ART WEEK MEXICO CITYFEBRUARY 4 - 9, 2020

AGENDA

PIA CAMILRÍE AHORA, LLORA

DESPUÉS

EXHIBITION OPENING

OMRFEBRUARY 4TH, 6 - 9 PM

CALLE CÓRDOBA 100,COL. ROMA NORTE

JAMES TURRELLPASAJES DE LUZ

MUSEO JUMEXMIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA 303COL. GRANADA

IN COLLABORATION WITH HÄUSLER CONTEMPORARY

JOSE DÁVILAPENSAR COMO UNA

MONTAÑA

MUSEO AMPARO2 SUR 708, CENTRO

PUEBLA, MÉXICO

MUACINSURGENTES SUR 3000CENTRO CULTURAL UNIVERSITARIO

RUBÉN ORTIZ TORRESRETROSPECTIVE:CUSTOMATISMO

MATERIAL ART FAIR

YANN GERSTBERGER SOLO PRESENTATION

BOOTH A13FEBRUARY 6TH - 9TH

FRONTÓN MÉXICODE LA REPÚBLICA 17COL. TABACALERA

SALÓN ACME NO. 8

PABLO DÁVILA

SALÓN ACMEFEBRUARY 6TH - 9TH

12 - 9 PMCALLE GRAL. PRIM 30 & 32,

COL. JUÁREZ

SALÓN ACME NO. 8

TANAT

SALÓN ACMEFEBRUARY 6TH - 9TH

12 - 9 PMCALLE GRAL. PRIM 30 & 32,

COL. JUÁREZ

ZONAMACOMAIN SECTION

BOOTH E118FEBRUARY 5TH - 9TH

CENTRO CITIBANAMEX, HALL D

PREVIEW

Atelier Van Lieshout is the studio founded by sculptor, painter and visionary Joep van Lieshout. After graduating at the Rotterdam Art Academy, Van Lieshout quickly rose to fame with projects that travelled between the world of easy - clean design and the non-functional area of art: sculpture and installations, buildings and furniture, utopias and dystopias.

In 1995, Van Lieshout founded his studio and has been working solely under the studio’s name ever since. The studio moniker exists in Van Lieshout’s practice as a methodology toward undermining the myth of the artistic genius.

Over the past three decades, Van Lieshout has established a multidisciplinary practice that produces works on the borders between art, design, and architecture. By investigating the thin line between manufacturing art and mass-producing functional objects, he seeks to find the boundaries between fantasy and function, between fertility and destruction.

Van Lieshout dissects systems, be it society as a whole or the human body; he experiments, looks for alternatives, takes exhibitions as experiments for recycling. All of these activities are conducted within Van Lieshout’s signature style of provocation—be it political or material. Recurring themes in the work of AVL include self-sufficiency, power, politics, and the more classical themes of life and death.

Selected Exhibitions: Dysfunctional, Carpenters Workshop Gallery, Venice Biennale, Venice (2019); Blast Furnace, Art OMI, Ghent, USA (2019); The CryptoFuturist and The New Tribal Labyrinth, Pioneerworks, New York (2019); Design Museum London, London (2018); Ferrotopia, NDSW-Werf, Amsterdam (2018); Gartenschau, König Galerie, Berlin (2018); Domestikator, Centre Pompidou (2017); Der Hausfreund, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna (2017); ST AGNES: Three positions. Six directions, König Galerie,Berlin (2017); Art Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the NL, GRIMM Gallery (2017); AVL-Mundo, Rotterdam, NL (2017); Poly Pluto Pluri, Galería OMR, México City (2017); The good, the bad & the ugly, Ruhrtriennale, Rotterdam (2017); Furnication, Carpenters Workshop Gallery, Paris (2017).

Selected Collections: FNAC, Paris; Museum Boijmans Van Beuingen, Rotterdam; Jumex Collection, Mexico; MoMA, New York; Walker Arts Center, MN, USA; Hall Collection; MAK Vienna; Prada Foundation, Milan; K20 K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen; Sprengel Museum Hannover; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Caldic Collection; MACRO Roma; Ludwig Forum, Aachen; Folkwang Museum, Essen; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich.

ATELIER VAN LIESHOUTRavenstein, Netherlands, 1963Lives and works in Rotterdam, Netherlands

Atelier Van LieshoutUnlimited no. 10, 2012

Fiberglass, polyester and styrofoam139 x 136 x 50 cm

(AVL 0118)

Van Lieshout dissects systems, be it society as a whole or the human body; he experiments, looks for alternatives, takes exhibitions as experiments for recycling. All of these activities are conducted within Van Lieshout’s signature style of provocation—be it political or material. Recurring themes in the work of AVL include self-sufficiency, power, politics, and the more classical themes of life and death.

