EXHIBITION
February 10th -
March 16th
DESCRIPTION
JO-HS is proud to present its third exhibition ‘LUZ’ bringing together a group of modern and contemporary lighting designers, photographers and artists all working within the realm of light.
What is light and what would we do without it?
Light is fundamental for life. Without it, we would cease to exist. The main source of light on Earth is the Sun. Historically, another important source of light for humans has been fire, from ancient campfires to modern kerosene lamps. With the development of electric lights and power systems, electric lighting has effectively replaced firelight. Light is the natural agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible.
It is a simple thing, sometimes we take it for granted, but without it most of the things we now call “art” would not have been created. From the cave paintings at Lascaux, to the tall gothic cathedrals and paintings by Caravaggio, light has always had this sacred quality. It is what creates perception, and every physical or mental image is imbued with representation. Without being able to see, a physical representation of our environments and life itself would be impossible. Of course, every image is influenced by our perception, since we perceive according to how something is presented to us.
In this sense, that is the beauty of art. Each artist has their own way of viewing things, each representation will be unique and personal. Light at its core might be the same –it makes the invisible, visible–, but the way it is applied and transformed can really grant different aspects. From the manipulation of colors, shadows, space and shapes. For instance, sunlight will make you feel warm, but a work from James Turrell will be completely sensorial, transportive and ethereal.
February 10th -
March 16th
DESCRIPTION
JO-HS is proud to present its third exhibition ‘LUZ’ bringing together a group of modern and contemporary lighting designers, photographers and artists all working within the realm of light.
What is light and what would we do without it?
Light is fundamental for life. Without it, we would cease to exist. The main source of light on Earth is the Sun. Historically, another important source of light for humans has been fire, from ancient campfires to modern kerosene lamps. With the development of electric lights and power systems, electric lighting has effectively replaced firelight. Light is the natural agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible.
It is a simple thing, sometimes we take it for granted, but without it most of the things we now call “art” would not have been created. From the cave paintings at Lascaux, to the tall gothic cathedrals and paintings by Caravaggio, light has always had this sacred quality. It is what creates perception, and every physical or mental image is imbued with representation. Without being able to see, a physical representation of our environments and life itself would be impossible. Of course, every image is influenced by our perception, since we perceive according to how something is presented to us.
In this sense, that is the beauty of art. Each artist has their own way of viewing things, each representation will be unique and personal. Light at its core might be the same –it makes the invisible, visible–, but the way it is applied and transformed can really grant different aspects. From the manipulation of colors, shadows, space and shapes. For instance, sunlight will make you feel warm, but a work from James Turrell will be completely sensorial, transportive and ethereal.
Luz
In this “LUZ” exhibition, we aim to demonstrate the different qualities of light. From lamps, to light installations, to photography and video, they’re all dependent on this one medium of expression. The difference lies in the way each artist appropriates and perceives it, in order to create something new. It is a source for life, but also for creation and manifestation.
The first examples of modern light art appeared after the discovery of electric lighting made longterm lighting safe and affordable towards the end of the 19th century. Light art however didn't become a dedicated form of art until the late 20th century, in large part due to pioneering work begun in 1969, as part of an experimental program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, by Robert Irwin and James Turrell.
While photography’s strength lay in depicting depth through light and shadow, it still remained a two-dimensional medium. Seminal light artist Dan Flavin created art that could blur the boundaries of space by manipulating the principles of sculpture.
When we think of light, we rarely think of darkness, yet there can only be light if there is darkness.
The first examples of modern light art appeared after the discovery of electric lighting made longterm lighting safe and affordable towards the end of the 19th century. Light art however didn't become a dedicated form of art until the late 20th century, in large part due to pioneering work begun in 1969, as part of an experimental program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, by Robert Irwin and James Turrell.
While photography’s strength lay in depicting depth through light and shadow, it still remained a two-dimensional medium. Seminal light artist Dan Flavin created art that could blur the boundaries of space by manipulating the principles of sculpture.
When we think of light, we rarely think of darkness, yet there can only be light if there is darkness.
ARTISTS
Ananas Ananas
Ananas Ananas is a food-art studio founded by Verónica González (Mexico City) and Elena Petrossian (Los Angeles). They create temporary food artwork for spaces and events, working worldwide to design and produce dining experiences and edible installations for fashion brands, galleries, restaurants, design studios, artists, hotels and more. Their work also involves working sustainably and creatively to raise awareness of issues regarding the downfalls of food production and food waste.
Laura Berger
Laura Berger is a contemporary artist living and working in Chicago. She is inspired by rituals, symbols, nature, dreams, travel, our quest for self-development and freedom, and how we piece things together to create personal meaning and a sense of belonging to the greater whole. Her current work is centered around themes of interdependence and self-understanding, featuring figurative imagery and dreamlike minimalistic environments.
