Tezontle

Tezontle founders Carlos H. Matos (b.1983, Mexico City) and Lucas Cantú (b.1982, Monterrey), who live and work in Mexico City, established their joint practice in 2015. Oscillating between the endeavors of an architecture firm and that of an art practice, Tezontle creations are grounded in an attunement to the ways in which the built environment reflects fragments of history, and thus are imbued with all sorts of myths, constructs and inventions. With intensive material experimentation, they have constructed a distinct imagery that refers to a bucolic utopia, at once modernist, pre-Hispanic and primitive. The artists’ process includes curating found objects with self-made ones, generating innovative, formal and material narratives. Their method is deliberately independent of scale, postulating that when scale is rendered irrelevant, the sculptural becomes the architectural and vice versa. Matos and Cantú collaborated in the Architectural Association’s experimental concrete workshop ‘AAVS Las Pozas’, which took place every summer in the Huasteca Jungle, serving as a research platform that aimed to forge links between craft and culture in the town of Xilitla, San Luis Potosí, MX. Tezontle has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at Friedman Benda, New York, US; at the MARCO Museum in Monterrey, MX; LIGA, CDMX, MX; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, MX; and an off-site exhibition by PEANA curated by José Esparza Chong, presented during CONDO Complex in Mexico City, MX. Public works include ´Tenaza´ a monumental sculpture commissioned by the XIII Havana Biennial in Havana, CU.. They have participated in different residencies like La Casa Park in New York, US; Casa Wabi in Puerto Escondido, MX; and ´Tu casa es mi casa´, Richard Neutra’s VDL House in Los Angeles, US; amongst others.They were also shortlisted for the Serpentine Pavilion in London, UK. ...

Since its opening in 2017, PEANA has served as a platform for multidisciplinary production and research of emerging Mexican contemporary art, with a strong emphasis on experimental practices. A recurring characteristic of the artists they support is the continuous evolution of the artistic lineage of conceptual rigorously expressions that are grounded in the plasticity of the artwork’s materiality. Through its off-site and group exhibitions PEANA is interested in the curatorial practice as cultural synthesis that bridges historicized art practices to emerging ones from Mexico and abroad. ...