Atelier Van LieshoutUnlimited no. 13, 2012Fiberglass, polyester and styrofoam160 x 72 x 50 cm(AVL 0120)

Matti Braun’s work is characterized by a constant negotiation between concrete references and general allusions, between poetic ephemerality and an uncanny sense of visceral immediacy. Braun has harnessed his interests to post-colonial discourse and notions of globalisation: most of the works suggest the migration of goods, skills or ideas. This interest, combined with feverish research, allows Braun to move rapidly between motifs of trans-nationalism, from 19th century textile trading to the 20th-century Négritude movement. Yet, for all its expansiveness, the logic of these quick-fire references is very contemporary: the associative textuality of the Internet and modern communications technology.

Making visible patterns of migration, Braun alludes to the typically unknown, even ignored, cross-cultural effects of globalisation. From the ancient Silk Route connecting the East to the West, to a now generic iPhone screensaver of a tropical sunset, the artist tracks specific examples of cultural appropriation in a non-linear manner.

Removing any palpable figuration or iconography, instead seamless washes of colour initiate a hypnotic intensity, the seeming simplicity of which belies the technical complexity of their production. Braun's chosen methodology is particularly laborious in the time taken to reach the exact colour field. The dye process used for Braun's paintings has its roots in the artist's investigation and appropriation of traditional techniques of textile production often used for religious or ritualistic purposes. While his earlier patola or batik series included references to the iconographic traces of their sources, later paintings do not. Initially executed on raw silk, these series included brightly colored passages or circular splashes that appear almost painterly and overtly reminiscent of post-painterly abstraction. The gradient silk paintings, now on smooth, finely woven silk panels used either a very reduced or an extremely saturated palette.

Selected Exhibitions: Ku Lak, Esther Schipper, Berlin, Germany (2020); 14th Fellbach Triennale (group), Fellbach, Germany (2019); Matti Braun, Vikram Sarabhai, Nouveau Musée National Monaco (NMNM), Monaco (2018); R.T./S.R./V.S., Rubin Museum of Art, New York (2018-2019); Singale Sugat, BQ, Berlín (2017); Sol Bol, Galería OMR, Mexico City (2016); Matti Braun, Kunstverein Heilbronn (2016); Bo Lak, Esther Schipper, Berlin (2014); Ave Vala, BQ, Berlin (2014); Gos Log, Arnolfini, Bristol (2014); Salo, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany (2010); Salo, La Galerie, Contemporary Art Center, Noisy-le-Sec, France (2010).

Selected Collections: Bundeskunstsammlung / Art Collection of the Federal Republic of Germany; The Cranford Collection, London, UK; KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland; Kadist Foundation, Paris, France; The Dallas Cowboys Art Collection, Dallas, USA.

MATTI BRAUNBerlin, Germany, 1968Lives and works in Cologne, Germany

Matti BraunUntitled, 2019

Silk, dye, and elm wood frame70 x 70 cm

(MBR 0037)

The work of Jose Dávila reflects upon the legacy of major movements in art and architecture in the twentieth century. Informed by his training as an architect, Dávila approaches the crucial contradictions between form and function. Located between homage, imitation, and critique, the artist references modern architecture, urbanism, and milestones in mid-century and contemporary art, pointing to both their forecasts and failures.

Contradictory feelings of weight, tension and levity run throughout Jose Dávila’s works. Making use of materials in a way that pushes the limits of our perception, he pairs incongruent elements that cause us to re-examine the ways in which we understand what is at hand.

Taking inspiration from the ideals put in place by the 20th century avant-garde, Jose Dávila re-appropriates and re-contextualises artists, iconic artworks and raw materials. Figures and details are cutout and re-worked. Unexpected elements are brought into our focus. Heavy materials are juxtaposed with impossibly delicate placement. The result is an elegant balancing act which feels almost atmospheric, drawing us in as we wait to see if things will stand or fall.

The elements conforming these works are specific references or citations from his awareness on art history, however, the result allows for an intersubjective exchange with the public in which the superimposition of graphics and text creates a free flow of associations and ideas from where new meaning can occur.

Selected Exhibitions: [Forthcoming] NIRIN, 22nd Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia (2020); Directional Energies, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas (2020); Pensar como una montaña, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico (2019); Walking Through Walls (group), Gropius Bau, Berlin (2019); Sueño autosuficiente, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City (2019); A Simple Rule to Remember, Franz Josefs Kai 3, Vienna (2018); Somewhere Behind the Eyes, Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf (2018); Non tutti quelli che vagano sono persi, Museo del Novecento, Florence (2018); Cycles of Collapsing Progress, organised by Beirut Museum of Art BEMA, Tripoli (2018); Mecánica de lo inestable, Galería OMR, Mexico City (2018); Sense of Place, LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) as part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, Los Angeles (2017/18); Die Feder und der Elefant, Kunsthalle Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany (2017).

