We are delighted to present the second solo show by the Mexican artist Jorge Méndez Blake.
For Jorge Méndez Blake poetry is in danger.
It faces various threats: climate change, the current sanitary crisis, economic catastrophe, and socio-political indifference, as well as the constant violence of our postcapitalist societies. Once again, we seem to be witnesses of the suitable action of sending poetry to the bottom list of proprieties, simply because there are other matters that require our attention.
That is exactly why it must be defended.
In this new solo exhibition, Méndez Blake introduces the idea of (M)ars poética, following the classical term of Ars poetica by Horace, Huidobro, or MacLeish -the art of poetry, the meditation on how to write poetry, the role of the poet-, a linguistic game by combining Mars, the Ancient Roman god of war and protector of the people against their enemies, encouraging “poetic action”, conscripting us to defend poets, language, and literature.
I will defend poetry, is a personal statement, and a calling from visual arts to uphold poetry and to remember the power and energy that the poem transmits. In words of Shelley in his classic 1821 essay*: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”.
* A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1821