Mexico City Art Week is always a rich, abundant time in the art world, but this year’s assortment of Mexican and international artists feels particularly special. Here are some of the best Mexico City exhibiitons on view at Museo Jumex, kurimanzutto, and OMR.
“Everything Gets Lighter” at Museo Jumex
November 18, 2023-February 11, 2024
Gabriel Orozco, “Parachute in Iceland (West),” 1996, La Colección Jumex, México.
This is the last week to see “Everything Gets Lighter,” a collection of works by 66 international artists that explores physical and poetic evocations of light. Notably, the exhibit’s name was inspired by the poem Everyone Gets Lighter by John Giorno, who read his work at Museo Jumex two decades ago.
Mexico City’s Museo Jumex organized this exhibit to celebrate its tenth anniversary, bringing in Lisa Phillips—the Director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York—as guest curator. Philips arranged a series of works spanning between 1961 and 2023, with mediums ranging from found objects to sculptures to paintings. Highlights include works by James Turrell, Jenny Holzer, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, and Feliz Gonzalez-Torres.
The exhibit can be thought of as a sort of counterweight to the existential threats that surround us. Said Phillips, “At the moment our world is under enormous pressure, but we continue to take solace in the healing power of light and in the recognition of the ultimate impermanence and immateriality of life. The artists in this show have given us plenty to ponder, from experiments in pure light to meditations on reflections, shadows, and luminosity.”
Gabriel Orozco at kurimanzutto
February 10-March 23, 2024
Gabriel Orozco, “Untitled,” 2021-2022, gouache, tempera, ink and graphite on paper, courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City / New York photo by Gerardo Landa / Eduardo Lópex (GLR estudio).
Seven years ago, Gabriel Orozco transformed kurimanzutto into a convenience store. Now, the artist returns for his second exhibition with the gallery. The self-titled Gabriel Orozco offers a series of recent drawings, paintings, and sculptures connected to the places where Orozco lives. Diario de Plantas is a notebook so small it could fit in the palm of one’s hand; inside, it holds leaves from his stays in Tokyo, Acapulco, and Mexico City. The sculptures in Dés (French for dice) were carved from local Mexican stones, including red volcanic tezontle and white marble. The paintings featured in Gabriel Orozco articulate the seemingly implausible encounter of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and the imposing stone sculpture of Coatlicue, the Aztec goddess of life and death.
Eduardo Sarabia‘s “Four Minutes of Darkness” at OMR
February 6-March 26, 2024
Eduardo Sarabia, “Untitled (Karaoke),” 2023, hand painted ceramic vase and wood box, vase: 26 3/8 x 18 7/8 x 18 7/8 inches, box: 23 5/8 x 32 1/4 x 23 5/8 inches, courtesy of the artist and OMR.
This week, OMR debuts Eduardo Sarabia’s first solo exhibition with the gallery since the beginning of his representation in March 2023. Four Minutes of Darkness comprises 30 artworks that unite themes of ancestral, alchemical, and mystical knowledge, imagination, and religion. There is a large stained-glass ceiling; there are hand-drawn swords and shrimp; there is a hand-made wool tapestry. It is a tapestry, in fact, that depicts a solar eclipse—the most important theme of all in Four Minutes of Darkness. In April, Sarabia’s exhibition will relocate to the Museo de Arte de Mazatlán in Sinaloa, his family’s place of origin. On April 8, when the solar eclipse turns day into night for four minutes, viewers will be invited to watch the spectacle together from the museum.
