The Mexican Cultural Institute presents
The First to Laugh by Mauricio Limon De Leon
A curatorial proposal by Marco Calderón from September 4 to October 29, 2020
It took the Mexican artist Mauricio Limón de León (Mexico City, 1979) ten years to produce a large-scale, precise, and sensitive body of work on the way of life of a stigmatized social group in the suburbs of Mexico City.
Mauricio Limón’s work reveals a key constant: an iconoclastic aesthetic outlook that oscillates between poetry and trash humor. Between mockery and observation of the mundane, the artist invites us to a social and human reflection. In Le premier qui rira, he focuses on a specific urban space: Iztapalapa. Densely populated, this area in eastern Mexico City includes the Cerro de la Estrella hill, a hilly national park dominated by the Pyramid of the New Fire, a cultural and religious center dating from the pre-Hispanic era. This remote, uncomfortable, and marginal enclave, from a cartographic and social standpoint, takes on an enigmatic and deeply human dimension in the artist’s eyes.
Iztapalapa is an emblematic space in terms of urbanity. Its streets offer a landscape defined by asphalt, cement, rebar, and plastic, whose configuration has an air of chaos conducive to creativity and improvisation. It is not uncommon to find unfinished buildings for lack of sufficient funds. Its residents, accustomed to scarcity and transgression, bear witness to the complex reality of any large metropolis.
Through his fascination with human interactions and experiences, Mauricio Limón uses play, laughter, or anger to make them visible and to remind us of the importance of social practices in artistic creation.
Currently in residence at the Fondation Fiminco in Romainville (2020-2021), he was recently a laureate of the Visual Arts commissions of the Cité internationale des Arts de Montmartre (2019), where he developed several painting and performance projects, notably a series of 27 carved wooden masks inspired by Mexican religious festivities, created for the collective performance "Coup de balai pour révéler de puissants récits," which takes a fresh look at political and intellectual elites. This performance was presented at the Art Rotterdam fair in February 2020 under the title "A gigantic broom to uncover compelling narratives," in collaboration with other artists (1).
(1) 2020, approx. 20 min. Performance in collaboration with @fabriceboutique Commissioned by Ellen de Bruijne Projects @edbprojects; Art Rotterdam; AVL-Mundo #theperformanceshow is part of the collection @avlmundo ▪ Special thanks to performers: @lucifer.nandez @super_totsi #antoniasteffens Nicolas Rosés Ponce
Through various disciplines and media such as painting, drawing, video, or performance, Mauricio Limón explores power and local cultures, whose social codes he dissects.
Based on long-term research into anthropological and social interactions, sexuality, and power, his work addresses the theoretical and philosophical concerns of psychoanalysis and class struggle.
Interested in people with marginalized lifestyles, such as street vendors, squeegee workers, or the homeless, Mauricio Limón has managed to bring these isolated people in situations of personal or social fragility into the heart of his artistic process, by becoming intensely and lastingly involved with them. The result is a body of work in different media – video, performance, installation – notably a series of paintings created between 2008 and 2014, using a pictorial technique situated between pixel art and pointillism, whose result, close to a photographic grain scattered over a texture of oil and natural resins, is striking. This is borne out by the portrait of the "Flama" ("fire-eater"), whose features bear the marks of a past one imagines to be painful. This exercise in contemplation makes us question the vision and representation we have of society as a whole.
The paintings also include a series of maps whose routes, soccer fields, vacant lots, graffiti, and other facades allow viewers to wander through the fragmented narrative of the artist’s exploration process.
A former student of the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (Netherlands), Mauricio Limón was awarded the Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in New York (United States) in 2010 and the Jóvenes creadores grant (Mexico) in 2011. His work has been exhibited in Mexico, the United States, Canada, and Europe at Rozenstraat – a rose is a rose, Amsterdam; the Pinchuk Art Center, Kyiv; the KunstMuseum Bonn, Germany; the Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo, Madrid; the Museo Tamayo, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, and Galería Hilario Galguera, Mexico City; the Y-Gallery, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco; and the Laroche/Joncas Gallery, Montreal. His work is part of the Frank Demaegd collection, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (United States), the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (Mexico), and the Colección Cisneros (United States).
His recent exhibitions include A set of non verbal fantasies, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam (2018); Wrong Dress In Plumes Of Smoke, Galerie Wildpalms, Dusseldorf, Germany (2019); Dientes rotos, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City (2019); and Organismos articulados, a group exhibition presented at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Berlin, Germany (January 2020).
mauriciolimon.com
https://www.fondationfiminco.com/artists/mauriciolimon
https://www.citedesartsparis.net/fr/mauricio-limon
Marco Calderón (Tepoztlán, Mexico, 1976), a former Professional Master in Art Market student!
A curator, artist, and PhD candidate in aesthetics at Paris 8 University, he is developing a study of the history of the Mexican Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Over the past seven years, he has focused on museology and curatorial practices, fostering long-term exchanges with artists. He has been particularly involved in projects centered on contemporary life, creative processes, and exhibition-making practices.
He gained international experience through multiple collaborations with institutions such as the gallery of the Institut français d’Amérique latine at the French Embassy in Mexico City (2017-2018), which entrusted him with the curation and cultural coordination of several exhibitions, such as Ese tiempo mineral, bringing together works by Iván Argote, Yanieb Fabre, and Anne-Charlotte Finel. He took part in the ICI intensive course in curatorial practice in Mexico City, organized by international independent curators and the Fundación Alumnos47 (2018). He worked with the EAVI research group at Goldsmiths, University of London (2015) and was assistant to the curators of the exhibition Resiting the present Mexico 2000-2012, programmed at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2010-2011).
The First to L a u g h
MAURICIO LIMÓN DE LEÓN
Instituto Cultural de México, from September 4 to October 29, 2020
119 Vieille-du-Temple Street, 75003 Paris, France | 01 44 61 84 44 | idemexfra@sre.gob.mx
Free admission, Monday to Friday from 10h to 13h and from 14h to 18h, Saturday from 15h to 19h
Closed on Sundays and public holidays
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