Selected Collections: Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Stiftung für due Hamburger Kunstsammlungen, Hamburg; Allbright Knox Museum, New York; Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles; Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden; Colección Jumex, Mexico City; Museo Amparo, Puebla; MUAC: Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; Fundación La Caixa, Madrid; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Pérez Art Museum Miami.

JOSE DÁVILAGuadalajara, Mexico, 1974Lives and works in Guadalajara, Mexico

Jose DávilaUntitled, 2019Metal beams, boulders, bronze and wire496 x 445 x 363.5 cm(JDA 0608)

Jose DávilaUntitled, 2019

Vinyl paint on loom state linen210 x 170 x 6 cm

(JDA 0609)

Shilpa Gupta is interested in perception, and in how we transmit and understand information. Gupta’s mediums range from manipulated found objects to video, interactive computer-based installation, and performance. Her work often engages with media and its constant flow of meaning. Shifting the primary status of art from object-based commodity to participatory experience, Gupta creates situations that actively involve the viewer.

Gupta is drawn to how objects, places, people, and experiences are defined, and asks how these definitions are played out through the processes of classification, restriction, censorship, and security. Her work communicates—across cultures—the impact of dominant forces acting on local and national communities, prompting a reevaluation of social identity and status, and makes visible the aporias and incommensurability in the emerging national public sphere in India, which include gender and class barriers, religious differences, the continued power of repressive state apparatuses, and the seductions of social homogeneity and deceptive ideas of public consensus enabled by emerging mediascapes.

Gupta's works which deal inter-subjectivity and phenomenology, constantly remind us about the relational and highly mediated facets of the act of seeing, retrieving and remembering. Be it brass labels, stamps, objects confiscated at airports, motion flap boards, or illegal material that traverse physiological and geographical chasms, her practice pushes the boundaries of how the art object is understood.

Selected Exhibitions: May You Live In Interesting Times (group), 58th Venice Biennale, Venice (2019); Shilpa Gupta, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano (2018); While I Begin, Voorlinden Museum and Gardens, Wassenaar (2018); Being: New Photography 2018 (group), MOMA, New York (2018); Fault Lines - Everyday Borders (group), Gwangju Biennale 2018, Gwangji (2018); Fearless - Contemporary South Asian Art (group), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2018); MAM Collection 004: Imagining the Unknown Stories (group), Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2017);

Selected Collections: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York: Asia Society, Hong Kong; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Mori Museum, Tokyo; Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen; The Menil Collection, Houston; Deutsche Bank; Daimler Chrysler; Caixa Foundation; Louis Vuitton.

SHILPA GUPTAMumbai, India, 1976Lives and works in Mumbai, India

Shilpa GuptaI Will Die, 2012Print on mirror and embroidered curtain on metal rod147 x 104 x 12.5 cm(SGU 0002)

Since the 1970’s, the recurrent approach of Candida Höfer is to visualizethe architectonic space as a frame of human relations. Her work consists of identifying and perceiving compositions that existed before she was aware of them and that she leaves unabridged. In photographs of indoor spaces, of public and semi-public buildings, the order and disorder that derive from their communitarian function are revealed.

Known for her meticulously composed, large-scale color images, Höfer’s oeuvre explores the structure, presentation, and influence of space. Interested in the psychological impact of design and the contrast between a room’s intended and actual use, Höfer has focused her lens on cultural and institutional buildings such as libraries, hotels, museums, concert halls, and palaces. Whilst devoid of people, the images allow us to consider the role of their missing inhabitants. The large-scale nature of the work invites the viewer to linger over the architectural details and contemplate the subtle shifts in light that make up the character of the space.

On her decision to exclude people from her photographs, Höfer has said, “…it became apparent to me that what people do in these spaces – and what these spaces do to them – is clearer when no one is present, just as an absent guest is often the subject of a conversation.”

Selected Exhibitions: Candida Höfer en Mexico, Sean Kelly, New York, NY, USA (2019); The Fabric of Felicity, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2019); Paris revisited, VNH Gallery, Paris (2018); Spaces of Enlightenment, Kukje Gallery, Seoul (2018); Candida Höfer en México, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh (2018); Candida Höfer en México, Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico City (2017); Candida Höfer en México, Museo Amparo, Puebla (2017); Candida Höfer en México, Centro de las Artes del Parque Fundidora, Monterrey (2017); Candida Höfer, Pinacoteca do Estado de Sao Paulo, Brasil (2017); Candida Höfer. In Mexiko: Primer Acto, OMR, Mexico City (2016); Nach Berlin, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Berlin (2016); Candida Höfer. Memory: Selected works from the State Hermitage Museum (2015).

Selected Collections: Centre Pompidou, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, DG Bank Collection, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), Kunsthalle Basel, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Staatliches Museum für Kunst und Design, St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, ZKM Karlsruhe.

