Oráculo
Alejandro Villa Duran
Aleph Escobedo
Enrique Garcia
Gerardo López
Isabel Legate
Zhi Wei Hiu
San Ildefonso
Centro Historico, Ciudad de Mexico
08.18.23 – 09.22.23
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An oracle seeks to place language around the unknowable. It passes through the human body and crystallizes in spoken word. It is a potent, transformative, translucency – an egg, a seed, an idea. The transformative potential of the oracle is bound in belief itself because one must believe for it to be fulfilled. In this sense, an oracle can be a powerful catalyst for radical change because, unlike hope, an oracle is the profound belief that that change is bound to occur. The 6 artists included in this exhibition explore how magic, mythology, and belief function as productive forces in the world.
Alejandro Villa Duran’s painting is part of a series of works titled Intuitive Map on an Entangled Consciousness. It is energetic, pure abstraction. Acid green and fuchsia tendrils peer from molten silver-like foliage. In Duran’s practice, his body is the medium – a conductive element that transmutes energy into matter.
Aleph Esecobedo’s Espora Xilofaga 3 is similarly conductive. A wood cylinder blooms from the wall and is engraved with paths that reference the hatching of insect eggs. A copper branch extends outwards and disperses into a radiant spore. Escobedo’s interest in mycology greatly informs his practice. The sculpture references the myth that where lightning strikes, mushrooms grow.
The fertile ground produced by this mythological lightning is further explored in Enrique Garcia’s Second Origin. In this piece, Garcia catalogs sites of production and circulation at distinct scales, from geological to macroscopic. We see the birth of an island through volcanic eruption, an image of the aorta, the vocal cavity, and a fertility deity that symbolizes human’s attempts to influence creation cycles in the natural world through worship.
The creative potential of fire is further explored in the work of Zhi We Hiu. Four photograms, arranged along a horizon, were exposed over the duration of 40 minutes and captured the burning of incense over photosensitive paper. Wei Hiu was interested in translating the symbolic use of fire and paper in the rituals of ancestor veneration. The material undergoes a transformation from the heat of the smoke and the effect is cosmic and deeply bodily. Along the entryway, Hiu’s cast silver sculptures are in a similar state of decreation. Four shelves display a deconstructed tree. The branches are cut and molding with a patina. This sense of undoing is also in his final piece, Installed in the bathroom, a photographic print washer whose endless loop slowly deteriorates the silver prints it encases.
Isabel Legate’s oval-shaped canvases evoke luminous and delicate membranes. The oval symbolizes the egg, fertility, and eternity – It is the macrocosm and the microcosm. It is fitting that Legate works on silk, a fabric made by insects in complete metamorphosis. Legate’s paintings also reference beauty compacts with their rich and softly shimmering colors. She is interested in the ways consumer culture harnesses the power of bodily transformation to create an insatiable desire for that which is fleeting.
– And it is exactly that which is fleeting which sometimes provides a delicious relief. Gerardo López’s graphic graphite drawings exist as a kind of daydream one visits to escape corporate drudgery. The drawings are playful, delicately sparkling, and nostalgic. The text and logos, appropriated from corporate identity, become sigils of the chaos magic of consumer culture.
In the words of López: “Fantasy is the key.”
Untitled (Rinse), 2023
Print washer, 7 silver gelatin
Dimensions variable
Sclera and Kristina Darkly, 2023
Dye and acrylic on silk charmeuse
24 x 16 1⁄2 in and 36 x 16 1⁄2 in
Hyaluronic Cherry and Rind, 2023
Dye and acrylic on silk charmeuse
24 x 16 1⁄2 in and 36 x 16 1⁄2 in
Second Origin, 2023
Found photos mounted on coroplast, oak, stainless steel hardware
40 x 42 in.
Espora Xilófaga 3, 2022
Dye, copper, wood
31 1⁄2 x 13 x 10 1⁄2 in.
Espora Xilófaga 3, detail
Untitled, 2023
From Intuitive Map of an Entangled Consciousness
Mixed Media
39 1⁄4 x 19 1⁄2 in.
VODKA, 2021
Graphite on paper
12 1⁄2 x 9 1⁄2 in.
I <3 my aesthetic boards más que a mi mismo, 2023
Graphite, color pencil, acrylic and wax pencil on paper
12 x 8 1⁄2 in.
Untitled (Burn 02), 2016
Silver gelatin print
7 ¾ x 9 ¾ in.
Untitled (Burn 03), 2016
Silver gelatin print
7 ¾ x 9 ¾ in.
Zhi Wei Hiu
Untitled (Burn 01), 2016
Silver gelatin print
8 x 10 in.
Zhi Wei Hiu
Untitled (Burn 04), 2016
Silver gelatin print
7 ¾ x 9 ¾ in.
Zhi Wei Hiu
Untitled (Ovum 01), 2023
925 Sterling silver, unfixed patina
2 x 2 x 2 in.
Zhi Wei Hiu
Untitled (Ovum 02), 2023
925 Sterling silver, unfixed patina
2 x 2 x 2 in.
Untitled (Ovum 03), 2023
925 Sterling silver, unfixed patina
2 x 2 x 2 in.
Zhi Wei Hiu
Untitled (Tree), 2023
925 Sterling silver
4 1⁄4 x 1 x 1 in.