Nairy Baghramian: Maintainers

For her first exhibition at kurimanzutto, Nairy Baghramian will present recent sculptures collectively titled Maintainers. Each work consists of three interdependent elements – raw aluminium casts, colored wax forms and lacquer painted braces. While presented in a disparate composition within the gallery space, all of the elements resonate with a visible correlation and an inherent potential for interdependence and connectivity. The shapes of the abstract cuboids made of polishing wax defy modernist vocabularies. Their material nature implies a submissive utilitarian purpose, as they exist to preserve their aluminium counterparts who could gradually consume them over time.

Nairy Baghramian’s practice is galvanized by a determination to bridge formal concerns with investigations of content. She is committed to an active questioning of traditional sculpture, layering her work with reflections on institutional realities, socio-political themes and historical antecedents from the worlds of art, architecture and design. Baghramian often challenges the limits of sculpture and moulds, object and signification, strength and fragility, organic and mechanical.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Untitled, 1995
January–February, 2018
Sonora 128

The eighth iteration of Sonora 128 presents the billboard work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled”, 1995. From January through February 2018, a black and white image of a bird soaring through space will simultaneously appear on six billboards located throughout the metropolitan area of Mexico City. Dispersing itself throughout the urban environment in a final parting gesture, the once fixed billboard takes flight in Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s work, dissolving into the city, in celebration of both presence and absence. 

Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s billboards are mutable works. Following the idea of movement, flux and change, they manifest themselves in multiples across the public landscape, always in at least six locations. The expansive, open nature of this work allows a broad cross section of the population to encounter billboards in different social and economic contexts, allowing its spectators to question notions of urban landscape, as well as how and who can occupy public space.

Throughout his career, Gonzalez-Torres’s involvement in social and political causes fueled his interest in the overlap of private and public life. His aesthetic project was, according to some scholars, related to Bertolt Brecht’s theory of epic theater, in which creative expression transforms the spectator from an inert receiver to an active, reflective observer and motivates social action.

The extension of Gonzalez-Torres’s project amplifies the reach of the original Sonora 128 billboard, transforming its scope throughout the terrain of Mexico City. Since its inception in March 2016, Sonora 128 has formed a natural offshoot to kurimanzutto’s first experimental energy outside the white cube. Within a two year program, it has showcased works by eight artists at the fixed corner of Avenida Sonora and Nuevo León in colonia Condesa, in tandem to satellite exhibitions, conversations and performances.

Our thanks to the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation and Andrea Rosen Gallery for their generous support and kind advice, which has made this project possible.

At six locations in Mexico City (download map here):

Avenida Sonora 128
Hipódromo Condesa, 06100

Gobernador Agustín Vicente Eguia 18
San Miguel Chapultepec I Secc, 11850

Viaducto Tlalpan 83
Huipulco, 14370

El Camino Real de Toluca 415
José María Pino Suárez, 01140

Avenida de las Torres 188
Zona Urbana Ejidal Santa María Aztahuacan, 09570

Calle Isabel la Católica 330
Obrera, 07707

For additional information, please contact:
Julia Villaseñor: julia [​at​] kurimanzutto.com / T +52 55 5256 2408