Photos: Aurélien Mole and Ander Sagastiberri.
Curators

Jorge Satorre: Ria

Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Móstoles, 1 February–31 August 2025

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The exhibition “Ria”, the first solo museum show in Spain dedicated to Mexican-born, Bilbao-based artist Jorge Satorre (b. 1979), presents new works alongside a survey of Satorre’s sculptures, drawings, and installations created since 2013, a phase he sees as a process of calibrating the distances between starting points and final forms in his work. It also reflects a certain introspection that allows him to question personal experience in relation to broader cultural, political, and social contexts.

Emerging from his initial interest in developing a career as a book illustrator, Satorre’s artistic research has consistently focused on experimenting with the boundaries of various disciplines associated with drawing. Over time, this practice has become increasingly linked with a sculptural dimension that dialogues with the diverse contexts where he conceives and displays his work. His recent projects often involve acts of transformation and subversion stemming from elemental actions such as moulding, stamping, forging, casting, or breaking. These processes intertwine the intimate with the industrial, the functional with misuse, anecdotes with archetypes, and remembered events with imagined ones.

The first gallery in the exhibition presents works that reflect associations with Satorre’s immediate surroundings, which he nevertheless approaches with measured detachment. “Triplay” (2025), the first work we encounter, has been specifically conceived for this space and takes the form of double doors. As we move through the galleries, this dynamic is inverted: in the final gallery, the mural “Ricardo” (2020) and the drawing “Río, ría” [River, ria, 2025] shift towards a more intimate engagement with a new and somewhat unfamiliar context shaped by his experience when he moved three years ago from Mexico City to Bilbao. This perspective is also reflected in the title of the exhibition, which references a type of coastal inlet common in the north of Spain that cuts through the Basque city.

Satorre often creates meticulous maquettes to plan his exhibitions, making clear not only his interest in the mechanisms involved in staging his works but also in the significance of altering the scale of observation. The “Ria” maquette was reimagined in his studio as a drawing with the dimensions of the model itself, rather than of the galleries. This drawing is reproduced in the exhibition guide alongside texts by Satorre that consider each work on display.

The artist’s first monograph, “Río” [River] was released in conjunction with the exhibition, featuring new essays by Daniel Garza Usabiaga (Director, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City), Sean Lynch (artist, Askeaton, Ireland) and a conversation between the artist and Latitudes, the exhibition curators. This bilingual Spanish-English edition is structured around Satorre’s exhibitions and works of the last fourteen years, arranged in reverse chronological order. The book is designed by the artist and publisher Gabriel Pericàs in collaboration with Satorre, and is co-published by Museo CA2M and Caniche Editorial.

Ria” occupies c. 500m2 on the museum’s second floor and runs concurrently with the graphic intervention by María Medem, and from March 1, to Rodríguez-Méndez, and David Bestué. It will coincide with various events in the city surrounding the 44th edition of the ARCOmadrid art fair (5–9 March).

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