice and the artworks I produce.”

This benefit auction is part of Art + Activism and organized by WILLAS contemporary with all proceeds being donated to Human Rights Watch. Artists will receive their typical percentage, which they can choose to donate to Human Rights Watch.

Art + Activism supports Human Rights Watch by engaging with artists, curators, cultural icons, and galleries. It deploys creative mediums for the human rights movement, toward a more equitable future where everyone’s voice is elevated.

Human Rights Watch investigates and reports on abuses happening in all corners of the world. 450 people of 70-plus nationalities who are country experts, lawyers, journalists, and others who work to protect the most at risk, from vulnerable minorities and civilians in wartime, to refugees and children in need.  To ensure their independence, they refuse government funding and carefully review all donations to ensure that they are consistent with their policies, mission, and values. They partner with organizations large and small across the globe to protect embattled activists and to help hold abusers to account and bring justice to victims.

Browse lots and place bids on ARTSY before the auction closes on Thursday, March 18th at 1:00pm EDT (6:00pm CET).

ONWARD & UPWARD Exhibition @droog Amsterdam

“Mother with Child and the Imminent Possibility of an Endless Journey” is part of ONWARD & UPWARD Art in the Garden of Life, a new art exhibition @droog Amsterdam curated by Renny Ramakers and Liselore Frowijn.

The direct reason for the exhibition ONWARD&UPWARD is the uncertain present in which the COVID-19 pandemic brought us. ONWARD&UPWARD reflects on the uncertainties and pitfalls of life itself and on man’s strength to continue; we must carry on moving ‘onward’ and ‘upward’ using all the means at our disposal.

From 2 October
exhibition@droog
Staalstraat 7A, Amsterdam
Open WED-SUN 11-18h

COVID-19 measures taken into account at all times.
Time slot tickets are required. No groups of more than 4 people.
Tickets: onwardandupward.nl

Spirit Vessels

‘Spirit Vessels’ is a new series of sculptures by artist Jorge Mañes Rubio. These works explore the ancestral idea of material culture being embedded with a life force, a spiritual quality that is activated through ceremonial exchange, ancestor worship and other forms of ritual. While occupying a physical space in our world, the meaning and real purpose of these objects is to open new ways of communication between humans and an intangible dimension; to mediate in an endless negotiation between two distinct yet inseparable realms.

Bright colours, bold textures and a wide range of materials —from plastic gemstones and glass beads to clay, sand and raw pigments— bestow these objects a humble, undeniable familiarity. Their gracious names suggest a certain awareness, as if striking up intimate conversations with us. In fact, these images speak to us about human renovation and the possibility of finding comfort in times of upheaval. With Spirit Vessels, the artist acknowledges an ever changing, interconnected spiritual dimension without which we cannot exist nor find purpose, emphasizing the role humans have played from times immemorial in maintaining a fragile cosmic balance.

New Work

Making the Invisible Visible (Moon Rays)⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
From the Peak of Eternal Light series, 2020. 205x140x80cm
Iridescent & PP colour films

Making the Invisible Visible (Moon Rays)⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ is the latest piece from the series Peak of Eternal Light. In it, colourful shiny bands flow from top to bottom, represent the connection with the spirit world, making the invisible visible in a hypothetical lunar world. The work reflects on the power of shamans, more specifically those shamans who collaborated with the artist during his residency at the National Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea. In their practice, colourful costumes and props are used to contact specific spirits and gods, becoming sacred ritual objects. This artwork explores the existence of such objects and ritual practices in a future context outside our planet.

“There’s a mysterious light in their bodies, a vibrant fire that allows them to see through darkness and perceive things and coming events that are hidden from the eyes of others. Through these colourful rays of light they are exposed to the full power of the forces of the cosmos. They can see the spirits and communicate with them. They can see the souls of the dead and even hear them speaking. They can, in fact, see, hear, and know everything. Spirits are attracted to them because of their shining quality; they see them in the form of shining bodies that draw them and make them wish to go and live inside of them, giving them their own strength, sight and knowledge.”⁣⁣

Peak of Eternal Light at ‘To the Moon and Back’, Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Australia

To the Moon and Back celebrates the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. Within the heritage-listed Ballarat Municipal Observatory and Museum, a diverse group of international artists bring their individual voices to a contemporary exploration of the continuing relevance of the historic 1969 lunar landing and its lasting photographic legacy.

Even with today’s developing technology, photography, in all its variants, continues to provide audiences with insights into our only natural satellite. Featuring Andrew Curtis (Aus), Vincent Fournier (France), Sharon Harper (USA), Sasha Huber (Switzerland), Penelope Umbrico (USA), Qicong Lin (China), Matt Lipps (USA) and Jorge Mañes Rubio (Spain).

This project is supported by the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst

Peak of Eternal Light at ‘The Moon’, Royal Greenwich Museums, London

To celebrate 50 years since NASA’s Apollo 11 mission landed the first humans on the Moon, the National Maritime Museum at the Royal Greenwich Museums in London stages The Moon, the UK’s biggest exhibition dedicated to Earth’s nearest celestial neighbour – opening on 19 July 2019. Jorge Mañes Rubio’s iconic Moon Temple will be featured along with other artworks by artists such as El Anatsui and Chris Ofili.

Featuring over 180 objects from national and international museums and private collections, the exhibition presents a cultural and scientific story of our relationship with the Moon over time and across civilisations. Through artefacts, artworks and interactive moments, the exhibition will enable visitors to reconnect with the wonders of the Moon and discover how it has captivated and inspired us.

The Moon is on at the National Maritime Museum from 19 July 2019 – 5 January 2020. For more information visit Royal Museums Greenwich

This project is supported by the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst

On Distant Objects and Hungry Gods at the National Museum of World Cultures NL

On Distant Objects and Hungry Gods will be part of the National Museum of World Cultures NL new exhibition “Healing Power”.

Jorge Mañes Rubio’s work with Korean shamans is featured in this unique exhibition together with artists such as Joseph Beuys, Damian Hirst and Marina Abramovic. Merging art with extraordinary ethnographic collections in this field, “Healing Powers” offers a unique opportunity to take visitors on a spiritual journey.

The concept of healing is relatively new in Europe. It has been on the rise since the 1980s, concurrent with the increasing popularity of Eastern medicine and the New Age movement. The treatments are often centuries old and come from all over the world: from the Arctic to South America, and from Canada to China. And although methods and tools differ from one continent and one era to the next, the goal is always the same: learning to balance body, mind, and soul, while healing and gaining more self-knowledge in the process. The underlying principle is also the same: the belief that there is more between heaven and earth, more than we can explain with our ratio and (Western) science.

Opening Healing Power
Thursday, July 11 from 5 p.m

Museum Volkenkunde
Steenstraat 1
2312 BS Leiden

This project is supported by the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst

Peak of Eternal Light on NHK’s Cosmic Art Documentary

Peak of Eternal Light was featured on Japanese National TV NHK’s Cosmic Art Documentary. In it, artist Jorge Mañes Rubio discusses his role as an artist at the European Space Agency, the meaning behind some of his most recent work and his hopes for the future of space exploration. 

This project is supported by the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst