"Broken Grid" and "Broken Letter" at the Rosa Santos Gallery

The Rosa Santos Gallery (Madrid) presents from April 2nd to May 28th Retícula Quebrada and from March 25th to May 20th, Letter of Quebrados at the Rosa Santos Gallery (Valencia) by Chema López. Retícula Quebrada and Carta de Quebrados are the two parts of the synchronous project that Chema López presents in the galleries of Madrid and Valencia.

Broken Grid could refer to a broken impression, a fracture in the drawing, or cell-shaped splits that characterize the certificates shown in this project. However, if we go a little deeper, it is possible to understand this "failure" as the social and vital reality of the women represented. Women and families who were traversed by migration, conflict, border, travel, and prejudice, and whose lives are concisely summarized in identity documents, residence permits, and other official writings with purely descriptive classifications.

Retícula Quebrada is shown as a body with two arms, one that collects the representations of different women, migrants and families in the paintings, and another that relies on abstraction to point to the strategies and control mechanisms used by the power . An interesting eclecticism gathered in the work of Chema López to question the certainties that, despite being generated through classifications and institutional images, we assimilate as intrinsic to collective reason.

On the other hand in Carta de Quebrados, Chema López builds his work around the certificates that appear in various territories and historical moments, some are membership cards used in times of war, and others arise with the aim of identifying , catalog and segregate different social groups. But the path proposed here is not only a comparison between individuals according to the institutional categorization, but also an exploration of the multiple faces of a conflict, as well as the games of power, abstractions, camouflage and capacity for social impact.

Carta de Quebrados is the title of this new project and exhibition that, through the paintings installed as a chromatic letter, plays to be an allegory of the broken colors, that is to say of those that are obtained from the mixture of the complementary and the sum of the target. However, this idea dissipates when we try to recognize it as such in the work of Chema López, who still ranks finer. Navigating the antagonistic and biased descriptions of the (anonymous) protagonists of this project confirms the rupture that certificates and life have imposed between what may one day be called complementary, but which ideology, power, and interests politicians will necessarily keep it separate.