Juan Mejía

Juan Mejía’s spectacular geometric figures challenge the way in we see and organise space. Building on the movement of geometric abstraction from Latin America, Colombian-born Mejía incorporates remarkable elements of minimalist connotation in his work. Working primarily as a sculptor, his practice is influenced by his training as an architect, where he learnt to adopt a playful approach to notions of space and form. Mejía plays with a range of materials, creating cuts, folds and rhythms, bringing to life inert material and uncovering the relevance of immaterial space. The mediums he uses range from sintra, a plastic material from which he carved the ‘Signos’ series, rusted steel used in ‘Origami’, a series of folded sculptures, paper in ‘Light Boxes’ and poly vinyl in ‘Subtle Spaces’. What is most fascinating about Mejía’s work is its constant challenge to the limits of pictorial language and design, creating new forms out of the empty spaces of cut-out paper in ‘Light Boxes’ and ‘Signs’, sculpting a rhythm out of flat surfaces and emphasising empty space in ‘Origami’ or producing a narrative of energetic and contrasting colours in series such as ‘Totem’ and ‘Bi-colour Origami’.

‘My sculptures furnish valuable elements of minimalist connotation. On the emphasis of securing a compositional balance, we find the limits of the pictorial language and the architectonic design.’ – Juan Meija

Submitted by MINISTRY OF NOMADS