About her work, Berger states, "I'm interested in our search for a sense of belonging and meaning, and the way that pursuit interacts with our existential concerns within the larger world. I like to use painting as a way to explore questions that have no concrete answers -- ideas which exist on a more spiritual or emotional plane. Much of my focus has been on exploring alternate notions of family and connection -- through our ties to the global community, to our personal histories, to nature and to the unknown. The figures in my work are meant to represent everyone, and myself, with external identifiers of race and age removed. Sort of a drilling down to the more pure level of what makes us human and a representation on that soul level of where we're all the same and equal."
Exit Ceren
Ceren Arslan is a New York City based architectural designer who works with buildings, interiors, landscapes and experiences. She received her Bachelor of Architecture from Pratt Institute in 2018 graduating with a Top Honorable Mention Degree Project Award and has participated in travel studios in Berlin and Rome. She is one of the curators of the first alumni-run collaborative exhibition, Aesthetics of Prosthetics.
Ceren’s work derives from conceptual thinking combined with her artistic talents in illustration, collaging, painting, and fiction. Her amorous fou of textures, materials and patterns permeate through her work at all scales.
Ana Corrigan
Ana Luisa Corrigan is an artist based between Los Angeles and New York, working over various mediums of clay, paint and printed matter over the past 10 years. Raised in San Diego, California, and a graduate of Parsons School of Art and Design, Corrigan received a BFA in Communication Design, later pursuing a switch from screen to working three dimensionally informed by a desire to explore the spatial design focus of material and function. She describes her practice as an intersection between fine art and function through organic and figurative shapes. The fragility and integrity of clay as a material and practice where she values the exchange between process and time.
Dylan Dubson
Dylan Dubson Garcia is a Mexican artist working in painting, sculpture, installation and performance. He studied Fine Art at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago.
His practice is characterized by a stubborn refusal to be exceedingly specific or “unique”. Instead, the work is imbued with a playfulness that emanates to a multifaceted and inventive practice. In his recent sculptural series “Ghosts”, divergent canals made of translucent mesh repeatedly lead the viewer to visually enter and withdraw from interaction with the piece, creating an aesthetic link between the work and its larger environment. Dubson Garcia is involved in translating vagueness into openness, creating systems of multiple agencies in the process. The artists’ intention is to probe, through constructions and assemblage, the meaning and implications of the materials at large.
Recently he has been part of Decanto Mexico and the Crudo exhibition at the Plomo Gallery in Gallery Weekend Mexico, Decanto Mexico. He lives and works in Mexico City.
David Eardley
David Eardley is a writer, cultural curator, and interdisciplinary artist. He is the founder of Pink Essay, a creative studio exploring the world of interiors and redefining furniture design.
In his Self-Construction series, his work asks what does it mean to consciously construct one's own identity? Here he explores the simultaneous relationship between the physical act of construction and the nonphysical act of self-construction through a series of sculptural chairs built from a quantity of single units.
André Feliciano
André Feliciano is both: artist and art-gardener.
As an art-gardener, cultivates the Floraissance Vivarium. As an artist, creates in the field of the philosophy of photography (which was the base to develop the idea of the Floraissance itself).
A cultivated person is someone interested in art. And what about art itself? Can it be cultivated? There can be no question that art often appears in pieces of wasteland, like weeds, growing in the cracks, between other fields of knowledge. But the seed must be scattered, blown into flight, until germinating into a new plot of land, so that everyone perceives it. It does not suffice for only the expert, the gardener, to know that there are dormant seeds in a piece of land; we have to see the shoots. When they emerge, we'll be in Florescentism, André Feliciano envisions. “Just as a tomato plantation is cultivated, the nature of art is being cultivated”, the art gardener asserts. Whereas in the tomato plantation the whole process of preparing the land for the plant's growth takes 3 months, in art, the artist says, it takes 3 centuries. “Today, the seed of the nature of art has already been planted, but the plant has not yet bloomed. We don't know what the fruit will be, or when it will come.”
When Florescentism arrives, which in André Feliciano’s theory, is a kind of graft between spring and renaissance, a mixture between the times of nature and of art history, art will no longer be intelligible only to the cultivated and the cultivators; it will be alive and a part of everyone’s lives. The ill-fitting term “contemporary art” will give way to a more specific name, and “florescentic art” is one suggestion.