CANDIDA HÖFEREberswalde, Germany, 1944Lives and works in Cologne, Germany

Candida HöferMuseo Nacional de Arte Ciudad de México I, 2015C-Print180 x 202.8 cmEdition 2 of 6(CHO 0167)

ARTUR LESCHERSão Paulo, Brazil, 1962Lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil

Artur Lescher investigates the tangible qualities of sculpture and its interaction with architecture. The artist creates single volume pieces, which are designed to be suspended and yet pulled in by gravity. As a result, a unique tension between the sculptural proportions and the surrounding space is created.

Lescher’s works attest to his constant experimentation with materials, their physical qualities and objectual characteristics. Through his works, the artist makes constant reference to natural elements, which when reproduced impeccably by means of industrial processes, reveal and deny these real allusions.

The artist combines physics and mechanics principles with the semantic synthesis of the sculptures he creates. The outcome is the subversion of the fixedness and weight typical of his raw materials, to the benefit of lightness – and of poetic impressions. Lescher appropriates raw materials and industrial processes to deliver a precise, organized universe of objects, building tension as the viewer moves through space. The observer unwittingly triggers the possibility of disruption of mathematical perfection and the equilibrium between the artworks through the simple displacement of air – which presupposes the motion of pendulums, even though it doesn’t really take place – and through personal interpretations of what they see. Notions such as balance, equality and proportion are delivered from instrumental use to reunite with their metaphysical character, amplified by the artworks’ formal purity.

Selected Exhibitions: Suspensão, Pinacoteca, São Paulo, Brasil (2019); Asterismos, Galería OMR, Mexico City, Mexico (2018), Galería Nara Roesler, Sao Paulo (2018), Almine Rech, Paris (2019); Alignments, IK LAB, Tulum, Mexico (2018); Porticus, Palais d’léna as part of FIAC 2017, Paris (2017); Inner Landscape, Piero Atchugarry Gallery, Punta Del Este, Uruguay (2016); Provisório Permanente-Lux, Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo (2016); Universo, curated by Fábio Faisal, Carbono Gallery, São Paulo (2015); The Nostalgia of the Engineer, Galería OMR, Mexico City (2014).

Selected Collections: Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo; Instituto Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro; Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, São Paulo; Museu de Arte Contemporânea, São Paulo; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection.

Artur LescherAscensor #5, 2018

Brass, green multifilament threads and steel cables150 x 84 x 7.5 cm

Edition of 5, +2 AP(ALE 0123)

Méndez Blake's work revolves around books, libraries, and literature. By focusing on classic authors such as Emily Dickinson, Jules Verne, Franz Kafka, and Jorge Luis Borges - among many others - his practice delivers the value of literature as a means of knowledge.

With an architectural background, Méndez Blake has developed his conceptual language to form the metaphor of the literary narrative in a spatial approach that employs analysis and synthesis as tools to transform the poetic into visual compositions. Based on the artist’s idea that ‘writing is itself a kind of construction and reading is a way of creation’, he translates literary texts into images, sculptures, and installations, and transforms literature into an architecture that articulates situations, places, and objects to perform the act of reading.

The bronze sculpture Luis (2018) originates from an archive image: The architect Luis Barragán eats an apple while taking a walk through the site that will later be known as the “El Pedregal” residential complex in Mexico City. The image shows an indefinite landscape made out of volcanic rock, eventually it will be covered up and delimitated with concrete walls and other construction materials. The photo shows a primeval land, a newly discovered Garden of Eden. The apple, a Western symbol of fresh beginnings (good or bad), functions as a certain poetic premonition that resonates along with the fertility of the volcanic soil.

Selected Exhibitions: Who Writes? Curated by Jo Ying Peng (group), Galería OMR, Mexico City (2019);Dear James, Mai 36, Zürich (2019); Borders, James Cohan, New York (2019); Cycles of Collapsing Progress, organised by Beirut Museum of Art BEMA, Tripoli (2018); The Unwritten Library. The Last Reader, Annex M, Athens (2018); De la línea al movimiento, Blueproject Foundation, Barcelona (2018); A Message From the Emperor, Marfa Contemporary, Marfa, Texas (2017); Apollinaire’s Misspell and Other Calligrams, Meessen De Clercq, Brussels (2017); Derniers usage de la littérature, Frac Franche-Comté, France (2017); Du verbe à la communication, Carré d’art, Nîmes, (2017); NGV Triennal, National Gallery of Victoria, Australia (2017); The Queen Falls, Galería OMR, Mexico City (2017).

Selected Collections: Jumex Collection, Mexico City; Colección Televisa, Mexico City; Colección Coppel, Mexico City; Colección Suro, Guadalajara; National Gallery of Victoria, Australia; Museo Amparo, Puebla; 21C Museum, Louisville; Fundación Calosa, Irapuato; MUAC (Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo), Mexico City; Queensland Art Gallery, Australia; Deutsche Bank Collection. Sayago & Pardon Collection.

