By Evan Moffitt
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Rodrigo Hernández, Vida interior, 2015, papier maché, wood, lack, Indian ink, 68 x 38 cm. Courtesy kurimanzutto, Mexico City; photograph: © Diego Pérez
In an ongoing series, frieze asks a critic to select the best shows currently on view in their city. A new show will be posted each day this week.
Rodrigo Hernández, ‘Every forest madly in love with the moon has a highway crossing it from one side to the other’
kurimanzutto
6 February – 19 March
This solo show of sculptures by the Mexican, Basel-based sculptor Rodrigo Hernández is the third in a series of six exhibitions curated by Chris Sharp at kurimanzutto. The long, narrow back building of the sprawling complex is a particularly uncompromising space, yet Hernández’s small wall sculptures have plenty of room to breathe.
Made from wire and silver-painted paper to appear like hand-hammered metal, they recall the ideographic images on Mesoamerican pottery and the folk art often found in Mexican cities like Taxco, famed for its silverwork. Hung at various heights, the works appear to float through the space, amplifying the dynamism of their amoebic forms. Recalling the vibrant interiors of Mexican houses, the walls are painted in bright shades of yellow, orange and blue – a refreshing touch of exuberance in a city where many of the blue chip galleries opt for muted, minimal austerity.
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Fred Sandback, Untitled (Triangular Construction), 1989, chrome yellow and white acrylic yarn, installation view at Casa Gálvez, Mexico City . Courtesy Proyectos Monclova and The Fred Sandback Estate; photograph: Moritz Bernoully
Fred Sandback, ‘The Properties of Light’
Proyectos Monclova and Casa Gilardi
2 February – 11 March, 2016
In 2002, Fred Sandback had a revelation in the Convento de Tlalpan in Mexico City (better known as Capilla de las Capuchinas), a chapel designed by the late Mexican architect Luis Barragan. The minimalist artist had long aspired to make ‘sculptures without interiors’, and Barragan’s architecture was all about the play of light and shadow. In the chapel, specifically placed windows cast natural light onto a cross so that its shadow stretches across the altar wall.
In collaboration with the Fred Sandback estate, Proyectos Monclova have installed works by Sandback in three private homes around Mexico City, including Barragan’s own residence. With their vibrant painted walls and deftly coordinated lightwells, Barragan’s buildings merge perfectly with the bright strings of Sandback’s sculptures, sculptures that here make their strongest impression when casting shadows upon colour-matched walls.
At the gallery, a more traditional exhibition of Sandback’s work is equally as beautiful, if more predictable, with the open floor-plan accommodating six larger-scale works that successfully demonstrate the full exuberance of an artist predominantly known for his visual and conceptual austerity.
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Korakrit Arunanondchai, ‘Dear Chantri, the you of the future may collect the us in the present maybe decide to call it a history put it in a room filled with people and give them all funny names’, 2016, exhibition view. Courtesy the artist and Lodos gallery, Mexico City; photograph: Ramiro Chaves
Korakrit Arunanondchai, ‘Dear Chantri, the you of the future may collect the us in the present, maybe decide to call it a history, put it in a room filled with people and give them all funny names’
Lodos
5 February – 6 April, 2016
Thai artist wunderkind Korakrit Arunanondchai is a divisive figure. While maybe best known for his body-print paintings (which admittedly read like bad art school riffs on Yves Klein), Arunanondchai’s work is really an extended examination of spectacle.
Currently on view at Lodos gallery, his latest film Dear Chantri … (2016) not only questions the spectacular nature of internet culture (which extends further than Guy Debord could have ever predicted) but also how technological mediation has altered the limits of the human body and our notions of the infinite. Incorporating clips from Thai reality television shows and news broadcasts as well as sweeping vistas captured with drone-mounted HD cameras, the 15-minute film shows the artist painting in the wild, as if trapped in a kind of monastic performance or artistic self-flagellation. Presented in an ‘egg yolk yellow’ room to a drum and bass soundtrack, the accomplished film is a multi-layered meditation on humanity’s uncertain future.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.