Alejandro Ponce

Arte Abierto presents N4V1D4D and Detumescent Tree (Fall) by Alejandro Ponce.

A new Open Art program in which we commission a work that seeks to decode and play with the concept/tradition/folklore of this month's celebrations.

This 2023 N4V1D4D begins a new Open Art program, in which every December we commission the creation of a work from an artist to decode and play with the folklore of Christmas, the winter solstice celebrations and their codes.

N4V1D4D seeks to provoke multiple playful, formal or conceptual reinterpretations of the traditions, ironies, anachronisms, folklores and imaginaries of the Christmas season and its symbolisms.

This year the selected artist is Alejandro Ponce with Destumescent Tree (fall), 2023 which will be exhibited outside the Open Art space.

Alejandro Ponce Detumescent Tree (Fall), 2023

One of the origins of the Christmas tree tradition as we know it is attributed to the pagan celebration of the Yule festivities, carried out by the ancient Germanic peoples to celebrate the entrance of the winter solstice and the god Odin. As in many other ancient cultures, the verticality of this tree – originally oak and not pine – was attributed an erectile, magical and vital force.

Just as a vertical monolith represents vitality and the transcendental on a symbolic and ritualistic level, on the contrary, a horizontal or resting monolith represents a tomb or decay.

Based on a game between the vertical and the horizontal, and all the concepts that these two positions encompass, Detumescent Tree (Fall) is a small moment before a tragedy, the fall of a Christmas tree towards horizontality from a building.

Alejandro Ponce (Mexico City, 1987) is an interdisciplinary artist who works in media such as sculpture, sound art, installation, performance, drawing and painting. Among his fields of interest are the analysis of deep memory, hypnosis as a tool for artistic production, the language of the unconscious, psychotherapy and the enigma.

— Arte Abierto