Octavio Moctezuma

Gobernador presents the opening of its exhibition program with Interocepciones, a solo show by Octavio Moctezuma (Mexico, 1957) curated by Emmanuel Albarrán Rueda.

The exhibition brings together, for the first time, the eponymous series produced between 2019 and 2025, in dialogue with works from the 1990s that function as key precedents to his current line of research. This body of work intersects art and science, shaped by the artist’s medical training and his participation in transdisciplinary programs such as the Art, Science and Technologies (ACT) program at UNAM.

Starting from self-representation, Moctezuma implements methodologies from science in his recent work—such as fluid mechanics and neuroaesthetics—to move beyond the traditional portrait. Through controlled accident and chemical experimentation, the artist manages to materialize interoception, translating the complex perception of the body’s interior into the pictorial medium.

— Gobernador

In the curator’s words:

“Beginning with these Renaissance drawings [the anatomical models of Andreas Vesalius], Moctezuma delved into descriptive anatomy to carry out graphic experiments on schematism and scientific illustration, developing the idea of dissection as a gesture of opening and exposing the interior… Three decades later, in Interocepciones, we recognize another stage of these investigations, where he has completely moved away from naturalism and literalness to propose an expressionist and informalist painting.”