Following meticulous and self-created methodologies, Gabriel de la Mora researches, collects, classifies, catalogs, and manipulates remarkably diverse materials. These materials are familiar, sourced from quotidian objects—his ongoing series The weight of thought, for example, repurposes leather and rubber shoe soles. de la Mora’s materials of choice are those often considered waste or residue: collected artifacts and antiques, obsolete mechanical and utilitarian objects, parts, corporeal matter, architectural scrap. Through these, the artist explores finitude and permanence, the passing of time, it’s bracketing, and the transformation of matter and energy alike. The formal outcome of these processes plays with pre-established notions of drawing, painting, and sculpture. Characterized by their visual potency, the resulting bodies of work complicate theoretical and historical art terms (the ready-made, the objet-trouvé, the monochrome, the peinture en plein air, among others). As such, they establish an ironic spin on the abstract and minimalist aesthetics and inquire about the ever-changing notion of painting as a phenomenon. Can painting originate itself with the passing of time and without any intervention from the artist’s hand? This apparent negation of painting and other ontological musings formulated by de la Mora’s oeuvre is extended to artistic practice at large: When is an artwork born and when does it reach its conclusion? What is the role of the artist within the creative act? Coupled with equally methodical and strict processes, Gabriel de la Mora has constituted a practice in which the role of the artist is not to create nor to destroy, but to transform.
Gabriel de la Mora was born on September 23, 1968 in Mexico City, where he lives and works. He earned an MFA in Painting (2001-03) from Pratt Institute, NY and a BFA in Architecture (1987-91) from Universidad Anáhuac del Norte, Mexico City. He has been a Fulbright García-Robles grant recipient, a grantee from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, and a member of the National System of Creators-FONCA (2013-15), Mexico.
His work is part of public and private collections in Mexico and abroad, among them: Fundación/Colección JUMEX, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Internacional Rufino Tamayo, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo-MUAC, and Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City; Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico; Museum of Contemporary Art-MOCA, Los Angeles, CA; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; El Museo del Barrio, NYC, NY; Albright-Knox, Buffalo, NY; Perez Art Museum, Miami, FL; Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY; Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago de Compostela; Colección Banco de la República and Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, Bogotá; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano-MALBA, Buenos Aires.
He is represented by PROYECTOSMONCLOVA (Mexico City), Timothy Taylor (London), Sicardi Ayers Bacino (Houston) and PERROTIN (Paris, New York, Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Hong Kong).
Cien del MUAC exhibition is structured as multiple discourses, guided not by a thematic line, but by the relevance that certain works and authors already have in the consciousness of contemporary art in our country, where each piece addresses in itself a story about the museum’s collection and contemporary artistic practices.
Artistas: Carlos Aguirre, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Francis Alÿs, Carlos Amorales, Julieta Aranda, Carlos Arias Vicuña, Marcela Armas, Francois y Bernard Baschet, Erick Beltrán, Maris Bustamante, Tania Candiani, Mónica Castillo, Miguel Castro Leñero, Arnaldo Coen, Armando Cristeto Patiño, Minerva Cuevas, Ximena Cuevas, Iván Edeza, Felipe Ehrenberg, Juan Francisco Elso, Helen Escobedo, Manuel Felguérez, Claudia Fernández, Julio Galán, Fernando García Ponce, Mario García Torres, Javier de la Garza, Gelsen Gas, Gunther Gerzso, Alberto Gironella, Thomas Glassford, Mathias Goeritz, José Miguel González Casanova, Gráfica del 68, Lourdes Grobet, Silvia Gruner, Yolanda Gutiérrez, Enrique Guzmán, Jan Hendrix, Melquiades Herrera, Hersúa, Roberto Huarcaya, Graciela Iturbiude, Enrique Jezik, Yioshai Jusidman, Leandro Katz, Perla Krauze, Myra Landau, Magali Lara, Pedro Lasch, Daniel Lezama, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Ernesto Mallard, T<eresa Margolles, César Martínez, Daniel Joseph Martínez, Mónica Máyer, Enrique Metinides, Erick Meyenberg, Sarah Minter, Grupo Mira, Gabriel de la Mora, Rodrigo Moya, Ricardo Nicolayevsky, Yoshua Okón, Gabriel Orozco, Damián Ortega, Rubén Ortiz Torres, Martha Pacheco, Marta Palau, Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Adolfo Patiño, Grupo Proceso Pentágono, Vicente razo, Ricardo Regazzoni, Pedro Reyes, Carla Rippey, Manuel Rocha Iturbide, Miguel Rodríguez Sepúlveda, Vicente Rojo, Graciela Sacco, Kazuya Sakai, José Luis Sánchez Rull, Guillermo Santamarina, Semefo, Teresa Serrano, Santiago Sierra, Melanie Smith y Rafael Ortega, Taller de Documentación Visual, Tercerunquinto, Francisco Toledo, Pablo Vargas Lugo, Germán Venegas, Lorena Wolffer y Nahum B. Zenil.
