Mexico: Reconfigured

Comprised of seven contemporary Mexican artists, Francisco Toledo, Arturo Elizondo, Sergio Hernández, Julio Galán, Ray Smith, Mónica Castillo and Yishai Jusidman, this exhibition goes beyond a simple "celebration of diversity". These artists represent those at the forefront of Mexican painting today. All the artists represented in this group have crossed geographical and aesthetic boundaries to live and work in dramatically different environments. Cultural globalization has for years assisted to blur notions of an exclusive and specific national identity. In the struggle for the Mexican artist toward and/or against his/her heritage, we find in these artist's works voices which speak with a sense of tradition. Iconographic images, rich and symbolic colors, figures placed within a personal or historical context are executed with the obvious hand of the artist and are most characteristic of this spirit or desire to process past and present -to reconfigure an identity.

The tale of modern Mexican painting begins with the muralist, commissioned to create art which linked the aesthetics and politics of a people. These works successfully identified a sense of "Mexican-ness" and the painted messages began to communicate across the border to the U.S.A. where eventually artists such as Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros were invited to apply their talents to commissions here. Within Mexico itself, the government began to promote the inflow of Europeans who were to help in rebuilding the country. What occurred was an exchange which began to fracture the picture perfect notion of the "official" Mexican identity. By the 60s and into the early 80s, a generation of painters, collectively referred to as La Ruptura, seemed to dominate the local aesthetic in Mexico by practicing a painterly abstraction derived from the school of Paris. It is Rufino Tamayo, in the course of this period, whose lyrical, picturesque output satisfied the international curiosity for a sense of "authentic" Mexican reference.

Francisco Toledo's role is vital to the status of art in Mexico today. The revered Maestro of Mexican contemporary art sought experience and exposure in both Paris in the 60s and New York in 1977 and 1981-82. His art evidenced an admiration of Tamayo's work and was inspired as well by European masters such as Klee and Miro. His work, in approach and subject, essentially linked Mexico more to an international scheme and he becomes the leader in this new direction within Mexico itself. Sergio Hernández shares with Toledo and Tamayo his birthplace of Oaxaca where he currently lives and works. The rich territorial and artistic heritage provides fertile ground for the artist and in certain characteristics of his work, Hernández maintains a sense of artistic tradition. His paintings reveal a personal vision which incorporates fantastic animals and spirits, often in skeletal form, but the worlds he creates are never predictable.

In the mid-80s, Ray Smith and Julio Galán moved to New York to work. The highly charged art scene at that time offered overlapping movements, such as the Italian Transvanguardia and German Neo-Expressionism as well as the virtual explosion of dynamics of various New York talent. The crossroads provided many avenues in which to explore. Within this environment, Smith and Galán add their own language and direction, furthering a distinctive shift from fixed ideas concerning Mexican art and accomplished such in the art world's most international arena. Later Arturo Elizondo would arrive to live and work in New York. In Elizondo's work, the challenges of the different experiences mix and merge with a romantic focus to capture his heritage all the more.

Mónica Castillo and Yishai Jusidman represent an acceleration in pushing notions of Mexican aesthetics. Castillo lived in Germany for eight years and Jusidman's studies took place in the United States. Castillo's deconstructed self-portraits and Jusidman's Sumo paintings communicate a highly conceptual and international involvement. Through various applications of European and American painting technique and theory there still emerges a sensuousness and emotional quality identified with their native country.

The landscape of Mexican art continues to redefine itself with the contributions of the artists in this exhibition.

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