Gabriel de la Mora: Unearthing the Mirror
January 21 – February 27, 2021
GABRIEL DE LA MORA (b. 1968, Mexico)
“…art is not created nor destroyed; it is only transformed, just as energy is.”
After studying architecture at the Universidad Anáhuac del Norte from 1987-1991, Gabriel de la Mora began his career as a practicing architect. After five years, he redirected his work, focusing instead on visual art, and in 2003 he received a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting at Pratt Institute in New York.
Since the early 2000s, de la Mora has collected detritus and ephemera ranging from hair to found photographs, shoe soles to painted ceilings. He transforms these objects, using meticulous craftsmanship to call attention to their original uses, while also making conceptual investigations into the nature of art. Curator and art historian Willy Kautz has written, “Gabriel de la Mora’s work lies in questioning and experimenting with the interstitial limits between painting, drawing, and sculpture. … Linking constructivist languages with the evocative, fortuitous discoveries of dadaist experience, de la Mora updates the minimalist/conceptual optic to reveal the intimate and personal within the universal convention of modernist abstraction.”
Much of de la Mora’s production focuses upon the intimate functions of objects that, outlasting their usefulness, have been discarded. By repurposing found things, de la Mora points to the actions of time upon the object. In his collected chips of paint and fabric painted ceilings, for example, he suggests that the painting came into existence long before the artist came into contact with it and placed it upon a canvas. In this way, he is also drawn to the visual and affective power of archival collections. He often works with old photographs and found papers. These materials are weighted with mysteries from the past—their hidden narratives are central to de la Mora’s conceptual and formal interests. The artist lives and works in Mexico City.
2020
2019 | Originalmentefalso: Gabriel de la Mora, Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL), Mexico City, Mexico Gabriel de la Mora: Inevidencias, Casa de México, Madrid, Spain |
Gabriel de la Mora: TNTR AA, Perrotin New York, NY, USA | |
2018 | Entropías, Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City, Mexico |
| Técnicas y Contextos, Pinacoteca de la Universidad de Colima, Colima, México | |
2017 | Crystals of Inevidence, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, USA |
2016
| Gabriel de la Mora; Sounds Inscriptions on Fabric, The Drawing Center, New York, NY, USA |
| Gabriel de la Mora: Serial, Timothy Taylor, London, UK |
2015 | (f), Galeria OMR, Mexico |
2014 | Lucíferos, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX, USA |
| Lo que no vemos lo que nos mira, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico |
2012 | T.O.E.F.M.U.T.I.T.O.A.I.I., Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX, USA |
| Exposición Panamericana, NC - arte, Bogotá, Colombia |
| Señales Aleatorias/Ruido Blanco, Museo de Arte de Sonora (MUSAS), Mexico |
2011
| Ruido Blanco/White Noise, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (MACO), Oaxaca, Mexico |
| Originalmentefalso, Galería OMR, Mexico City, Mexico |
| Frágil/Fragile, Museum of Latin American Art (MoLAA), Long Beach, CA, USA (Project Room) |
2008 | d.i.b.u.j.o.s., Bastero Kulturgunea, Andoain (Gipuzkoa), Spain |
| 39-G.M.C.-23.sept.07, Conner Contemporary, Washington D.C., USA |
| Blind Lines, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX, USA |
2007 | Brújula de cuestiones, Galería OMR, Mexico City, Mexico |
2006
| Extensions, Galerie La Serre, École Régionale des Beaux-Arts Saint-Étienne, France |
2004 | 00-04, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Colima, Colima, Mexico |
2003
| G.M. antes y después, Ministry of Culture of the state of Colima, 10 venues in Mexico |
2001
| Serie Homenaje a Robert Mapplethorpe, Galería Nina Menocal, Mexico City, Mexico |
1997
| The Form Without Form, Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, D.C., USA |
1996 | La Inconciencia de la Vista, Museo Regional de Historia, Colima, Mexico |
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, USA
Art Museum of the Americas, Organization of American States, Washington, D.C., USA
ARTIUM, Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO), Miami, FL, USA
Colección Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia
Colección Ella Fontanals-Cisneros, Miami Florida, USA
Colección FEMSA, Monterrey, Mexico
Colección Fundación Televisa, México
Colección SIVAM, Mexico City, Mexico
Colección Universidad de Colima, Mexico
Fundación/Colección JUMEX, Mexico City, Mexico
Museo de Arte contemporaneo Alfredo Zalce, Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico
Museo de Arte de Sonora (MUSAS), Hermosillo, Sonora, México
Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Mexico
Museo de la Cancillería, S.R.E., Mexico City, Mexico
El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY, USA
Museo del Palacio del Arzobispado, Mexico City, Mexico
Museo Universitario de Arte Conpemporáneo (MUAC), UNAM, Mexico
Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), Los Angeles, CA, USA
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), Houston, TX, USA
Museum of Latin American Art (MoLAA), Long Beach, CA, USA
Perez Art Museum Miami Collection, Miami, Florida, USA
Richard E. Peeler Art Center, DePauw University, Greencastle, IN, USA
Secretaría de Cultura del Estado de Colima, Mexico