Catalog available in the museum shop as well as downloadable online on the MUAC website.
12 years after the last revision of the collection of this museum, Cien del MUAC explores its artistic and documentary heritage to share with the public works that are already referents of the collective imagination and thought. With the participation of 96 artists and collectives, we selected key works in the history of contemporary Mexican art, with a variety of genres and formats in a period of a little more than half a century. This catalog also includes recently acquired pieces that strengthen the artistic and cultural heritage of UNAM.
Gabriel de la Mora @ Art Basel Hong Kong 2021 / PROYECTOS MONCLOVA Booth 1D55 21.05 – 23.05.2021
We are thrilled to announce our participation at Art Basel Hong Kong with a solo booth by Gabriel de la Mora.
The series Neornithes ventures into the realm of animal-sourced materials as it employs industrially dyed turkey feathers presented in 13 different hues. For this series de la Mora implements a distinctly rigorous methodology: he selects a reduced area of each feather, cuts it, and pastes it onto a paper. These squares are then arranged to build chromatic patterns inspired by modernist points of reference such as the work of artist Josef Albers.
https://www.artbasel.com/hong-kong/the-show
Curator Tatiana Cuevas
Museo Amparo, Puebla, México.
28 de febrero al 31 de diciembre de 2021.
Artists:
Abraham Cruzvillegas, Ana Roldán, Carlos Amorales, Cynthia Gutiérrez, Damián Ortega, Daniel Guzmán, Daniel Monroy Cuevas, Diego Berruecos, Dr. Lakra, Edgar Orlaineta, Edgardo Aragón, Eduardo Abaroa, Eduardo Terrazas, Erick Meyenberg, Fernando Palma, Francis Alÿs, Gabriel de la Mora, Gabriel Orozco, Gabriel Rosas Alemán, Germán Venegas, Jonathan Hernández, Jorge de la Garza, Jorge Satorre, José Dávila, Julio Galán, Lourdes Grobet, Magali Lara, Mariana Castillo Deball, Melanie Smith, Minerva Cuevas, Pablo Sigg, Pedro Reyes, Tercerunquinto, Teresa Margolles, Helen Escobedo y Vicente Rojo.
https://museoamparo.com/colecciones/105-el-tiempo-en-las-cosas-salas-de-arte-contemporaneo/artistas
Timothy Taylor is pleased to announce our online presentation for Art Basel Miami Beach. The presentation brings together ten contemporary artists who explore the relationship between colour, shape and surface to create symbolic meaning.
Proyectos Monclova presents a selection of works by five Mexican artists from two different generations: Gabriel de la Mora (*1968), Helen Escobedo (1934- 2010), Fernando García Ponce (1933 – 1987), Edgar Orlaineta (*1972), and Eduardo Terrazas (*1936). Including two sculptures, four paintings, and four mixed media works, these five artists explore the history of modernity within Mexico through a continuous dialogue of works dating back to 1970.
I draw these letters
as the day draws its images
and blows over them and does not return
Writing, Octavio Paz
The poet is a creator who disappears behind his work, says Octavio Paz. This condition is necessary for the reader to complete the poem, since the images can only be freely interpreted when they have been separated from their author. Paz ponders with Heraclitus that it is the logos itself that is manifested in the poem and, through its matter, the individual subjectivity of the author is not expressed, but the voice of all humanity. Similarly, in the works that comprise the series The Sense of Possibility, by Gabriel de la Mora, the artist gives place to nature, which literally acts on the canvases.
These pieces were conceived as a response to the environmental deterioration caused by our industrial and extractive activities. During a visit to Monterrey in September 2015, De la Mora documented the gradual deterioration of Cerro de las Mitras, where there are deposits of raw materials for the manufacture of cement. The series consist of landscapes and seascapes acquired in antique and flea markets – decorative pieces, by forgotten or unknown authors, perhaps as a result of quasi-industrial production lines – that were exposed to the elements for different periods of time.
The process reverses the meaning of outdoor painting: that idyllic figure of the painter in the field that popular culture tends to regard as the ultimate attempt to capture the essence of the landscape. Here nature is imposed on the pieces: the wind, the sun, the humidity, hailstones and changes in temperature act on the pieces to transform them. They have ceased to be a representation of the landscape to become an indication of the presence of nature and its effects. In them the tension is manifested between the practice of painting with its claim to eternity –the image that fixes the moment to stop time, the technique that has developed the materials that try to prevent the decay of the pictorial object– and the deterioration caused over time, a slow, almost imperceptible erosion that has been halted and stabilized again.