Thomas Glassford
Thomas Glassford studied art at The University of Texas at Austin, where he received his BFA. He moved to Mexico City in 1990, and joined a young avant-garde of Mexican, European, and American artists living in the city. Since the early 1990s, Glassford has used everyday materials, ranging from gourds to broomsticks, anodized aluminum to melamine plates--to create architectural or installation-scale works. He transforms these materials into rhythmic and often abstract creations, reminiscent of Minimalist sculpture and Op Art paintings of the 1960s.
Mauricio Guerrero / La Metropolitana
Designer and photographer, in 2008 he co-founded the design-solutions collective La Metropolitana in Mexico City. The studio’s creative and productive development have allowed it to engage with projects on multiple scaled dimensions — from public works in museums and parks, to restaurants, stage settings, accessories, graphic design and, most notably, furniture design and production. With a diverse team of more than 60 professionals, La Metropolitana has consolidated itself as a creative and economic center within Mexico, combining centuries-old artisanal woodworking techniques with technological innovation possibilities, all produced by highly skilled craftsmen.
Guerrero himself says “I believe in art’s ability to tell stories through an image, to capture details and unexpected moments. I firmly believe that to be amazed one must observe with care”
La Metropolitana is a collective focused on generating solutions through creativity and design.
Founded in Mexico City in 2008, the studio has since been focused on developing creative and productive abilities that have allowed it to approach projects of multiple scales — from public works like museums and parks to restaurants, stage settings, accessories, graphic design and, most notably, furniture design and production.
With a diverse team of more than 60 professionals, La Metropolitana has become a consolidated source of creative and economic progress within Mexico, combining centuries-old artisanal techniques with technological innovation, all produced by highly qualified craftsmen.
Exploring and understanding the boundless possibilities of different types of wood has driven and characterized the studio’s work.
Ingrid Culebro Brown / HILA
Ingrid Culebro Brown is a product designer based in Mexico City
Laurel I is a lamp that explores the relationship between two bodies. Each one with its own shape and its own texture, as they intersect they create a whole greater than any one of them. This union is the result of the harmony between the volumes, their dimensions, the weave of their fabrics.
Inspired by the lamps in my mother's kitchen, this piece seeks to revalue wicker, a material that was an important part of my environment growing up. A material made of natural fiber, abundant, and functional: its characteristics were for my mother and her generation reasons for lack of care towards the objects made with it. These same characteristics are what I seek to claim today as essential for the construction of objects that, when produced by hand, can have dignity and permanence in the user's environment.
In Tequisquiapan, Francisco weaves Laurel using rattan sticks that measure between 1 and 1.2 m. Moisten each wand so that it acquires flexibility and can be woven into a metallic structure, made in blacksmithing and enameled in the color of the reddish earth where I am from. Knit the inner body first, then the outer body. At the end of the weaving, a flame passes over it, without burning. Finally, let the lamp dry in the sun for three days.
Adrian Leverkuhn
Adrian Leverkuhn is a Chicago based multidisciplinary artist working in painting and digital media. His work ranges between oil painting abstractions to software-driven installations. His inspiration comes from the interplay of history, subjectivity, and what is currently known as complexity science, the collection of theories and conceptual tools used to study dynamic, non-linear systems. While his projects often employ video, sound, and software, painting remains central to his practice, as he considers it “the richest, most well-documented visual record in existence, no matter the hemisphere”. He has exhibited and his Palimpsest, his first solo exhibition at Chicago’s Thomas Masters Gallery in 2010
Since 2017, Leverkuhn has been working on “Fluid Alliances”, artworks standing at the intersection of software and painting. His recent work Light Touch (2021) and Volition (2022) brings together These self-contained electronic lightbox installations display perpetually changing environments built on certain rules of interaction, generating a near infinite number of scenarios. These projected images of human bodies move and interact in space, converging and diverging continually.
He is based between Lisbon and the U.S..
Ben Noam
Ben Wolf Noam was born in Cambridge, MA, in 1987, and received a B.F.A. in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design in 2009
He has exhibited throughout America, Europe and the Middle East. His first solo show “The Infinite” was shown in October 2021 at Galeria Mascota in Mexico City. Additional prior exhibitions include The Breeder Gallery (Athens), Suzanne Geiss Co. (New York), Museo di Capodimonte (Naples, Italy), SADE Gallery (Los Angeles), Metropolitan Art Society (Beirut, Lebanon), 10 Hanover Gallery (London, England), and others. He has had performances commissioned by Night Gallery and PS1 MoMA. Ben Wolf Noam’s visual, curatorial, and performative work has been presented in The Observer, Vice, T Magazine, ArtFCity, Art in America, Artforum, Nylon, Purple Magazine and many others.
