After two years' presence in Mexico in project-specific spaces, Galerie Nordenhake has established itself in la Colonia Roma - the bohemian block in the heart of CDMX - with a totally re-articulated space designed by the acclaimed architect Frida Escobedo (Mexico City, 1979). The new gallery is situated in a former warehouse on Calle Monterrey, one of the main arteries of Colonia Roma Norte. The space has been conceived as a dynamic new platform for artworks and exhibitions while preserving the existing character of the building.
In conversation with Frida Escobedo about the evolution of the project we developed the idea of making the architectural process public. While engaging the public in Escobedo's own practice this approach has also introduced the audience to Galerie Nordenhake's history and core values from a context-based spatial and expository experience.
The inaugural exhibition, Today, has developed from the same principals. The exhibition brings together artwork by...Escobedo with two seminal artists: Francis Alÿs (Antwerp, 1959) and On Kawara (Kariya, 1932 – New York, 2014). Today takes its name from On Kawara’s signature series of work, and explores the diverse ways in which time can be understood. In this same manner, the three pieces that compose the exhibition engage with the implications and the effects that the passage of time has over the space itself, whether physical, material or imaginary. The Other (2018) by Frida Escobedo is an installation composed of 10 pieces of glass extracted from the windows of a dilapidated building from the 70’s in Colonia Juarez, whose materiality reveals traces of the multiple stories they have borne. In this way the remnants of dirt, paint and adhered stickers on the hazy glass surfaces function as an almost archaeological material that displays a narrative of the course of architectural modernity in Mexico.
Japanese conceptual artist, On Kawara, began his Today series of paintings on January 4, 1966 and painted the numerical date of each day on that day, a practice he continued until his death. Here we present July 9, 1981, which is accompanied by the artist’s own purpose-made box for the work including a newspaper page from the same date. While On Kawara's painting registers temporality within in the globalized Western calendar, the work enters into an antithetical dialog with Escobedo's architectural suite which conversely communicates the accumulative passage of lived time.
Finally, Sunpath (1999), one of the most iconic pieces of Francis Alÿs's production of the 90’s, engages in a subtle antagonism with the other two works. Touching on both the continuous action of performance and photographic documentation, the work records the slow passage of a group of people as they shelter beneath the shadow of the Mexican flag cast across Mexico City's Plaza del Zócalo. The trajectory of the shadow over the course of a day marks time in space like a benevolent sun dial.
Entrada actualizada el el 05 feb de 2021
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