For twenty-plus years, Zona Maco has been a key part of Mexico’s evolving art scene and the main attraction of Mexico City Art Week. The fair’s 2025 edition, February 5th-9th, showcased 200 galleries from 29 countries at its traditional venue, the Centro Citibanamex Convention Centre. The real fireworks were once again on display at the satellite exhibitions, the ACME venue, and the always impressive Material Art Fair.
That is not to say that there was anything wrong with the main exhibit, which brought in the usual blue chip fair along with a plethora of interior designer-friendly high-end art that surely pleased the never-ending throng of international art collectors strolling about with lucre in their pockets. It’s just that there is little to distinguish the main fair from any other art fair I’ve been to in recent memory, including the last time I was able to make it to Mexico City in 2020. I remember seeing the same galleries and the very same work five years ago. If anything, it allowed me to remark on my own art appreciation and sensibility and how it has morphed over the years.
There were certain standouts, like a subtle duo exhibition by Amsterdam artists Aldo van den Broek and Johnny Mae Hauser via Homecoming Gallery out of Amsterdam. The modestly sized works on display reminded me of a curator’s dream show combining Luc Tuymans and Gerhard Richter. Another impression was made by the relatively young Julia Silova, a Latvian artist represented by Cut Art Gallery (Latvia). Her multi-paneled works, composed of Rorschach-like fleshy body parts, morph from referencing Baroque tapestry to Geiger-inspired near-porn. They are impressive and alluring, yet also approaching an uncanny valley.
While never a collector, my sense of wonder and amazement at much of the art on display had much more bang years ago. I’m sure this is due in part to the simple exposure I’ve had to such venues over the years. However, I think there is something deeper at play, something that I’ve become more comfortable with as I’ve matured into a person who has been exposed to established work and tried to understand my own relationship to the market.
Another way to put this is once you’ve seen a James Turrell in an art fair, they all seem to blend into the same phenomenological space, sort of apologetic at that, having been forced into a convention hall, never to express the real cosmic changes he so deftly taught us to experience in his purer, non-lit sky spaces. It’s a bit of a microcosm for the whole thing. I found myself bored and herdlike as I searched for something interesting to take in.
I ended up finding salvation at the ACME fair and the Material portion. These two venues are set up for a different kind of engagement: they are both more flexible and less commercial. In the case of the former, they are in a hacienda-like space that truly makes one feel like the architecture and climate of the host city are on display as much as the objects, and that is a good thing.
Perhaps my favorite art on display in the overall fair was Teresa Moro’s paintings at the Materia satellite. This Spanish artist presented incredible and unassuming portraits of notable artists’ studios, such as Donald Judd, mesa de trabajo 2, 2020. The twenty small acrylic paintings resembling watercolors each reflected a studied and measured element from each working space. As a practicing artist, viewing them made me reflect upon the sacred space I tend to create for myself when working, a respite against non-productivity, a stave against inevitable entropy. They seemed reliquary in that regard.
Luz Carabaño, “pétalos,” 2024, oil on linen, stretched over shaped panel, 7.5 x 7.5 inches
Luz Carabaño presented some very beautiful paintings, again modest in scope yet lush and loose, inviting the eye to lavish upon faintly realized botanical specimens. Petals, 2024, for instance, a non-orthogonal shaped painting on linen, drew me into its orbit amongst a host of other competing distractions. The small painting welcomed my art-weary eye, yet kept delivering a sensual payoff the more I looked.
Kyle Alden Martens, 2025, “With Wristwatches (2),” sandblasted vintage watches, walnut wood, leather, silk, thread
Another standout among many at the Material satellite was Kyle Alden Martens, a Montreal-based artist represented by Patel Brown (Toronto, Montreal). A pair of comfortable-looking slippers were modestly displayed on a low-rise pedestal, hard wood insoles with time pieces embedded into the wood, placed right where the heel would rest in the shoe. The pace of time literally displayed in a pair of shoes rendered un-walkable… something Méret Oppenheim-like about them, only time itself is challenged of its utility.
Much walking the beautiful city indeed. As I took a break from the art venues and explored a tiny bit of the Roma neighborhood, I strolled through a weekend art fair set up in a park. I looked at the art presented there and wondered about its relationship to the vetted work I had just come from… Who vets it, and why? What about my own understanding of value in art was on display? I’m not sure I wound up with any answers, yet I was once again very happy to have made the journey.
Zona Maco was on view from February 5 through 9, 2025.
