Exhibition Details

Objects With Narratives presents OBJ-05-06-07-08-09-11-12, the first solo exhibition of Valencian artist and designer Manuel Bano, based in Mexico City. The exhibition is part of the OBJ series, an ongoing body of work comprising chronologically numbered objects that explore the relationship between material, form and function. The show brings together a selection of pieces conceived from a single material: recycled copper. Rather than a finished collection of objects, the project is understood as an open investigation into the physical and expressive capacities of copper, pushed to its limits through artisanal processes. Each piece results from a transformation: the copper is worked through fire and hammer, without industrial mediation.
The hammer becomes both tool and language, and form emerges through the repetition of gestures that deform, tense and stabilise the metal. In this process, idea, action and material establish a direct and visible relationship. Formally, the works originate from elemental geometries and develop as an extension of drawing into space. The objects can be read as materialised traces, where precision does not rely on machinery but on the control of the process. Rather than being understood as isolated pieces, the works operate as a system of variations.
Each object introduces adjustments in proportion, geometry and scale, configuring an ongoing field of study between function and sculpture. Produced between Santa Clara del Cobre, Michoacán, and Valle de Chalco, Estado de México, the pieces position Bano's work within a contemporary practice in which tradition operates as an active tool. In this context, copper ceases to be a support to become the essence of the project.