Subir y Bajar

Base Agency and MMGC (Martin Michaelis & Georgianna Chiang) present Subir y Bajar curated by Oaxaca-raised, Los Angeles-based artist Cosmas Brown opening during Mexico City’s Art Week 2022.

Subir y Bajar will be showcasing work by Tomás Díaz Cedeño, Milena Muzquiz, Cosmas and Damian Brown, Dr Lakra, and Alejandro Garcia Contreras.

This exhibition is a cross-cultural conversation between five artists of different backgrounds from Mexico and the U.S. Inspired by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes’ engraving by the same name, Subir y Bajar or the Rising and the Falling, is an exploration of the intimate and chaotic movements of the Universe, the Up and the Down. The artists assembled for this show create work that describes these forces in their many guises, each exploring unique avenues, while constantly overlapping in their practices.

As a predominantly sculptural show, the pieces inhabit the spaces as many beings, describing the rising forces of life, while insinuating fragility and the inevitable fall of all things. In her Segmented Totemic Ceramic Towers, Milena Muzquiz has developed a deeply intuitive and expressive artistic practice, redirecting traditional modes of ceramics with her hectic monuments. These works bring in the daily mundane of modern life, intermixed with the mysteries of the human figure, and questions of language and identity.

Each piece serves as an exploration and reinvention of natural materials, wherein the artists have taken what was once low, discarded, or destroyed, and resurrected it, constantly referencing the cyclical nature of the universe, and emphasizing the ability of art to resurrect discarded materials. While Dr. Lakra is known for his image-heavy work, his wooden Phallus sculptures tie his practice into the historical, directly referencing ancient fertility rites from across the globe.

Subir y Bajar investigates the relationship between Art and Body, by creating a space inhabited by totemic sculpture, allowing the viewer to navigate the landscape of confrontation and connection. Through his ceramic wall relief , Tomás Díaz Cedeño depicts nature in fleshy and often violent terms, a dialogue of man’s disruptive relationship with nature. Using process-based materials to pull the work into the present, his multidisciplinary practice nods intimately to references of ritual, destruction, and sacred environment.

The work touches deeply on narratives of alchemy and the occult. Alejandro Garcia Contreras creates a world of ceramic figures, and vessels that draw deeply from mystical beliefs and world mythology, as well as popular culture. His subject matter, often morbid or sexualized, pulls the viewer into a strange and fantastical universe that bridges the gap between ancient cultures and anime bondage.

Themes of transformation and fertility intimate the high points of the spiritual ideal, while the darker side of underworlds and necromancy remind us of the inevitable fall. Cosmas + Damian Brown has chosen to reconstruct the chopped limbs of a eucalyptus, combining them into primordial beings and painting them in garish colors. While dealing with concepts of imbalance, these pieces serve as a reminder of the supernatural properties of color, and the alchemical ability of the artist to restore life to that which is dead.

In his engraving Goya allegorically depicts the extravagance and demise of those who play with Fortune. As the caption adjoining this image reads: “Fortune treats very badly those who court her. She rewards with smoke the trouble of climbing and punishes with downfall those who have succeeded in rising."

—Base Agency & MMGC

The exhibition will be open from Wednesday to Monday, from 11 to 5pm.