1301PE is pleased to present its fourth solo exhibition with Mexican artist Jorge Méndez Blake titled “I remember it was raining...” The exhibition centers around Méndez Blake’s dismantling of American poet Elizabeth Bishop’s (1911-1971) poems Dimensions for a Novel, The Flood, Electric Storm and Rain Towards Morning. These
component parts will coalesce as paintings and a ceiling mural. Two additional large paintings using the form of the famous calligrammes by Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) will continue his Il Pleut Fort paintings.
“...writing is itself a kind of construction and reading is a way of creation.” -Jorge Méndez Blake For more than twenty years, Méndez Blake’s use of structure, both literary and physical, has
always been of paramount importance. His use of the concrete poetic form becomes an important focal point, concentrating and distilling the artist’s varied interests around language, form, meaning-making and our relationship to life.
Jorge Méndez Blake’s (b. 1974) work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in museums, including a commission for the Bass Museum in Miami (2022); the Museo Tamayo (2020) and the Museo de Arte Moderno (2019); MARFA Contemporary (2017); the Kunsthalle Mulhouse (2015); the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (2015); the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2014); Museo D'Arte Contemporanea Villa Croce (2012); the Museum of Latin American Art, Los Angeles (2010). His work has been part of group shows at the National Gallery of Victoria (2017); the Hessel Museum of Art (2016); the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (2014); the Frankendael Foundation (2013); the Queensland Art Gallery, Australia (2013); the Fundación Marcelino Botin (2012); the Aspen Art Museum (2012); the Museé d’Art Moderne (2011); Artspace (2011); the Bass Museum (2009); the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (2009) and the Casa Encendida (2005).
