The 7 Best Shows to See During Mexico City’s Gallery Weekend

Juliette Gil
Campeche
November 5, 2021 – January 29, 2022

For Gallery Weekend in Mexico City, newcomer Campeche unveils his second exhibition at CDMX: a personal exhibition of Julieta Gil. The young artist has recently gained attention for her work Nuestra Victoria (Our Victory, 2020), which responded to Mexico’s 2019 feminist uprising. Gil created lush images from 3D scans of the Angel of Independence monument covered in protest graffiti – slogans that were mostly observed via photographs, since the government whitewashed the daubs. almost immediately. In Campeche, the artist’s solo exhibition, ‘Revertir el Degaste’, continues its exploration of the historical forms and layers of street art and the city’s visual culture, documenting political activities while experimenting sculpture, architecture and installation.

Julio Garcia Aguilar
Ladron Gallery
November 5 – 30

“The Long Boom” by Julio García Aguilar at Ladrón Galería is the young artist’s second solo exhibition. Aguilar, originally from Oaxaca, creates colorful and striking oil paintings that are raucous depictions of the banality of power and the madness of rash decision-making. His images depict elements taken from Looney Tunes cartoons. Elmer Fudd’s ridiculously long and curvy shotgun, still threatening to turn on his shooter, appears in a few books such as Fracture (2020), just like Bugs Bunny in High season (2021), here twisted into a mean face airplane crashing into a zigzag airstrip. The thick and oily impasto of García Aguilar, associated with the simplicity of his figures, evokes the the Mexican muralists of the mid-twentieth century, who shared the artist’s fascination with the many forms of imperialism, industrialization and oppression.

‘SIEMBER’
Kurimanzutto
October 23 – December 11

After traversing 37 projects since its launch in February 2020, the time has come for ‘SIEMBRA’ – Kurimanzutto’s ambitious exercise in subdividing its airy space into separate booths assigned to different artists or galleries – to end its run, from less for the moment, while the gallery returns to its usual programming. Fortunately, this closing episode features one of its most exciting line-ups, pitting small-scale solo offerings from up-and-coming names, such as video artist Paloma Contreras Lomas and Oaxacan painter Jou Morales, alongside of well-known personalities like Eduardo Abaroa, Mariana Castillo Deball, Mariana Tellería and Adrián Villar Rojas. While ‘SIEMBRA’ regularly suffered from uneven enthusiasm between emerging and established artists, it would seem that the benefit of hindsight allowed for a more balanced farewell show.

Kristin Reger
Silicon Lounge
November 3, 2021 – January 2, 2022

In her latest solo release, “Burst,” at Salón Silicón, Chicago-born, Mexico City-based artist Kristin Reger continues her sculptural research into body form to explore why we age and get sick and how we slowly decay. after death. Such existential questions have always floated around Reger’s practice, but this time she brings them into her personal life. The show is about the passing of his father, Bob, who died of brain cancer earlier this year, prompting Reger to delve deeper into his legacy. as an activist.

Lorena Ancona
LANO
September 4 – November 7

Lorena Ancona’s exhibition at LLANO, “Sharper than a Serpent’s Tooth”, presents a group of sculptures and ceramics that form a very tight and focused body of work. Her practice is rooted in the pre-Hispanic visual culture of the Maya: the people who populated Quintana Roo, the state where she was born, which today is perhaps best known for the spring culture of cities like Cancún and Tulum. For this exhibition, Ancona has created magnificent hanging clay and rope sculptures, such as Serpiente and Quijada (Serpent and Jaw, 2020) from representations of sacrificial tools, and paintings made with traditional pigments stuck on stucco, such as Sharper than a serpent’s tooth (2021).

‘666’
Nordenhake Gallery
October 22 – December 4

This three-person exhibit — which includes the work of Mexican sculptor Tomás Díaz Cedeño, German photographer Michael Schmidt, and Spanish painter Antoni Tàpies — takes its name from one of Tàpies’ canvases, Cap-666 (Head-666, 1990), which features a disembodied gray head with crossed eyes lying on the ground. The exhibition succeeds in bringing together this multigenerational group of artists: it is a revelation to realize how Díaz Cedeño’s ritualistic and witchy sculptures work with Schmidt’s eerie black and white portraits and images of empty cities, or the austere and material colors of Tàpies. heavy paints. An exercise in the unexpected, the show accurately highlights the disturbing nature of the different aesthetic languages ​​spoken by these three artists.

Roger Munoz
NIXXXON
October 23 – December 12

Born in Costa Rica but now based in Mexico City, painter and provocateur Roger Muñoz brings an acerbic, understated wit and pop-cultural aesthetic to his airbrush and oil paintings, his intriguing sculptural objects and the behavior of his collaborator/drag alter-ego, Lic Sniffany Garnier Odio. Comparatively minimalist, the works in this show, ‘Veneno para las hadas en las fauces de un viejo maricón’ (Fairy Poison in the Jaws of an Old Fag), include only two sculptures, one of which is a small-headed sphinx sporting an expensive manicure (Esfinge TV Segun Sniffany [Sphinx TV according to Sniffany], 2021). Next to it hangs Reencarnación de Anti-Madre (Travesti con boca de fumadora) (Anti-Mother Reincarnation [Transvestite with a smoker’s mouth], 2021), a painting of a bodyless, A jellyfish-like figure, its head floating in a dystopian winter landscape against a cloudy green and black sky, while its face giggles, maybe even empty grunts.