Eduardo Terrazas | 5.1, 1972 | Serie 5: Deconstrucción de una imagen (Deconstruction of an Image) [detail] | Amparo Foundation – Museo Amparo, Puebla
In 1972, Terrazas had his first exhibition at the Palace of Fine Arts. In that show, he presented several pieces from his series Tablas (Boards), as well as Deconstrucción de una imagen (Deconstruction of an Image) – a modular mural that reflects on the instability of a total image by being reconfigurable and exhibited in multiple ways. Tablas is significant because it was the first time that Terrazas used the technique of wool thread adhered to a wooden surface with Campeche wax. It was a distinctively local and traditional solution. Initially, it was executed by his collaborator Santos Motoaaopohua de la Torre de Santiago, a Wixárika artist who, like Terrazas, has an international career. From these early works, his workshop has generated variations in the handling of materials and weaving and adhesion techniques.
The designs of the pieces in the Tables series engaged with the latest trends in painting during those years, both in Mexico and abroad. Their graphic solutions can be associated with what was internationally known as post-pictorial abstraction or locally referred to as geometrismo – generally non-figurative painting with geometric design and clearly delimited color fields. The radical difference in Terrazas’ pieces lies in their materiality. Unlike most artists practicing this type of painting, his works do not rely on the latest industrial materials such as acrylic or lacquer. This resistance to industrial imperatives of this modern abstraction reconfigures the field of the pictorial by introducing a foreign material associated with a traditional and local practice. His works acquire a new presence as objects with a strongly tactile surface that demands a different kind of perception compared to other paintings of the time, which had a strong industrial appearance and surfaces devoid of manual gestures.
