Fine Arts exhibits the work of Damián Ortega for the first time

Mexico City. The artist and editor Damián Ortega maintained that his creation was full of content due to the power that exists in the street, in the square and the market, and acquires another dimension and richness due to the place where it is now displayed: the Palace of Fine Arts, a venue that exhibits his work for the first time.

Open to the public from today, the retrospective exhibition Damián Ortega: Pico and elote It is a journey through three decades of work, which includes emblematic pieces imbued with criticism and reinterpretation of elements of Mexican cultural production and tradition.

The exhibition brings together 82 creations by Ortega (Mexico City, 1967), such as the well-known Controller of the universe (2007) y cosmic object (2002), as well as some not seen in Mexico City. It was previously presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Monterrey.

The internationally known artist told The Conference who had the illusion of showing his work in the historic and relevant Palace of Fine Arts. He remarked that when the creation Going out to the public in a museum is where it really takes on real and political life, where there are readings, interpretations and an experience of getting there. All this gives it vitality and credibility..

Today at 6 p.m., Damián Ortega and the curator of the exhibition, José Esparza Chong Cuy, will have a conversation at the venue. On May 13, at 9 p.m., the artist will lead a virtual tour of the exhibition, broadcast through the Facebook and YouTube accounts of the Palacio de Bellas Artes Museum.

Ortega highlighted that some of his creations take on a new impulse when they arrive at the museum, “obviously the Volkswagen (cosmic object), the truly familiar, popular and historic car of Mexico City. Exposing it is very exciting. Without a doubt, in the context of the murals it is doubly crazy.

“It also happens with Controller of the universe, in addition to the very nice relationship with Diego Rivera’s murals and being located within this magnetic center where the viewer has the capacity for transformation. There are many pieces. I think about the exhibition of Russian constructivism that was presented in this space and I love seeing the Cruz Azul uniforms here now as a great utopia of the Mexican cooperative.”

The creator said that he became interested in the public and political meaning of muralism since his foray into caricature, which recovers both components because it reaches the common space, even if it is printed. There is the critical and historical work of how movements or arts are going to be reinterpreted. I have always admired muralists and they have also been my object of study.

The language of tools

The artist, who at the beginning of his career was a political caricaturist, explained that the materials with which he has worked, from clay, labor artifacts, corn and other foods They are half of the piece and where there is meaning. There the work begins and the ideas are created, even simply as matter. Tools are also a language. When you start playing with them the ideas and the work begin to come out..

The curator José Esparza Chong Cuy commented to this newspaper about the materials that Ortega has used. “In the series Masks, which Damián Ortega started during the pandemic lockdown, used household utensils, from a tree branch or the shell of an egg to a beer bottle, or even tortillas. Corn has been a recurring material in his practice. Ortega transforms these elements to give them a different symbolic value than what they already have.

“Damián is governed by a curiosity that gives him the opportunity to try to understand the basics of an object, which he transforms and disassembles as many times as he considers necessary, and which he puts back together, whether it is the product or the idea, which mutates into a thing. different from what it was. For example in tired peakan inert construction tool comes to life.”

The executive director and chief curator of the Storefront for Art and Architecture, in New York, mentioned that “the beak and the corn, which give the exhibition its title, are two key pieces to read the universe of Damián Ortega’s interests, but also 120 daysin which the author appropriates 120 coca-colas made of ceramic that are no longer the container that a company uses neocapitalist to become something baroque.”

Esparza concluded that the exhibition “is very generous because all viewers can relate to the images generated by his pieces, from an installation like the one in Harvestof construction rods, with which people will be able to see the shadows of the alphabet in a very simple way and everyone will be able to read it.”

The exhibition Damián Ortega: Pico and elote It is exhibited in the Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts (Av. Juarez s/n, Historical Center).