MARCOS CASTRO GROUP SHOW IN MUSEO TAMAYO

November 28th to February 28th, 2021

Curators: Humberto Moro and Andrés Valtierra with assistance from Regina Elías

OTRXS MUNDXS [Spanish gender neutral for “Other Worlds”] is a group exhibition that surveys and articulates the work of an heterogeneous, multicultural group of more than forty artists who work individually and collectively in Mexico City. Throughout four thematic sections (I. Capitalism and Domination, II. Seriality, Identity and Obliteration, III.Entropy, Speculation and Visualization, and IV. Body and Materiality), the exhibition presents recent works and special commissions, which reveal urgent discourses, representative of an artistic community who internalizes the paradigms and failures of late capitalism. OTRXS MUNDXS focuses on highlighting otherness: artist’s presentations constitute artistic microcosms which question the preconceived, hegemonic notions—or else, they solidify alternative visions—of what it means to make art in or from Mexico City.

OTRXS MUNDXS presents a majority of younger, or emerging artists—for some of whom this exhibition is their first major museum presentation—as it articulates the narratives in which they are invested with a selected group of more established artists who have been instrumental for defining the Mexican artistic landscape, both nationally and internationally.

Even though the exhibition is an exhaustive revision of the current artistic landscape, it is not intended to be an all-encompassing or universal exercise. In that sense, the exhibition has been constructed with an awareness of its own limitations and with the hope of posing one argument, amongst the many that can be made about art in the present.
The exhibition is, first and foremost, a platform for art and artists to trace conversations that have been at the forefront of global artistic discourse, presenting the important dialogue between local communities and Mexican artists with artists from Ecuador, República Dominicana, France, Brazil, Peru, and many cities of the United States. It also addresses the lack of institutional representation and attention to local communities, particularly for a younger generation of artists in the city. OTRXS MUNDXS consists of an unprecedented institutional response to the global pandemic; a gesture which, in the best of cases, anticipates a post-pandemic alterity, a world in which equality, social and interspecies justice and the well-being of the inhabitants of this complex city, is not posed as radical idea, but as an attainable reality.

Francis Alÿs, ASMA, Zazil Barba, Fernanda Barreto, Javier Barrios, Miguel Calderón, Pia Camil, Marcos Castro, Paloma Contreras Lomas, Chelsea Culprit, Pablo Dávila, ektor garcía, Mario García Torres y Sol Oosel, Yann Gerstberger, Julieta Gil, Daniel Godínez Nivón, Romeo Gómez López, Cristobal Gracia, Clotilde Jiménez, Madeline Jiménez, Ángela Leyva, Yeni Mao, Noe Martínez, Melanie McLain, Josué Mejía, Berenice Olmedo, Fernando Palma, Tania Pérez Córdova, Rita Ponce de León, Jerónimo Reyes-Retana, Armando Rosales, Marco Rountre, SANGREE, Barbara Sánchez Kane, Guillermo Santamarina, Ana Segovia, Tercerunquinto, Tezontle and Beatriz Zamora.

ABOUT MARCOS CASTRO

Marcos Castro’s practice is strongly marked by a style coming from the Mexican graphic and muralist tradition, which also highlights the influences of neo-expressionism and German expressionism, as well as a contemporary gothic or punk aesthetic.

Within his practice, the artist has developed a personal symbolic language articulated around several constants, such as an animalistic imaginary with hybrid beings, and above all a constant rereading of Mexican origin mythology. By deconstructing patriotic symbols or reinterpreting events all the way from pre-Hispanic history to the student movement of 1968, Marcos Castro conveys a personal vision of his contemporaneity, of its own historical and cultural moment, and at the same time incites the spectator to question the official historical and nationalist discourses.

Marcos’ work puts a spotlight on Mexico’s fragmented and incomplete identity, from which he picks up a multitude of symbolic elements and aesthetic codes and uses them to construct a new narrative; a kind of
personal mythology in which everyone, by sharing the same context, can recognize each other. The artists is positioned as a witness of his time and even as the bearer of a revolutionary torch, a torch belonging to a revolution of thought that forces us to question the established order and the most ingrained myths.

STATEMENT

The images I create come from my own experience and connection with nature. There is also an influence in my work from my cultural context, for instance, the importance of rituals. All of my work appears to be a story, permanently incomplete because there is no end or beginning. It is a story that takes place day by day, that is constantly evolving and continually created. In this way, each painting, drawing and sculpture appears as a fragment, an episode within the same world.

CHECK OUT MARCOS CASTRO'S PIECES