Emerson Dorsch presents Alfonso Borragán: Bucarolito

Friday, September 6th from 6-9pm Emerson Dorsch is proud to present an Opening Reception for Spanish artist Alfonso Borragán’s first exhibition in the United States. His exhibition Bucarolito will open at the end of a month in residence at the gallery and will be on view through October 5, 2019 at Emerson Dorsch gallery in Miami’s Little Haiti.

Here the raw elements of Borragán’s art boil down to the MOUTH and the STONE. Think, if you will, of all the ways the human mouth serves as a threshold between an individual and the world at large. Similarly, contemplate how many ways stones and their particulates represent site, the earth, the material universe, and its non-living scaffolding. The action at the center of each of Borragán’s experiences is TO INGEST and to inscribe and reveal an image through this action. This is the alchemy. For, in his environment of magenta phyto lights and dusty air, groups ingest stones together. In this case, they eat bucaros, which are small, unfired clay vessels eaten by the Spanish Aristocracy in the 17th century. Clay and earth ingestion is an ancient practice. There are traces of Egyptian ingestions of the Limes of Nile. Partially eaten ceramics have been found in Greece. Romans imported Greek edible ceramics with great impact; they led to terra sigillata. Bucaros appear in Renaissance still lives and in Diego Velázquez’s painting Las Meninas. Those who ate them believed its properties could transform human matter.

Image: Alfonso Borragán, endolito, 2019.