Mexico City…por primera vez

by Lauren Moya Ford December 10, 2013

Mexico City…for the first time.
While I didn’t party as hard as this guy, I did find myself in a place even more amazing than I could have imagined. The city is gorgeous, the people are friendly, and I got to eat delicious street food like this:

A tlacuya, y’all. Don’t forget to eat one every chance you get.

A tlacuya, y’all. Don’t forget to eat one every chance you get.

I went to SOMA (not an acronym) headquarters to see a lecture about Demasiado Futuro, the thesis exhibition of the first generation of artists to complete its academic program. Turns out I was in the wrong spot, so I jumped in the car with Ana María Sánchez, SOMA’s Events and Residency Coordinator and Cristóbal Gracia, a recent graduate, who  told me about the program as we inched through the treacherous Mexico City traffic.

SOMA is not affiliated with a university, nor is it officially accredited, which allows it the freedom to pursue alternative modes for learning and collaboration. Along with their academic program, SOMA also hosts artist residencies, an international summer program (held in English), and a free weekly public lecture series (“Miércoles de SOMA”). The Demasiado Futuro exhibition demonstrates SOMA’s uniqueness; I’m about to finish my own MFA program at UH, which could benefit from the type of experimentation and interdisciplinarity I saw in the SOMA’s show’s 20 artists. The work that they are doing is crucial inside and outside of the Distrito Federal.

Works by Cristóbal Gracia (Left) and Natalia Ibáñez Lario (right) at the Demasiado Futuro show at the Sala Donceles, Centro Cultural de España. Open thru January 12, 2014.

Works by Cristóbal Gracia (left) and Natalia Ibáñez Lario (right) at the Demasiado Futuro show at the Sala Donceles, Centro Cultural de España. Open through January 12, 2014.

Matt Mullican’s that world/ese mundo at the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo totally blew my wig off. Mullican explores the nature of reality via images, systematically collecting and arranging symbols, patterns, colors, and maps on mini and massive scales. Mullican’s works compose and confound visual cosmologies that are intuitive but informative, familiar but elusive. He says: “It’s not the world that you see, it’s the world that I see representing the world that you see.” The show contains over 60 of Mullican’s drawings, videos, sculptures, notebooks, and installations from the past four decades. You can find a great PDF about that world/ese mundo en español here. This show is one of the best things I have seen, and merits multiple visits.

Matt Mullican, that world / ese mundo at Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo. Open through March 23, 2014.

Matt Mullican, that world/ese mundo at Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo. Open through March 23, 2014.

Pablo Rasgado makes an especially poignant investigation at Galería OMR, which sprawls over two sumptuous Colonial-era apartments overlooking Colonia Roma‘s Plaza Río de Janeiro. Portions of the elegant walls and ceilings are blasted out as if they’ve been hit with shrapnel from a suicide bomber. Sand impressions of body parts and ancient architectural forms are set across a chest-level platform. In an adjacent salon, stacks of rocks, debris and dirt are piled as remnants of something between conjuring and destruction. Rasgado’s work is simultaneously heavy and light, corporeal and ethereal, and requires an investment in time to take shape.When no one was looking, I picked a slim paper booklet out of one of the piles; it contained a thoughtful essay about the exhibition by Willy Kautz, curator of the Museo Tamayo. The richness of Kautz’s writing mirrors the slow unfurling of meaning in the show itself.

In the other OMR gallery building, Ryan Brown’s paintings look like blown-up, bent pages of a Malevich-flavored art history text. I was less taken by Brown’s slick play of artifice and aesthetics.

Galería OMR Exhibitions: Ryan Brown The Sun is a Hole (left) and Pablo Rasgado Ojo por diente (right)

Galería OMR exhibitions: Ryan Brown, The Sun is a Hole (left) and Pablo Rasgado, Ojo por diente (right)

There’s something in the ether right now about making art from potted plants. (I’m not complaining; I’m tempted to make potted plant art all the dang time!) Marco Rountree Cruz’s show at Proyecto Paralelo is an interesting mix of two- and three-dimensional pieces. While some of the work is a little too hip, his collage suites are executed with extreme sensitivity to their form and material. Like Rasgado, Rountree Cruz meditates on ideas of memory and civilization in these small pieces, some made from his own black-and-white family photos. The pieces were beautiful, but the fact that Rountree Cruz would forever alter his own family history was distressing to me.

Two shots from Marco Rountree Cruz, CLUB DE ABURRIMIENTO at Proyecto Paralelo

Two shots from Marco Rountree Cruz, CLUB DE ABURRIMIENTO at Proyecto Paralelo

Mexico City is buzzing with energy, and its creative citizens are busy taking chances and negotiating life and history there. Gutsy artists within Mexico and from other parts of the world are opening galleries like LODOS Contemporáneo and NO Space in unconventional places. CAIN, a new bimonthly print and online magazine, features reviews of exhibitions at UNAM’s Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, el Museo Experimental El Eco, Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros, and other museums focusing on international contemporary art. It’s exciting to see that so many creative opportunities exist for young artists and writers in this dynamic setting.

Sidewalk in Roma, a neighborhood with many galleries + a street food stand down the block.

Sidewalk in Roma, a neighborhood with many galleries + a street food stand down the block.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 comments

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2 comments

anonymous December 16, 2013 - 12:53

I’m leaving a harsh criticism, and I’m sorry if it hurts feelings — but this article comes across as uneducated and unthoughful. I live in Mexico City, and the author’s bubbly, glossy review tells the outside world absolute nothing. I am appalled that she calls out Eugenio Lopez for being a party guy; I know he has a reputation, but he’s one of the most generous donors in Mexico and has done quite a lot for the development of art in this country; mentioning him only in terms of partying is disrespectful and certainly doesn’t speak well for the site in the face of the positive coverage of the new museum. This is not even close to the major error, however: her article, from the incorrect Spanish of the title, to the glossed over, mindless ‘reviews’ of alternative art spaces, comes across as pure name dropping and uninteresting. “The work that they are doing is crucial inside and outside of the Distrito Federal.”? Tell us why. Do a little examination. And using phrases like “all the dang time”? This is not a crafter’s blog, it should not be so informal.

I’ve been a reader of the site for a while, and this was disappointing. Mexico City is a dynamic place with many interesting projects on a world-class scale, which Texas would be wise to recognize, embrace and engage with.

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Sergio Borquez December 17, 2013 - 17:38

His name is “tlayuda”

🙂 cool blog dude

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