Gabriel de la Mora | Tercerunquinto

On the ground floor, Proyectos Monclova presents Psicotropical, an exhibition by Gabriel de la Mora who presents two new series of works created with fragments of butterfly wings and sheets of obsidian and andesite. And on the top floor the gallery will present Obra gris. About form and color, an exhibition by the Tercerunquinto collective with pieces that reflect on the plastic, artistic and social dimensions of the architectural wall.

Gabriel de la Mora, Psicotropical

For the first time in Mexico, Gabriel de la Mora presents two new series of works: Lepidóptera and Ígnea. For the first of the two series, De la Mora uses fragments of butterfly wings to generate mosaics based on the repetition of patterns with differences that are resolved in a uniformity that goes from monochrome to abstraction, sometimes geometric, sometimes fractal, resulting in the image. The wings are acquired from butterfly farms in Peru, Indonesia, and Madagascar, where specimens have fulfilled their function and died due to natural causes, allowing the artist to transform their apparent end into the beginning of something else. De la Mora manages to isolate fragments as compositional elements to transform images into discourse.

The second series titled Ígnea, created with fragmented sheets of stone materials, such as obsidian and andesite, converses in a very interesting way with the butterfly wings. First, the color contrast: its monochromatic tones are a counterpoint to the colorful iridescence of the wings, in addition to the material condition -the weight of the stone compared to the lightness of the wingsand finally, the immanent temporalities -the stone has fewer modifications with the passage of time while the wings require a more delicate conservation treatment. Despite the contrasting difference between these materials, both working groups straddle the line between fragility and the eternal.

The Mexican artist's interest in working with materials that contain DNA has been a constant in his practice, from pieces made with human hair, eggshells, turkey feathers, and most recently, butterfly wings. Each wing fragment contains a genetic code, defined by time and its natural environment, which draws their identity and allows them to know, among many things, to migrate and define their territory, as mentioned by the Brazilian curator Marcello Dantas, in the gallery text that accompanies the exhibition. For De la Mora, the use of these components is a way of approaching painting and drawing; on this occasion, it is the colors and patterns of nature that have the most important role in the creation of these pieces.

The title of the exhibition, Psicotropical, arises from the profound encounter between the viewer and the work. In addition to the fact that many of the species of butterflies used by the artist are from the tropics, each piece, being a universe in itself, generates a visual effect of such great intensity that it awakens in us endless questions that move us and leave us thinking.

Tercerunquinto, Obra gris. Sobre la forma y el color

The term obra gris, or gray work, refers, in masonry vocabulary, to the unfinished state of a construction site, a moment of pause and also of possibility. For the artistic collective Tercerunquinto, this expression is also a way of naming the Mexican landscape of the periphery, not only in the geographical sense, but also in the sense of everything that does not meet the characteristics required by the conception of a sociopolitical advancement from architecture.

This exhibition that opens within the timeframe of ZsONA MACO at Proyectos Monclova includes pictorial and sculptural work, the result of long research and archival work that the group carries out in parallel to its explorations and interventions in public space. The pieces that are presented suggest new readings in relation to the shape and color of architectural constructions and initiate a reflection on the physical dimension of the wall. In addition, the range of colors that appears in these pieces points to a deliberation on the socioeconomic reality of the country as it corresponds to the cheapest exterior vinyl paints on the market and, therefore, most used in the construction of social housing.

Tercerunquinto investigates and explores the multiple meanings that walls can collect from a detailed analysis that includes their construction units (concrete blocks), the contexts where they are located, their alternate uses, tones, forms and representations... Each block and each color panel is a minute constructive unit that encapsulates in itself the possibility of development and, in this sense, the work of the artists implies a recognition of how the pictorial representation of walls also becomes a reflection on the social, political and cultural conditions of architecture.

— Proyectos Monclova