Gabriel Orozco’s major survey at Museo Jumex
There’s a mathematical order lurking within the seeming chaos of entropy, a tension Gabriel Orozco has spent his celebrated career untangling. Since the early 1990s, the Mexican artist has reconfigured the detritus of society and the natural world into new constellations of meaning, finding fresh destinations for objects in time and space. Now, a sweeping museum-wide survey at Jumex Museum lays bare his relentless curiosity and unrestrained inventiveness, presenting over 300 objects across four floors and the museum’s public plaza. The show traces Orozco’s deep anthropological and psychological excavations into the material realm, constantly questioning what art can be, how it is made and in the process, the very structures of reality.
As its title, “Politécnico Nacional,” suggests, the exhibition positions Orozco as a kind of engineer of form, piecing together compositions where objects become both code and critique, revealing the political, economic and anthropological forces embedded within them. “Every piece of the universe that we start to interact with is charged,” the artist tells Observer. “That’s why I can work with the politics of stone, clay, toilet paper or a car. Everything is charged already, but then you try to recycle their functionality in cultural, linguistic, political and physical terms because there’s also a relation between the body and how we exist.” Marking his first museum exhibition in Mexico since 2006, this major survey also coincides with the debut of Orozco’s Master Plan for the Chapultepec Forest, a five-year endeavor in which he collaborated with national and international experts in environmental restoration, urban infrastructure, history, archaeology and other fields to transform Mexico City’s most significant park into a Bio-Cultural Forest, enhancing accessibility while increasing its biodiversity and resilience.
Gabriel Orozco’s “Politécnico Nacional” opens on February 1 and will be on view at Museum Jumex through August 3.
Marina Abramović at Luis Barragán’s La Cuadra
La Cuadra San Cristóbal is, without question, one of Luis Barragán’s greatest masterpieces. The way its vibrant pink walls, azure water fountain and lush natural surroundings interact creates a mesmerizing dialogue between light, architecture and atmosphere. Seamlessly blending traditional Mexican architectural elements with modernist principles, La Cuadra embodies Barragán’s signature command of color, light and geometric form.
Long closed to the public aside from a handful of private visits, the estate is finally set to become a cultural landmark following its 2017 acquisition by Fundación Fernando Romero. Architect and philanthropist Fernando Romero purchased the property not only to preserve Barragán’s architectural vision but also to transform it into a dynamic cultural platform. Once fully realized, the site will house multiple exhibition spaces for both permanent and temporary projects, an artist residency program, a library and even a podcast production studio, among other initiatives. While the beloved estate won’t officially open to the public until October 2025, visitors in town for ZONAMACO will get an exclusive preview with a special performance by Marina Abramović—an event already shaping up to be one of the unmissable highlights of the entire art week.
Andrea Ferrero’s “OTRXS MUNDXS” at Museo Tamayo
Working with cacao and other perishable materials as her primary medium, Peruvian and Mexico-based artist Andrea Ferrero crafts what she calls “appetible” art—a sharp, subversive examination of colonial domination and exploitation. Her work unpacks the historical and ongoing realities of global trade, particularly in commodities like cacao and sugar, which serve as potent metaphors for entrenched power structures and deep-seated societal behaviors.
Commissioned for the Tamayo Museum’s “OTRXS MUNDXS,” a survey of current trends in Mexican art, Ferrero’s installation delivers a pointed intervention into one of Mexico City’s most loaded historical monuments: Manuel Tolsá’s equestrian statue of Charles IV of Spain. Known as El Caballito (The Little Horse), the statue has occupied various locations across the city since its completion in 1803, standing as an enduring, if increasingly contested, relic of colonial rule. Ferrero’s full-scale replica trades bronze for chocolate, a material steeped in its own fraught history of labor, extraction and global trade, turning the very power structures Tolsá’s monument embodies on their head. All the King’s Horses reimagines a future for colonial artifacts that continue to cast long shadows over the present. Encased in industrial refrigerators and staged atop a dramatic red carpet, the work foreshadows both its inevitable dissolution and a broader reckoning with history.
“OTRXS MUNDXS” is on view through March 16.
Ad Monoliti at BODEGA
OMR, one of Mexico’s leading galleries, is making a bold move during this art week with the launch of BODEGA, a new project space in collaboration with Galería Agustina Ferreyra. Tucked within the gallery’s storage facilities in Colonia Doctores, the space opens with a solo exhibition by Ad Minoliti, an Argentine artist whose work has been drawing significant international attention in recent years.
Minoliti’s practice is rooted in geometry and color, but her world-making extends far beyond formal aesthetics. She constructs non-binary speculative fictions that unfold as intricate, multi-part multimedia installations, merging geometric abstraction, modernist architecture and queer and feminist theory into a singular pictorial language. Through these visual and spatial interventions, Minoliti envisions a non-human heterotopia—an alternative universe where the constructs of gender, education, disability, architecture and design are reimagined. By dismantling conventional perceptions of the body and the societal structures that define it, her work offers a radical and necessary challenge to the norms that shape human experience.