The pictorial image is an instant charged with subjectivity that De la Mora turns into a device at service of memory, understood according to the philosopher Manuel Cruz1, as a human glance about the world, as an instrument to see reality from another perspective. However, the procedure that the artist has used causes a double negative, each of these pieces is the representation of a landscape that is no longer there, and at the same time, it is a representation that disappears: it is the erased memory of an absence indicating that the memory is always on the verge of oblivion.
https://es-la.facebook.com/museogoitia
Curator:Abraham Villavicencio.
http://www.munal.mx/en/exposicion/originalmentefalso
http://www.munal.mx
Timothy Taylor is delighted to present Neornithes, a new body of work by Gabriel de la Mora. Referring to the taxonomic description for modern birds, Neornithes represents the culmination of de la Mora’s investigations into the role of biological material as both medium and metaphor.
https://www.timothytaylor.com/exhibitions/gabriel-de-la-mora-neornithes/
Perrotin presents Gabriel de la Mora’s first exhibition at our Paris location. De la Mora is a conceptual artist based in Mexico, whose work explores alternative modes of image-making. He works in a diverse range of materials including eggshells, sound screens, human hair, and found objects. The artist’s serial work constitutes a structure of mirror images, echoes, and repetitions.
https://www.perrotin.com/exhibitions/gabriel_de_la_mora_-echo/7867
https://www.perrotin.com/
The exhibition by Gabriel de la Mora (Mexico City, 1968) and Sofie Muller (Ghent, 1974) explores the passage of time and its impact on nature and human beings. The exhibition is configured as a dialogue between Muller’s sculptures and Gabriel De la Mora’s paintings, where the concepts of deconstruction and decadence coexist. Gabriel de la Mora presents a series of found landscapes that were made with oil or acrylic between 1950 and 1990 in Mexico. De la Mora exposes these paintings to the elements for a certain period so that the sun, changes in temperature, acid rain, and other climatic phenomena transform or disappear —partially or completely— the original landscape they represented. With this process in which time and nature take on an important role, de la Mora makes an analogy to the damage caused by a man on the landscape; for this purpose, he mentions: “just as man destroys nature, nature will destroy the representation of nature made by man and will return it to nature”. The title of each piece indicates the days when these paintings were exhibited, which mainly represented mountains or views in which lakes, rivers, and oceans appeared, spaces that suffer the effects of climate change and pollution caused mostly by humans. Sofie Muller, for her part, presents pieces made with alabaster – wounded, cracked and scarred heads – that reflect the deterioration of the human body over time as a consequence of a life defined by struggle, manipulation, personal experience, and the wounds. These pieces that are fragile, poetic, and brutal at the same time are placed on the floor, gently laid on a worn pillow, or suspended on the walls. The sculptures appeal to the study carried out by the artist on the manipulation of the human body and the concept of “manageable human”; Furthermore, Muller exhibits a series of drawings made with blood on alabaster that appeal to the fragility of the human body through the use of natural and organic materials. The overall result is determined by the age of the material used.
http://proyectosmonclova.com/exposicion/pentimento/
http://proyectosmonclova.com/
Starting April 25, you have a new appointment with Mexican contemporary art at Casa de México. We inaugurated the exhibition Inevidencias, by Gabriel de la Mora.
This exhibition brings together works from three different series by the Mexican artist Gabriel de la Mora. Being a consequence of each other, these series allow observing the development of the work of an artist who has sought to explore painting, drawing, and sculpture from a radical subversion of the bases and procedures of these disciplines.
At the same time, the exhibition allows us to get closer and know the work processes that the artist performs in his study of Mexico City, characterized by a meticulous and obsessive exploration of the infinite possibilities that iterations and repetitions allow.
https://www.casademexico.es/detalle-evento/5cac9cb441570e76f00fb467
Perrotin New York is proud to host Gabriel de la Mora’s first exhibition with the gallery. The unique methods and materials de la Mora uses—feathers, eggshells, and human hair, in this case—stem from the artist’s decision to “quit painting” in 2004. The result has been an exploration of alternative modes of image-making, wherein seemingly minimal and often monochrome-looking surfaces belie great technical complexity, conceptual rigor, and embedded information.
https://www.perrotin.com/exhibitions/gabriel_de_la_mora_-tntr-aa/6618
www.perrotin.com
This exhibition is organized by the Pinacoteca of the University of Colima to show the works of Gabriel de la Mora that are part of the Collection of the University of Colima and the Secretary of Culture of the State of Colima.
Gabriel de la Mora: Crystals of Inevidence / Cristales de Inevidencia
September 7 – October 19, 2017
Sicardi Gallery
