José León Cerrillo

José León Cerrillo is a multifaceted artist who explores the possibilities and contradictions of thinking about genuine abstraction through a wide range of media, from printed posters to sculpture, installations and performance. Often using language – a system of meaning with inherent flaws and implied power structures – as a starting point and drawing from different sources (graphic ideologies, psychoanalytic theory, geometric abstraction, etc.) he also works from simple geometrical systems and reinvents the symbols and iconography of modernism and constructivism. His objects, sculptures and installations disturb the space in which they are presented, echoing its architecture and at the same time deconstructing it.  Cerrillo’s work is usually structured serially. This not only allows the work to be an ongoing investigation, an open set, but also admits for the possibility of a retroactive reading. Past scenarios can be reused and rethought. By changing its fixed status, past work becomes material for new work, new work that in turn has the possibility of affecting the way that original work is understood. The future helping the past.

Design : José León Cerrillo

Typesetting : Studio Herrera

Translation : Mario Chanona

Photos Credits : Ramiro Chaves, Omar Said, Rodrigo Diez