Ad Minoliti’s “JARDÍN” opens on February 3 and is on through March 15 at BODEGA.
Pedro Friedeberg at SAEGER Galeria
The hypnotic, absurdly architectural spaces conjured by Mexican artist and designer Pedro Friedeberg have fascinated Mexican collectors and art lovers for decades, and now, at last, the international art world is catching on. His work—an intricate collision of Surrealist juxtapositions, bizarre imagery and optical illusions—draws from a deep well of literary, religious and symbolic references, all deployed to challenge our perceptions of reality and question the meanings of all symbols.
His boundless inventiveness and exuberantly immersive universe take center stage in “Símetrias Y Punto De Fuga,” a career survey curated by Michel Blancsubé at Saenger Galería that spans 70 years of his singular practice. As the exhibition text aptly states, Friedeberg’s work embodies “the excesses of an uninhibited free spirit who ravenously, pleasurably and exultantly embraces everything that comes into his head, and does so with erudition, application, determination—and talent.” Born in Florence, the city of Brunelleschi’s perspective grids, Friedeberg has long been consumed by vanishing points—the organizing force behind his compositions, meticulously constructed according to geometric laws but skewed by invented perspectives that create a pictorial space into which our imagination is invited to venture.
Pedro Friedeberg’s “simetrías y puntos de fuga – 70 años de creación” is on view at Saenger Galería through March 29.
Marek Wolfryd at General Expenses
For his second solo show with the experimental and worth-watching Mexican gallery General Expenses, Marek Wolfryd presents a new series of paintings and sculptures as part of his ongoing research into the intersection of artistic and economic narratives within cultural, historical and social contexts. Continuing on his ongoing research first presented in his recent show at Swivel Gallery in New York, Wolfryd investigates the link between the spread of artistic and cultural movements with their styles and aesthetical principles with the micro and macro-historical phenomena of trade and migrations that generated cultural exchanges, contamination and hybridization.
Reinterpreting cultural movements through long-term research, his multimedia practice highlights the tensions between economy and culture while offering fresh perspectives on the role of art in contemporary society. Wolfryd thoughtfully embraces the aesthetic of readymade and appropriation for his sculptures, installations, videos and performances to construct a conceptual framework that addresses issues such as mass production, consumer culture, art commercialization and financialization and copyright and intellectual property subjectivity, as all products of late capitalism and deeply rooted in Western thought.
Marek Wolfryd’s “Occidenterie” opens on February 4 at General Expenses.
Sabine Moritz at Fondation Olivia
Housed in an early 1900s residence reimagined by architects Alberto Kalach and Carlos Zedillo, this new private foundation in Mexico City opened last year with a dedicated space showcasing works from the Olivia Collection, which centers on abstract art from the post-war period to the present.
For this art week, the Olivia Foundation presents the highly anticipated Mexican debut of German painter Sabine Moritz, offering an in-depth look at her abstract practice through works from the Olivia Collection alongside recent pieces spanning a range of visual vocabularies. Having shifted from figuration to abstraction in recent years, Moritz treats this transition as a means of exploring memory, identity and the human experience. Figures emerge only to dissolve into gestural, dynamic swaths of color, drawing viewers into the complex interplay between personal narratives and broader historical forces. Her work is profoundly shaped by her upbringing in East Germany during the Cold War and her later pursuit of artistic freedom at the renowned Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where she studied under Markus Lüpertz and Gerhard Richter—whom she later married.
Sabine Moritz’s “Ara” is on view at Fondation Olivia through June 8.
Magali Lara at Galería RGR
Operating at the intersection of visual poetry, painting and drawing, Mexican artist Magali Lara explored the invisible knots of female intimacy and everyday life—moving through themes of sexuality, desire, death, love and maternity while interrogating the body and the power structures that shape it. For her first exhibition with the gallery, “Robar lo que me pertenece,” Lara presents a carefully curated selection of works spanning different periods in various mediums: oil paintings, gouaches, collages, textiles and artist books. With a fresh perspective—one not without humor—her practice challenges conventions of femininity, dismantling traditional narratives about the female body, authority and desire through a deeply tactile and experiential approach to non-representation.
Magali Lara’s “Robar lo que me pertenece” is on view at Galería RGR from February 5 through March 29.
Ugo Rondinone at ArteAbierto
Ugo Rondinone’s exhibition “Long Last Happy,” opening during Mexican Art Week, brings together two monumental sculptures created specifically for the space, two interactive works and a public engagement project developed in collaboration with children across Mexico. Anchored in Rondinone’s ongoing exploration of nature’s interconnectedness with human emotion and spirituality, the exhibition delves into the celestial forces embedded in the natural world. Through works embodying the sun, the moon and the rainbow, Rondinone continues his poetic investigation into how these elemental symbols shape our collective consciousness and personal experiences.
Ugo Rondinone’s “Long Last Happy” opens at ArteAbierto on February 8.