JORGE MÉNDEZ BLAKEGuadalajara, Mexico, 1974Lives and works in Guadalajara, Mexico

Jorge Méndez BlakeDesmantelando a Villaurrutia (Nostalgia de la muerte. Nocturno mar), 2018Acrylic on linen152.3 x 122 cm(JMB 0445)

Jorge Méndez BlakeDesmantelando a Flaubert (Bibliomania V) / Dismantling Flaubert (Bibliomania V), 2019

Acrylic on linen152.3 x 122 cm

(JMB 0505)

Jorge Méndez BlakeDesmantelando a Flaubert (Bibliomanía) VIII / Dismantling Flaubert (Bibliomania) VIII, 2019

Acrylic on linen152.3 x 122 cm

(JMB 0512)

Jorge Méndez BlakeDesmantelando a Flaubert (Bibliomanía) IX / Dismantling Flaubert (Bibliomania) IX, 2019Acrylic on linen152.3 x 122 cm(JMB 0513)

Jorge Méndez BlakeToda escritura comienza en una selva III / All Writing Begins in a Jungle III, 2019Coloured pencil on paper100 x 70 cm(JMB 0509)

Jorge Méndez BlakeToda escritura comienza en una selva IV, II, & I / All Writing Begins in a Jungle IV, II, & I, 2019Coloured pencil on paper100 x 70 cm, each(JMB 0508, JMB 0510, JMB 0511)

Jorge Méndez BlakeLuis, 2018

Bronze16 x 33 x 10 cm

Edition of 3, + 1AP(JMB 0501)

The bronze sculpture Luis (2018) originates from an archive image: The architect Luis Barragán eats an apple while taking a walk through the site that will later be known as the “El Pedregal” residential complex in Mexico City. The image shows an indefinite landscape made out of volcanic rock, eventually it will be covered up and delimitated with concrete walls and other construction materials. The photo shows a primeval land, a newly discovered Garden of Eden. The apple, a Western symbol of fresh beginnings (good or bad), functions as a certain poetic premonition that resonates along with the fertility of the volcanic soil.

GABRIEL RICOLagos de Moreno, Mexico, 1980Lives and works in Guadalajara, Mexico

Gabriel Rico’s work is developed in a zone in which one object crisscrosses with another in the inter-objective configuration space. Starting from his fascination with philosophical analogies and scientific disciplines, Rico creates pieces that fragment the composition of the contemporary human and evidence the geometric imperfection in nature utilizing the Gedanken-Experiment techinque. Rico’s sculptural works reflect on the nature of the materials used to produce them and their arrangement in the final composition.

The artist has been influenced by the sciences that study form and space; he considers himself a believer in matter, an ontologist with a heuristic methodology - sometimes using technological tools and scientific models as metaphors for our collective memory. Deconstruction and recontextualization are methods by which he continues the development of his investigation in areas such as knowledge-materializations and the fragility of space.

The principle of V - Let not the judge meet the cause halfway - (2019) is to achieve a syncopated rhythm from the elements that compose it, while considering the abstraction generated by a measurement of the separate elements that comprise them, as a principle for the uncertainty that is presented when the mind begins to visualize the different forms between them - and after a few moments observing it, the different materials of which they are made are evidenced.

It is a visual game between the image generated by first impression when seeing the artwork and the last image you saw - as if the process of observation itself was the one that discovered, little by little, the aesthetic benefits of the elements that are used in the sculptures.

Selected Exhibitions: The Stone, the Branch and the Golden Geometry, Perrotin, Seoul (2019); May You Live in Interesting Times (group), 58th Venice Biennale (2019); The Discipline of the Cave, Aspen Art Museum (2019); Cycles of Collapsing Progress, (group) organised by Beirut Museum of Art BEMA, Tripoli (2018); Mrs. Spring Fragrance, Coma Gallery Sydney (2018); Almost Solid Light: New Work From Mexico, Paul Kasmin, New York (2018); Le Sud BB, Hangar J! New Art Center, Marseille (2018); Rooftop Playground, Michael Fuchs Galerie, Berlin (2018); One Law for the Lion &The Ox is Oppression, Galerie Perrotin, New York (2017); PROXIMIDAD, The Power Station, Dallas (2017); DEAD, DEAD, LIVE, DEAD, ASU Art Museum, Tempe (2017); The Queen Falls, Galería OMR, Mexico City (2017).

Selected Collections: Korean Ceramic Foundation (KOCEF); Patricia Marshall Collection; ArtNexus Foundation, Colombia/USA; Associated Collection Centro de Arte Tomas & Valiente; Museo Reina Sofía, Spain; Frans Mesereel Centrum (FMC), Belgium; Private Collection Patrick Charpenel, Mexico; Fundacción Calosa, Mexico.

