Jonidel Mendoza

The Translucent Bodies of Jonidel Mendoza

By Susana Benko

Jonidel Mendoza, born in 1975 in Maturin, Monagas state, is a figurative artist who works the human figure with heterogeneous materials, which is why he is placed in the so-called non-conventional or mixed media art. He does not imitate human bodies as we see them in visible reality, nor does he represent them, in sculptural terms, with volume, mass, or matter. On the contrary, his work is almost immaterial, as he has managed to represent translucent figures that are barely "essences" or images alluding to the human being in an evanescent and very subtle way.

Since his early pieces of the late nineties, the theme of the human being is present. At that time he used X-rays worked on lightboxes. Depending on the incidence of light, bodies were revealed, expressing their "transparent humanity". This transparency is what gives the spiritual sense sought by the artist.

He then moved from X-rays to organza screens, and then to industrial mesh. In these series, the transparency of the figures remains the protagonist in his work. For a time he created silhouettes integrating other media such as painting or drawing. However, his desire to synthesize and abstract the figure continued. In 2008, he temporarily stopped assembling different materials and began to make pieces purified of any material mixture. He freed them from the frame and the box and that is how silhouetted characters appeared with a single line made with a scaffold. He also depicted them with steel guayas, and they are so expressive that they seem to be silent witnesses that watch us or watch over us. With the tyrap and nylon, he created, on the other hand, silhouettes from dots. The condensation or separation of these dots marks the zones of light and shadow, as well as the proximity or distance between the characters. Other results occur when he superimposes sieve meshes to create chiaroscuro effects that define characters in a group of silhouettes. All these works as a whole are perceived as "figurative drawings" in space.

So, it was already clear to our artist that the nature of the material "unveils the image". He is therefore a very singular artist: because he problematizes the expressive means he uses. He makes three-dimensional work adopting qualities of drawing and painting: he works with lines, textures, transparencies, chiaroscuro, and with them, he decodes and builds an image through the superposition and juxtaposition of industrial materials considered non-artistic. Light and shadow are crucial to the understanding of these works.

Based in Seoul, Jonidel Mendoza continues to work on the three-dimensional vision of his translucent and essential bodies. A work that is always suggestive and very sensorial.