Mauricio Villa and Marisa Raygoza

Mauricio Villa (Mexicali, BC) and Marisa Raygoza (Tijuana, BC) take part in this exhibition with bodies of work that reflect on and interpret—through their own subjectivities—the act of contemplation.

Through her practice, Raygoza addresses contemporary hypervisibility resulting from constant access to information, questioning what we are truly looking at from within virtual space. Her translucent sculptures invite interaction, proposing a perceptual play in which the gaze constructs new visual possibilities. From a more introspective approach, Villa presents painterly landscapes of the Mexicali Valley that capture the luminous halo produced by the intensity of the sun when observed through the camera. This optical phenomenon, characteristic of the region’s clear skies, articulates a relationship between landscape, perception, and the lived experience of the territory, with light as a central axis.

Silēre Phōs Pherein (Silences that Phosphoresce) draws on Byung-Chul Han’s essay The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering, referenced by Raygoza in conversations leading up to the exhibition. In this text, the author proposes the atomization of time as a condition of the contemporary crisis, and suggests contemplation as a way of restoring meaning to experience. From this perspective, beauty does not manifest in immediacy, but in its persistence: in that which, like phosphorescence, endures.

— Mayté Miranda