Gabriel RicoI have anticipated you IV (The object, constructor of the social, ex-pelled from the

social world, attributes to a transcendent world what is, however, not divine), 2019Ceramic

100 x 65 x 60 cmEdition of 2, + 1 AP

(GRI 0162)

Gabriel RicoV - Let not the judge meet the cause halfway - , 2019Foam, brass, marble, bark, neon, bone, pvc and steel

230 x 280 x 11 cm(GRI 0150)

Gabriel RicoXXIX - More robust nature.. more robust geometry - , 2019

Branch, neon and rock 80 x 165 x 25 cm

(GRI 0141)

Gabriel RicoFrom Pitagora to Penrose, 2019Shuttlecock, PVC, cement base, antlers, rope, neon and hare300 x 30 x 180 cm(GRI 0163)

CHRISTIAN ROSARio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1982Lives and works in Los Angeles, USA

Christian Rosa’s sparse, elegant abstract paintings express a kinetic energy where everything is in flux. Functioning like automatic writing, they are built up from individual shapes and marks set amid large expanses of raw, untreated canvas. Referencing both the language of Surrealism, especially that of Miró, and also the paintings of Cy Twombly, his pictures contain both the building blocks for a pictorial narrative but also the methods of its deconstruction. Minimal mark-making in oil, charcoal, pencil, resin and oil stick and a reduction of visible brushwork create works that are improvisational in appearance, holding their carefully balanced elements in an arresting visual tension. Rosa harnesses the inherent qualities of his materials by using their textural appeal to create layers and depth and to encourage emotive and subjective responses in the viewer.

In his work, new modes of communication arise between the isolated, singular elements on the canvas surface, which suggest the preformed beginnings of something: where lines, squares and childlike squiggles act like mnemonic symbols of a larger conversation. Punctuated by areas of primary colour, Rosa’s images could suggest recognisable things such as roads, buildings or even faces; whereby marks create an emergent and uncomfortable figuration through their immediate juxtaposition. His painting is guided, as curator Gabriela Salgado has noted, by ‘chance and an instinctive trust of the energy contained in physical motion and failure’. Created as points of departure for a new emotive, visual experience, his pictures suggest planes of energy from which many different narratives and possibilities can spring off.

Selected Exhibitions: [Forthcoming] Solo show, Galería OMR, Mexico City (2020);The Art Show (group), Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, Japan (2017); No means no....Alright, Galeria Mario Sequeira, Portugal (2017); Mach's dir selbst, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin (2016); Now it's Over, Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna (2016); Grafforists (group), Torrance Art Museum, Torrance (2016); More than nothing, White Cube, São Paulo (2015); Put your Eye in your Mouth, White Cube, London (2015); I am in love with the Coco, Kunstverein Heilbronn, Heilbronn (2015); The Shell (group), Almine Rech Gallery, Paris (2015); Pangaea: New Art from Africa and Latin America (group), Saatchi Gallery, London (2014); Caifornia Screaming, Ibid, Los Angeles (2014); Love's Gonna Save The Day, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin (2014).

Christian RosaUntitled, 2015Charcoal, oil paint and pencil on canvas170.2 x 231.1 cm(CRO 0025)

Christian RosaUntitled, 2015

Charcoal, oil paint and pencil on canvas170.2 x 231.1 cm

(CRO 0026)

Thomas Ruff is considered one of the most important photographers today. He belongs to the Düsseldorf School of Photography as a disciple of Bernd and Hilla Becher and studied alongside the likes of Candida Höfer and Andreas Gursky - together they are part of the school of thought that separates photography from the decisive moment and furthermore, from its journalistic function. For the past thirty years, Ruff’s work has redefined the limits and meanings of photography itself, consistently pushing historical conventions and expectations of the medium through the incorporation of technology. In this way, his work is a constant investigation of the possibilities of an image and its authorship.

An example of this is seen in phg.03_I (2013). Traditionally, photograms are made by placing objects onto photosensitive paper and exposing the paper to light, thereby recording the silhouettes of the objects. Captivated by this method but seeking to work beyond its limitations, Ruff collaborated with a 3-D imaging expert to design a virtual darkroom that would enable him to experiment with an infinite range of forms. Unbeholden to objects present, like the scissors, ribbons and paperclips of Moholy-Nagy’s photograms (c. 1920’s), he is able to specify the size, material, color and transparency of new digital matter. This collection of invented forms, together with simulated paper surface and fully adjustable light conditions, comprises a digital darkroom environment in which Ruff can access boundless possibilities and ultimate control. The final chromogenic prints describe an enigmatic photographic world of nebulous shadows, spheres, zigzags, and hard edges against richly colored backgrounds, a mesmerizing visual frontier of his own making.

The work of the photographer has focused on several genres of the medium, including portraiture, architecture, astronomy, the nude, reportage and photograms. Throughout the series presented in this exhibition, Ruff challenges the viewer by demonstrating that visual universes can become increasingly complex the more one contemplates the details.

