Los placeres y las penas de la conciencia, an exhibition by Andrés Gómez Servín

Andrés Gómez Servín has for several years collected all kinds of images and objects while traversing Mexico City. The things he collects are what often go unnoticed and repeated in different public spaces. For example, through his publishing house Mixed Media Press he has produced a book on the designs of the city's doors, and, recently, another book on different arrangements of small colored mosaics that decorate the walls of houses and buildings. Through the accumulation and serial presentation of these objects, his works show us small differences and variations in secret codes. His process typically includes a manual transcription of these records into such media as drawing, painting, and sculpture.

In his most recent solo exhibition, Los placeres y las penas de la conciencia, curated by Alex Romero and presented by Agencia de Arte in an apartment in Colonia Roma, the artist displays a set consisting of four works, four series, a polyptych, and, as a bonus track, a playlist.*1 The series include Mosaicos de la Colonia Roma, a version of the artist’s records consisting of fourteen drawings using colored pencils on paper; Nubes, fourteen cyanotypes on paper that record the different shapes that a cotton pad took on when handled by the artist at different times during his most recent birthday; El Reino de los Cielos, two records of a handful of chia seeds tossed at random; and Interfonos (1),*2 seven sculptures hanging on a wall. In this last series, Gómez Servin has perforated cement blocks with patterns that he found in different doorways and that originally served to let sound pass.

Although the present motifs and processes are mostly typical of his production, Gómez Servin takes advantage of the peculiarities of the exhibition’s space in order to add various layers of complexity to his work. Proof of this is the work made expressly for the exhibition titled Escalera, which reproduces in volcanic rock, on a table, the ladder that must be climbed in order to arrive there and dismounted in order to leave. With this gesture, the artist has us participate in a game of relations linking us directly with both the object and the space.

Something similar takes place in the site-specific installation I can feel the heat closing in, a black self-adhesive vinyl with cut-out tile letters, placed in the hallway next to the entrance on clear glass. The phrase is legible thanks to the ambient light that passes through it, and refers to the first sentence of the novel Naked Lunch by the writer William S. Burroughs, in which Burroughs fictionalized his stay in Mexico City, as well as the murder he committed against his wife Joan Vollmer in 1951, which occurred just two blocks away. The work makes us aware of the proximity of the crime scene, generating a geographic relationship in which we are witnesses to one of the city’s many stories. Can we feel the heat getting closer?

In this same sense, Interfonos (2) opens up possibilities of a relationship, but this time as a provocation. This work consists of an advertisement printed in silkscreen on adhesive vinyl that the artist gathered, pasted on paper, and framed. The advertisement offers three contact numbers and includes the phrases “INTERFONOS CERCA ELECTRIFICADA” (“ELECTRIFIED FENCE INTERCOMS") and “Servicio, Venta e Instalaciones” (“Service, Sales, and Facilities”).

One is very likely to have seen this advertisement (or something similar) on the doors of dozens of houses, with variations in print quality and color. If we think of the advertisement in the context of art, we can venture the hypothesis of an affective intensity, not in the sense of abstract expressionism—gestural emotive force—but as a need for subsistence. The piece reveals a certain intimacy of the capitalist subject in which economic forces affect libidinal forces up until taking them to the public space in search of a concrete solution: work.

Los placeres y las penas de la conciencia is a lattice of connections, whether potential or current. The works presented by Gómez Servín are links with time, memory, presence, use, and affect. It’s clear that his work is less focused on the properties of the objects he uses than on the relationships they produce: they are the result of an intimate correspondence with the minuscule forces that traverse the city.

The exhibition can be visited until June 19, by appointment via the Instagram account of Agencia de Arte @agenciadearte.mx

— Eric Valencia

Translated to English by Byron Davies

*1: open.spotify.com/playlist/6uO3MdFS7VeccqcJB93oJE?si=eb4f6f970be44213

*2: Since a series and a work have the same title, we should add for clarity: for Interfonos (1), wall sculpture, perforated concrete, 7 pieces, 20 x 20 x 3 cm. each; and for Interfonos (2), collage on paper, banak frame, 29 x 21 cm.