Salto al Potro

April - June 2024
Aldo de Sousa Gallery
Curated by Marina Aguerre

“Every person hides a world,” writes Alexis Minkiewicz in one of his many treasured notebooks. The interplay between concealment and revelation seems to be the device the artist has employed in these recent works to express his concerns and interests.
First and foremost, he embraces and highlights the craft of the sculptor by addressing, in a contemporary way, various materials that today might be considered obsolete. In this way, clay, plaster, marble, and bronze interact and create a counterpoint in which each piece takes the lead, while also echoing a potential pairing through the other works.
The sensuality of polished stone invites us to discover a core of latent bodies, like chrysalis cocoons, which—due to the ambiguity caused by their indefiniteness and their ongoing metamorphosis—both captivate and unsettle.
The bodies grow in scale, unfold in unnatural twists and postures, or expose themselves in a daring manner. From plaster to stone or bronze, on solid bases or light sculptor’s stands, the subtle mutilations and the balancing acts that characterize these figures speak as much of intertextuality with art history as of an inquiry into identity in the present.
Minkiewicz revisits this issue in his large charcoal drawings, in which he highlights various mechanisms of order, correction, and control. Thus, his highly distinctive perspective challenges the canonical models that have structured and standardized our society. In dialogue with these drawings, other bodies are integrated, functioning as the components of a new machine: a new scenario that reveals the possibility of an irreverent and rebellious identity.

Marina Aguerre