Jorge Satorre

CarrerasMugica

Making of

The drawings that make up Black jacket, gray sweatshirt come from a meticulous description I wrote of a scene in the Chapultepec Woods in Mexico City. I did twenty-two drawings in my studio by reading the text each time and never looking at the previous drawing. Every illustration corresponds to twenty minutes of that day I spent in the woods; as a whole they represent seven and a half hours during which subtle changes of light and weather occur. At some point, a couple enters the scene, exchanging love gestures for three hours.

I intend to make a book out of this work, which would be an illustrated version of the comedy The Steel of Madrid by Lope de Vega. In this theatre play, the author recounts a custom, popular among seventeenth century Madrid’s high society women, of going for walks to drink ferrous water from springs in the woods. This was recommended as a way to counteract the harmful effects of eating búcaros (little clay pitchers) bite by bite. It was believed at the time that búcaros – which commonly came from Extremadura, Estremoz (Portugal) and Tonalá (Mexico)- had beautifying and contraceptive effects.

Iron or steel-enriched water was also part of a custom I encountered in the blacksmith guild where small residues of metal that result from the sharpening of tools are used to imbue the water with healing properties. While the supposedly beautifying properties of the búcaros came from the engobe (slip) used to ornate them, the energy that the body had lost was replaced with the force of the tool that had accumulated on its edge, representing the history of work.

The society from the Spanish Golden Age quickly gave erotic undertones to the practice of “taking and walking the steel,” as the remedy was called, to imply that these walks were used to consummate furtive love affairs.

22 drawings
pencil on paper
21 x 29.7 cm each

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20.09.2020 La vie des tables - CREDAC, Ivry. 
20.10.2020 Devenir inmortal y después morir - La Capella, Barcelona 
18.06.2021 CRAC Alsace - Solo show. Altkirch, France. 

Jorge Satorre (Mexico City, 1979) Through manual processes and experimentation with different materials, my work usually starts off as a response to evidential traces that are part of historical moments of the contexts and subjects I relate to. After a brief incursion at the beginning of my career in the field of editorial illustration, drawing has remained my main medium, often produced by me, but also by colleagues I invite to collaborate from different areas like political cartoonists, and scientific and comic strips illustrators. The narrative possibilities of drawing allow me to make the objective record coexist with fictional elements, understanding this relationship as one of oscillation between different scales, between the individual and subjective and the general, hegemonic versions. Some of the venues where I have had solo presentations of my work are: CarrerasMugica - Bilbao (2020), REDCAT - Los Angeles (2018), Museo Tamayo - Mexico City (2017), Labor gallery - Mexico City (2017, 2014, and 2010); Statements - Art Basel (2014); Artspace - Auckland; Halfhouse - Barcelona (both 2013); Art Positions - Miami Art Basel (2011), Le Grand Café - St-Nazaire, France; FormContent - London; Centro Cultural Montehermoso - Vitoria (all in 2010) and La Casa Encendida - Madrid (2006).

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satorre.jorge@gmail.com

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