Selected Exhibitions: Thomas Ruff, Galería OMR, Mexico City, Mexico (2018); Thomas Ruff: neg◊lapresmidi, Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich (2018); Thomas Ruff, ARARIO Museum, Jeju Island, Korea (2017); Thomas Ruff, Etablissement d'en face Projects, Brussels (2017); Thomas Ruff, National Portrait Gallery, London (2017); Thomas Ruff, Whitechapel Gallery, London [catalogue] (2017); Thomas Ruff: ++from the press++, Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich (2017); Thomas Ruff : Machine + Energy, Mast Foundation, Bologna(2017); Thomas Ruff: New Works, Sprüth Magers, Berlin (2017).

THOMAS RUFFWest Germany, 1958Lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany

Thomas Ruffphg.03_I, 2013C-print240 x 185 cmEdition of 4, +1 AP(TRU 0017)

Traditionally, photograms are made by placing objects onto photosensitive paper and exposing the paper to light, thereby recording the silhouettes of the objects. Captivated by this method but seeking to work beyond its limitations, Ruff collaborated with a 3-D imaging expert to design a virtual darkroom that would enable him to experiment with an infinite range of forms.

Thomas Ruffpress++ Series, 2015-2016

C-print60 x 70 cm / 70 x 60 cm

All Edition of 8, +3 AP(Clockwise: TRU 0025, 0026, 0023, 0022, 0027, 0024)

Thomas Ruffneg◊nus_10, 2014

C-print60.5 x 70.5 cm

Edition of 8, +3 AP(TRU 0034)

Installation View: Thomas Ruff, OMR, Mexico City, 2018.

As a teenager, reknown British artist John Stezaker had already begun his obsessive collecting, starting with stamps and postcards and later moving on to film stills and actor’s publicity portraits; throughout the years, the artist has amassed an archive of thousands of found images that serve as material for his artistic practice. Collage by nature, the works of Stezaker juxtapose one image against another to create surreal compositions. By layering images and disrupting landscapes, subjects, and borders, he creates bizarre worlds in which traditional portraiture is confronted by the absurd. The end results are always both deceptively simple in their execution and oddly disturbing in their suggestion.

At the beginning of his artistic career, Stezaker was preoccupied with subtraction – where he cut a hole in the image and the white background showed through, marking an absence rather than presence of visual material. With a pronounced interest in Romanticism, in particular an obsession with William Blake, his work often evokes literary as well as visual precursors such as Kafka, Mallarmé and Bataille, alongside the ideas of assemblage brought forth by Jasper Johns. Now, through minimal interventions such as the combining of two images, reversing, or otherwise altering images, Stezaker lends a new autonomy and meaning to photographs that refer to a bygone era and have subsequently lost their original readability. The effect of such compositions lends to a final visual adaptation that appears simultaneously abstract and narrative.

Selected Exhibitions: John Stezaker: CONDO MEXICO CITY, OMR, Mexico City, Mexico (2019); Cross, Kaufmann Repetto, Milan, Italy (2019); She, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, Germany (2019); John Stezaker: Collages, Starkwhite, Auckland, Australia (2018); Black Mirror: Art as Social Satire (Group), Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2018); Journeys with 'The Waste' (Group), Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2018); Love, The Approach, London, UK (2018); Picture Fiction: Kenneth Josephson and Contemporary Photography (Group), MCA, Chicago, USA (2018); Horse, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2017); Blackout (with Richard Hamilton and Carlo Mollino), Ibid Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (2017).

Selected Collections: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Arts Council England, UK; British Council Collection, UK; FRAC Ile-de-France/ Le Plateau, Paris, France; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, USA; MoMA, New York, USA; MUDAM Collection, Luxembourg; Ringier Collection, Zurich, Switzerland; RISD Museum of Art, Providence, USA; The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA; Saatchi Collection, London, UK; Sammlung Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt, Germany; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, USA; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Tate Collection, London, UK; Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK.

JOHN STEZAKERWorcester, UK, 1949Lives and works in London, UK

John StezakerUntitled, 2014

Collage30.4 x 24.1 cm

(STE 0004)

John StezakerUntitled, 1978-1982

Screenprint on canvas182 x 183 cm

(STE 0009)

John StezakerClose Up, 1978-1983Screenprint on canvas32.5 x 144 cm(STE 0011)

John StezakerUntitled, 1978-1983

Screenprint on canvas129.5 x 153.5 cm

(STE 0010)

John StezakerUntitled, 1983Screenprint on canvas130 x 120 cm(STE 0012)

SUPERFLEXSUPERFLEX was founded in 1993Live and work in Copenhagen, Denmark

SUPERFLEX was founded in 1993 by Jakob Fenger, Bjørnstjerne Christiansen and Rasmus Nielsen. With a diverse and complex practice, SUPERFLEX challenge the role of the artist in contemporary society and explores the nature of globalisation and systems of power. SUPERFLEX describe their artworks as tools - thereby suggesting multiple areas of application and use.

