05 Apr 3 Must-See Exhibitions in Mexico City, Spring 2024 | Feature
Source Credit: Content and images from Ocula Magazine. Read the original article - https://ocula.com/magazine/features/must-see-exhibitions-in-mexico-city-spring-2024/
Attesting to Mexico City‘s evolving art scene are three exhibitions that reflect how the city engages and synthesises new aesthetics in the global art world of the 21st century. At OMR, Eduardo Sarabia reimagines the imagery of Mexican national identity, while Amoako Boafo presents his first Mexico City solo show at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery.
Exhibition view: Eduardo Sarabia, Four Minutes of Darkness, OMR, Mexico City (6 February–13 April 2024). Courtesy OMR.
Eduardo Sarabia: Four Minutes of Darkness
OMR, Córdoba 100, Roma Norte
6 February–13 April 2024
Expect: the second of an exhibition trilogy dedicated to a solar eclipse which will be visible from Sarabia’s parents’ hometown, Mazatlán, on 7 April.
Four Minutes of Darkness follows Mexican artist Eduardo Sarabia’s 2023 exhibition Prologue at Maureen Paley, London. There, spatially encompassing green vines painted along gallery walls referenced the tree of life, while mystical iconography such as the Mexican quetzal bird, ceiba tree, and palm reading, along with autobiographical imagery, marked artworks on view.
Sarabia transforms OMR gallery with site-specific vine murals that envelop the space, intertwining a collection of drawings, paintings, and sculptures. Recurring motifs—including birds, vases, diamonds, and the Minotaur—also appear on the wall. These murals draw inspiration from the artist’s former neighbourhood in L.A., where residents decorate their homes’ exteriors with vegetation patterns to deter graffiti.
The mural installation is anchored by a central room with four columns, a platform floor showcasing several sculptures, and crowned with a digital image simulating a stained-glass roof. The final instalment, Eclipse at Museo de Arte de Mazatlán in April 2024, will feature an observation platform for the eclipse at the Los Venados stadium.
The transition from the eclipse as an astronomical event to themes of memory and personal experience bridges the cosmic realm with terrestrial and internal human experiences. Oscillating between the celestial, natural, and the deeply personal, Sarabia converts the gallery into a sanctuary for dialogue between contemporary art and a renewed Mexican iconography that honours both pre- and post-Columbian art.
Exhibition view: Playing with closed eyes, 100 Years of Surrealism, RGR Galería, Mexico City (6 February–6 April 2024). Courtesy RGR Galería.
Playing with closed eyes, 100 Years of Surrealism
RGR Galería, Gral. Antonio León 48
6 February–6 April 2024
Expect: a celebration of the centenary of Surrealism across archives and artworks by 25 iconic modernists and the contemporary artists they inspired, curated by Gabriela Rangel and Verónica Rossi.
Playing with closed eyes draws from a core principle of Surrealism that is deeply indebted to psychoanalysis: that the unconscious can perceive and react to unique signals from the world to offer an alternative viewpoint of the present.
This capacity to alienate one from their immediate situation rendered Surrealism particularly resonant in the wake of World War I and the Great Influenza epidemic, when the movement took shape. Today, in the aftermath of Covid-19 and amid escalating tensions in Ukraine, Gaza, and beyond, the capacity to tune out from the world remains a resonant proposition.
Within the gallery, archival documents and artworks both celebrate renowned pieces and highlight recent contributions to the movement. The exhibition also delves into Mexico’s role in the evolution of Surrealism, uniting celebrated figures such as Leonora Carrington and José Horna with contemporary artists their legacy inspired.
Referencing a 1993 anthology that compiles Surrealist texts in 17 languages by writers and artists such as André Breton and Salvador Dalí, Diego Pérez’s marble sculpture, Dédalo en marmol (2023), engraves a succession of staircases inside a white cube. The work evokes a labyrinth of dream interpretation, recalling the muddled capacity of language to speak to reality.
This convergence bridges the 20th and 21st centuries, eras marked by rapid acceleration that fundamentally altered the world’s technological landscape. It asks, can machines dream? Most importantly, can our dreams forge a new vision for the future, or are we irrevocably outdated?
Exhibition view: Amoako Boafo, The one that got away, Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Mexico City (7 February–4 May 2024). Courtesy the artist and Mariane Ibrahim Gallery. Photo: Mariela Viquez.
Amoako Boafo: The one that got away
Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Río Pánuco 36
7 February–4 May 2024
Expect: a monumental stained-glass portrait alongside the artist’s signature finger-painted portraits of Black sitters.
Amoako Boafo’s first exhibition in Mexico City exceeds the hype surrounding the artist in the global art circles, including seven-figure auction prices and a collaboration with Dior Homme.
Boafo’s portraits, however, differ from those of peers like Kerry James Marshall, Henry Taylor, and Kehinde Wiley, with surfaces that are multicoloured and textured rather than monochromatic and smooth.
At Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Boafo continues to challenge traditional Black figuration and its emphasis on African American Blackness, inviting a broader spectrum of Black identities into the conversation. The exhibition is presented inside ornate rooms lined with French mouldings, framing the artist’s portraits as if they had always belonged to the room.
Some sitters are embellished within antique picture frames; others don white pearls and tailored jackets, reinforcing the association with refinement. On a glass wall spanning floor to ceiling is the artist’s first stained-glass work, showing a woman at a washbasin surrounded by verdant foliage. Assembled from cobalt and brown fragments, she looks back to smile back at the viewer.
Marking a new direction in Boafo’s work are portraits that collage textured paper with floral patterns onto his subjects’ attire. They soften the artist’s portraits, contrasting their unruly strokes. Camellia-dotted pants gild a mirror-gazing subject in Camellia Wrapper (2023), while a leaf-patterned shirt on a man holding a child suggests a similar ease. —[O]
Source Credit: Content and images from Ocula Magazine. Read the original article - https://ocula.com/magazine/features/must-see-exhibitions-in-mexico-city-spring-2024/