Above all, movement and insistence. The repetition of patterns is also a way of saying: “There is life here, there was play here.” Entrelazo, Aurora Pellizzi’s exhibition at La Tallera, dedicated to the memory of Carla Stellweg, who carried out the curatorial work, unfolds as a space of expansion and constant discovery—something akin to looking at things for the first time and being aware of it.

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Dear Tania,

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The blacks in Yvonne Venegas’s photographs possess a fullness similar to the darkness we see when we close our eyes, or to the moment when the lights dim just before a play begins. Both require that interval before we enter the terrain of the dreamlike or the fictional; both are distinct states of reverie. The exhibition Drama mexicano is presented at Lateral, only a few steps from FOCO Lab. Entering a space devoted to exhibiting photographic practices produces singular experiences like that darkness made of ink, inviting us to lose ourselves in the loving—or funereal—stillness of the photograph, as Roland Barthes once described it.

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Tomás Díaz Cedeño’s most recent exhibition, curated by Gaby Cepeda, is titled Withdrawal. When I ask myself about the conceptual implications of keeping the title in English, I realize that its translation into Spanish is ambiguous. Depending on context, it could mean retirada (withdrawal), retracción (retraction), or even baja (as a synonym for loss). The artist’s previous projects lead me to expect formally dense works, industrial assemblages, and heavy materials. How might a title that gestures toward loss accompany work with such qualities? After an intuitive walk through the exhibition, I identify a repeated gesture: holes. Some are abrupt, interrupting the surfaces that give them form. Others are placed with great intentionality, fulfilling specific functions. It becomes evident that my initial question about loss—derived from the exhibition’s title—corresponds to this negativity-that-is-always-positivized in the hole. What unfolds here is an essay on desirous forces traversing what is solid.

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