SEVENTH SUMMER
Mateo Ruiz Gonzalez

Seventh Summer is a meditation on the memory of a shared love. Rather than recounting the story as a narrative, Mateo Ruiz González works through gesture, landscape, and domestic intimacy to construct a visual language for experiences that resist description. Made over seven years, the photographs move between observation and introspection, accumulating into an atmosphere shaped by closeness, absence, and the recognition of an ending. Like memory, they emerge as partial and associative, navigating the spaces between attachment and release, acting as a testimony to the emotions between two lovers and the solitude that lingered even within their companionship.

An original text by George Weld opens the book through the act of naming. Allusive to Eden, Weld uses fragmented sentences, repetition, and compound words to evoke the imperfect and evolving language between lovers, extending the photographs into a parallel meditation on the fragile world they inhabit. In addition, excerpts from a poem by Richard Siken accompany the work throughout, as if spoken by the artist to his former partner.

At the center of Seventh Summer is the act of tending: to a relationship, to memory, and ultimately to the work itself. From image-making to self-publishing, creation becomes a means of reflection and healing for the artist. Like the seventh day, Seventh Summer becomes a period of contemplation: creation found its quiet end, and there was rest. The peace that followed was spent in contemplation of the divine work—the stillness reflecting on what had been shared, what had been built with care, and the ache that arrives with letting go.

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9.45x13 in. 80 pages. 35 duotone plates on uncoated paper and UV image coating. Vellum jacket with foil stamp text. Swiss binding, exposed spine with lilac thread. Soft cover with tipped-in print. Edit by Mateo Ruiz Gonzalez and Jenia Fridlyand. Design by Beginner Swimmer Works. Cover and jacket design by Cody Haltom. Produced by Pablo Mejia. Printed in Bogota, Colombia by TorreBeta.

PRE SALE * All pre sale orders (across all editions) will be signed by the artist. First 30 orders will come with one of a kind black and white or color SX-70 Polaroid. These will be chosen randomly.

EDITIONS

Standard: Signed book

Special: Signed book + 8x11in signed archival pigment print. Two different options, both edition of 10

Option #1: Scraped Knees, 2019

Option #2: Pip’s Backyard, 2019

Collectors: Signed book + 10x12in signed gelatin silver print + One of a kind beet root antotype on fabric made by the artist. Edition of 10

Summer Haircut, 2024

* Ships early November

ISBN: 123456789

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