Enrique López Llamas at LLANO
Llano is one of the most interesting and dynamic contemporary art spaces to emerge in Mexico City’s art scene in recent years. More than just a gallery, it operates as a platform dedicated to artists whose work stems from long-term research, organizing projects that unfold in an open field atop a former textile factory. This unconventional venue serves as a stage for exploring everything from volcanoes, jungles, deserts and oceans to mountains, urban landscapes and historical landmarks. In keeping with this experimental spirit, Enrique López Llamas’s second exhibition with the gallery, “El otro protagonista de la noche,” investigates adulthood as a societal performance—one that demands the constant staging of a fragmented self, caught between the mimicry of artifice and the weight of suffering under the spotlight. López Llamas’s practice is anchored on narrative fiction and speculation to address the cultural and power structures that shape our times.
Enrique López Llamas’s “El otro protagonista de la noche,” opens at LLANO on February 1 and runs through April.
Jo Dennis at JO-HS
JO-HS-gallery-4.jpeg?quality=80&w=970″ alt=”Abstract painting on military tents” width=”970″ height=”647″ data-caption=’Jo Dennis, <em>Paper Planes</em>, 2024; Oil, acrylic, spray paint, marble dust, cotton bed sheet, paper on canvas and military surplus tent fabric, 80 3/4 x 94 1/2 in. <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>Courtesy of the artist and JO-HS</span>’>
The works of British painter Jo Dennis are deeply embedded in the fabric of life. Layers of marks and gestures accumulate intuitively on used military tents, her chosen canvas, for their direct relationship with the body. This material connection transforms the painting process into a striking metaphor for the accumulation of sensations, emotions and memories that shape our perception of the world.
Marking her debut in Mexico, the title of Dennis’s exhibition at JO-HS, “A Glass Of Absinthe,” nods directly to Picasso’s sculpture of the same name, in which a real absinthe spoon is wedged between a modeled bronze sugar cube and glass. By integrating everyday objects into art, Picasso disrupted the long-held notion of the “sublime” as the domain of artistic genius, instead emphasizing art’s fertile, inextricable ties to ordinary experience and the material world. Dennis builds on this legacy, frequently embedding objects in her paintings to anchor them in both the tangible and the subconscious, pulling her works between physical presence and memory’s elusive, shifting terrain. The painterly and material traces left on the surface become remnants of past events—moments to be reconsidered, absences to be felt. Existing in this temporal and experimental space, Dennis’s works take on the qualities of a diary, capturing the intricate dialogue between physical action and psychological reflection that shapes our existential experience.
Jo Dennis’s “A Glass Of Absinthe” opens at JO-HS on February 4 and is on view through March 29.
Ana Hernández at Campeche
Campeche is one of Mexico’s galleries to watch thanks to its sharp talent-spotting and dynamic programming. Situated on the first floor of the 1951 Art Deco Kin Pech building in the historic Roma Sur neighborhood, the gallery is making a statement during art week with the debut solo exhibition of Mexican artist Ana Hernández. Rooted in the traditional sound, textile and visual languages of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec—where she is from—Hernández’s multimedia practice brings ancestral knowledge into the realm of contemporary art.
This exhibition takes inspiration from Son del Pescado, a pre-Hispanic ritual dance that tells the story of a fisherman trying to catch a sawfish, regarded by the Binnizá (Zapotecs) of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec as “the creator of the first day.” Historically performed only by men, the dance is tied through oral tradition to the gods, the origins of the world and the first men and women. At the center of the exhibition stands a striking sawfish sculpture covered in gold, accompanied by canvases on which Hernández draws using a mixture of water and soil—an invocation of land and memory. Completing the narrative, a video performance features the artist reenacting Son del Pescado in a mud puddle, evoking a ritualistic return to the natural cycles that ancestral wisdom respected.
Ana Hernández’s “LADI BEÑE” opens at Campeche on February 3.
THIRD BORN’s Inaugural Group Show
As Mexico City’s gallery landscape continues to expand, one of this year’s most intriguing new additions is THIRD BORN, founded by art world insiders Yuna Cabon and Misa Maria. Opening in the vibrant Roma Norte neighborhood during art week, the space makes its debut with “Crossing the Chasm,” a group exhibition spotlighting a dynamic roster of emerging artists who push boundaries of medium, materiality and conceptual depth. The show challenges viewers to engage with fresh perspectives while grappling with the complexities of navigating uncharted territory—both in art and in an era of societal shifts and uncertainty. The lineup features a compelling mix of international and Mexican artists, including names familiar to the New York scene, such as Erin Jane Nelson, who most recently participated in the 2021 Whitney Biennial. Alongside her are Frédérique Lucien, Annabeth Marks, Marián Roma, Zazil Barba, Anna de Castro Barbosa, Juan Manuel Salas and Loucia Carlier.
THIRD BORN’s inaugural exhibition “Crossing the Chasm” opens on February 7.
