José Montealegre - Nuevo Mundo / Exhibition text by José Segebre

José Montealegre moves between the surface and its content. His work translates historical and personal documents into liminal constructions that playfully instigate reality and fiction. His subtle deceptions are the practice of spatializing concrete temporal orders through truncated narrative strands. Such world making is a constant beginning. Embracing artisanal and sculptural practices from pre- and postmodernist aesthetics, Montealegre behaves like a new world alchemist: History grows out of repeated material transformations. Refining his appropriations and transmutations, he intertwines multiple, conflicted and fragmentary pasts with their otherworldly presence today. Decolonial processes become the horizons of change.

José Montealegre (b. 1992, Tegucigalpa, Honduras) graduated in 2019 with a Meisterschüler from Willem de Rooij's class at Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, and is currently based in Florence, Italy.

Among his recent and upcoming solo shows are Colibrí at Convent Art Space in Ghent, BE (2019), and Klosterruine, Berlin, DE (2021).

Group shows include Jahresgaben 2020 at Bonner Kunstverein in Bonn, DE (2020); Tracing Echoes at fffriedrich in Frankfurt, DE (2019); from dusk till dawn at PiK Deutz in Cologne, DE (2019); Wu Du Wu at Natalia Hug Gallery in Cologne, DE (2019); A guiding dog for a blind dog at Futura Gallery, Prague, CZ (2018); Someplace Special at Gillmeier Rech in Berlin, DE (2018); Planet 9 at Kunsthalle Darmstadt in Darmstadt, DE (2017).

José B. Segebre is a writer living in Berlin. He is currently a PhD candidate at HfG Offenbach in Philosophy/Aesthetics: "What are We Waiting For? The Time of Waiting in Queer, Feminist and Decolonial Aesthetics."

Gallery Mountains

Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz

Weydingerstr. 6

10178 Berlin

https://mountains.gallery/exhibitions/