Humans tend to gather value and, once accumulated, to protect this wealth. We place value in land, buildings, gold, and in immaterial entities such as knowledge, culture and relations. We invest in schemes of exploring and exploiting new ways of furthering our accumulated wealth. We seem to fall in love with our possessions. To protect this amassing of resources, we build borders around them: physical walls as well as virtual boundaries.

Whether naturally occurring or human-created, the lifespans of walls are limited. It is as if when a border is created, a parallel deconstructive process begins. Pressure simultaneously builds up from both the inside and the outside. The desire to fence in is as strong as the need to transgress, to reach the other, to seek and merge with what is not here and now. Whether they disintegrate sooner or later, the outcome is the same for any fortification. Empires, castles and even our human bodies will eventually give in to this decay, giving way to new generations. Our relationship with this planet has had an enormous impact on its ecosystem, to the extent that we may soon reach the end of our journey. But this also means growth, new exchanges, and, with rising sea levels, the vertical migration of different and new life forms.

Perhaps we should see this as an opportunity to reimagine one end as a new beginning.

Selected Exhibitions: Galeria OMR [forthcoming] (2019); It's Not The End of the World, Cisternerne, Copenhahgen (2019); In Our Dreams We Have a Plan, Kukje Gallery Busan (2019); We Are All In the Same Boat, MOAD MDC, Miami (2018); One, Two, Three, Swing!, Tate Modern, London (2017); Euro, Hayward Gallery, London (2017); C.R.E.A.M. - 5 year plan, Kunsthaus Graz (2017); Tate Exchange, Tate Modern, London (2017); Superfake / The Parley, ASU - Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe (2016); It's Permitted to Permit, Museum of Tomorrow, Rio de Janeiro (2015).

Selected Collections: National Museum of Art, Copenhagen; MoMA, New York City; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek; Jumex Collection, Mexico City; Malmö Konstmuseum, Malmö; Museum Bojimans van Beuingen, Rotterdam; KUNSTEN, Aalborg, Denmark; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia; Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich.

Reminiscent of the commercial signage frequently found in urban landscapes and generally located on the tops or façades of buildings, There Are Other Fish In The Sea translates the familiar phrase into a text-based installation, consisting of an illuminated signboard made with ocean blue LED letters mounted on a wall.

There Are Other Fish In The Sea utilizes the format of commercial signage, appropriating its form while contextualizing it within the forthcoming consequences of consumerism. The phrase diverges from a humancentric discourse, reconceptualizing the potential end of human life as rather insignificant for the rest of life on Earth: Other species will migrate and flourish in our absence, and there will be plenty of fish who will take our place and inhabit our spaces.

SUPERFLEXThere Are Other Fish In The Sea, 2019LED lights, plexiglass, aluminium letters and power adaptor37 x 262 x 8 cm(SUP 0004)

SUPERFLEXIf Value Then Copy, 2017Print on canvas3 pieces, 180 x 230 each(SUP 0009)

If Value Then Copy is a series of triptycs with a motif of the text “If value then copy”.

First conceived as a slogan for the work COPYSHOP (2005), it now takes shape as a transforming black and white work on canvas. Each edition in the series is unique and shows an increasingly distorted version of the design in a chronological order. From the original 100 photocopies were made – each a copy of the preceding one – and a selection of every tenth copy was chosen to descripe the evolution of copies.

The first edition featuring the original design is handpainted with the following editions being printed to represent the nature of the analogue photocopy machine, originally bought and used in the first COPYSHOP in Copenhagen.

SUPERFLEXPink Element no. 3 / Zig Zag Column, 2019

Slip coloured ceramic224 x 56 x 24 cm

(SUP 0017)

Pink Elements consist of varying configurations of pink, coral-friendly bricks. The bricks are materially aligned with the needs of underwater creatures, their pink colour scientifically known to propagate coral polyp growth. Though angular in shape, each brick houses more organic forms within, porous enough for fish and other aquatic species to burrow.

The bricks are thus a work of architecture in their own right, but hold the potential to be configured to suit human habitation. When presented on dry land in human spaces, the elements appear as stand-alone sculptural objects, or as fragments of existing human architecture - such as a corner or column. But when submerged in an aquatic environment, these structures will be repurposed by marine creatures: a pillar for humans today is a future penthouse for fish.

Pink Elements stand as future-ruins turned fish metropoli. They can be copied and repeated in any number of formations, adapted to their inhabitants and environment.

Pink Elements is part of the ongoing trans-disciplinary research project Deep Sea Minding, commissioned by TBA21- Academy, as a continuation of their program The Current. Deep Sea Minding merges artistic and scientific research in an attempt to reach an alternative understanding of the marine species, ultimately affecting the way we imagine and design our environments and objects. While generating relevant data and increasing awareness of rising sea levels, Deep Sea Minding proposes the creation of structures that could serve the needs and desires of both humans and marine creatures.

Installation View: There Are Other Fish In The Sea, OMR, Mexico City, 2019.

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