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Lot Essay
Born in Heredia, Costa Rica in 1954, Jorge Jiménez Martínez began his career as a sculptor in the 1970s and adopted the surname Deredia (short for "de Heredia") as his artistic moniker, one which firmly embraces his birthplace while signalling a sense of rootedness and permanence-all of which are hallmarks of his work. Since the late 1980s, Deredia's career has unfolded in an international context with appearances at the Venice Biennial in 1988, 1993 and 1999, as well as countless exhibitions in Europe, the United States, and Asia.
Trained in Carrara and Florence, Deredia merges aspects of figuration with elements of biomorphic abstraction to create sensuous forms that reveal their relationship with the environment, the forces of gravity, and the process of transmutation and growth. Deredia's stylized, rotund forms suggest an aesthetic lineage with both ancient and modern art, from the Woman of Willendorf (formerly known as the Venus of Willendorf) and Cycladic art to Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi, and the Costa Rican master Francisco Zúñiga. The influence of pre-Columbian forms is equally apparent in Deredia's sinuous, organic forms which permeate a sense of continuity, sensuality and connectedness with nature-all characteristics of the indigenous arts of the Americas. Indeed Deredia's fascination with the latter stems from his investigation of the ancient arts of Costa Rica's Boruca tribe. Deredia's study of the shapes and material used by the Boruca for their objects and artefacts led to his adoption of their symbology, most notably as it pertains to his recurring use of the sphere and circle.
The culmination of this symbolic lexicon came in 1985, when Deredia embarked on a body of work titled Genesis, a series of sculpture that depict distinct phases of the mutation of matter in space over time. The present work Fuerza ancestral belongs to this ongoing series and poetically evokes the formal and ancestral power of the sphere while evincing strong ties to notions of myth, origin, progression and timelessness. Thus, Deredia succeeds in situating his work within an aesthetic and cultural continuum that represents an exceedingly poignant and remarkable cosmological vision.
Trained in Carrara and Florence, Deredia merges aspects of figuration with elements of biomorphic abstraction to create sensuous forms that reveal their relationship with the environment, the forces of gravity, and the process of transmutation and growth. Deredia's stylized, rotund forms suggest an aesthetic lineage with both ancient and modern art, from the Woman of Willendorf (formerly known as the Venus of Willendorf) and Cycladic art to Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi, and the Costa Rican master Francisco Zúñiga. The influence of pre-Columbian forms is equally apparent in Deredia's sinuous, organic forms which permeate a sense of continuity, sensuality and connectedness with nature-all characteristics of the indigenous arts of the Americas. Indeed Deredia's fascination with the latter stems from his investigation of the ancient arts of Costa Rica's Boruca tribe. Deredia's study of the shapes and material used by the Boruca for their objects and artefacts led to his adoption of their symbology, most notably as it pertains to his recurring use of the sphere and circle.
The culmination of this symbolic lexicon came in 1985, when Deredia embarked on a body of work titled Genesis, a series of sculpture that depict distinct phases of the mutation of matter in space over time. The present work Fuerza ancestral belongs to this ongoing series and poetically evokes the formal and ancestral power of the sphere while evincing strong ties to notions of myth, origin, progression and timelessness. Thus, Deredia succeeds in situating his work within an aesthetic and cultural continuum that represents an exceedingly poignant and remarkable cosmological vision.