Gabriel de la Mora

Artist Gabriel de la Mora will give a guided tour of his exhibition 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.

— Proyectos Monclova