Taeko Nomiya
Born and raised in Mexico, photographer Taeko Nomiya connects her dual nationality of Japanese parents and Mexican birth. Growing up in a space where photography was treated as an act of reflection, seeing things in two different lenses foregrounds her practice in double exposure. Her work puts forward the parallel perspectives brought from belonging to two places simultaneously, exploring the status and experience of having Japanese parents, whilst being born and raised in Mexico. In this sense the preconceived ideas, concepts, and idiosyncrasies of ‘Japan’ and ‘Mexico’ are put on full display to present two countries and cultures coexisting in a single mindspace.
She most recently exhibited at MAIA Contemporary in Mexico City, an exhibition that dealt with her questions regarding identity and self. Two years prior her photographs had never been seen by the public, “these photos are postcards of a peculiar world in which until recently I was convinced that there was only one inhabitant. A world that could not be real, because it was only real to me. A world in which Mexico and Japan are not two countries at opposite ends of the globe, but a single hybrid reality that coexists in a single mental space”. Only through exhibiting did she realise many others like her shared the same feelings behind the dual representations. This socialized effect of her work has transmitted her personal identity to others who share the experience of being two things simultaneously.
G. T. Pellizzi
G. T. Pellizzi was born in 1978 in Tlayacapan, Morelos. He studied Philosopy at St. John’s College (New Mexico) and Architecture at The Cooper Union (New York). From 2004 to 2011 he was one of the founding members of The Bruce High Quality Foundation, with
whom he exhibited at the Whitney Museum and MoMA PS1 in NewYork, Centre Pompidou de París, Proyecto de Arte Contemporáneo Murcia, and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, as well as various galleries in New York, Zurich, Berlin and London. He hasexhibited as a solo artist at Mary Boone Gallery, The Watermill Center for the Arts in New York, Revolver Galeria both in Lima and Buenos Aires, Sala Siqueiros in Mexico City, el Museo Amparo in Puebla and el Centro de las Artes de Monterrey. He has participated in groupshows in the Kunsthalle of Vienna, the École des Beaux-Arts and Jeu de Paume in Paris, el Museo del Barrio in New York, la Bienal de las Americas in Denver, Pacific Standard Time at the Craft and Folk Art Museum in LA, and La Tallera in Cuernavaca among others. In 2016 he was awarded the Inga Maren Otto Fellowship at the Watermill Center.
Louis Poulsen
Founded in 1874, the Danish lighting manufacturer Louis Poulsen creates products that encompass the duality of design and light. Every detail in the design has a purpose and every design starts and ends with light. Louis Poulsen offers a range of lighting aimed at the commercial and domestic lighting markets, with lighting fixtures and solutions for both indoor and outdoor applications. In close partnership with designers, architects, and other talents such as Poul Henningsen, Arne Jacobsen, Verner Panton, Øivind Slaatto, Alfred Homann, Oki Sato, and Louise Campbell, Louis Poulsen has established itself as one of the key global suppliers of architectural and decorative lighting. The company has a global presence with showrooms in Copenhagen, Miami, Oslo, Tokyo, Singapore and Dusseldorf.
Poul Henningsen designed the three-shade system during 1925/1926. The first lights using the system were designed for an exhibition in Paris. His work with Louis Poulsen continued until his death in 1967. Throughout his life, PH sought to create glare-free lighting; aiming to direct light where it was most needed, and creating soft shadows while using incandescent bulbs as a light source. PH 4½-3½ Glass Floor is a member of the three-shade family and is one of 19 versions available today. Approximately one thousand different models have been produced over the years and consisted of table, floor and wall lamps, as well as a number of different chandeliers, which were popular in the 30s for lighting private homes with high ceilings. There were countless combination options. The lights were available in different colors, as well as a range of sizes. The first shades were made of metal with a painted undersurface, such as white, gold or silver depending on whether diffuse, warm or cold light was desired. Glass was later introduced for the three-shade system. In addition to the downward-directed light, glass lamps illuminated the room. PH was the first person to pursue a scientific approach to light and use the logarithmic spiral as a basis. By using a design based on the logarithmic spiral he achieved an even distribution of light over the entire curve of the shade. This even light distribution, together with the diffuse reflection through the glass, made it possible to control glare and shadow.
Pia Riverola
Born and raised in Barcelona, photography has played an ever-present role for Riverola since her youth when her grandfather gifted her a Minolta point and shoot. She used this camera to capture her immediate surroundings, preserving memories and moments of rare beauty in daily life that would otherwise vanish or be lost altogether. It is by this same principle that continues to guide her method today, engendering her work into a beautiful tapestry of colour. Her stunning representations are filled with a nostalgic quality, almost dreamlike, and show a command of light with subtle kaleidoscopic tones, reminiscent of early era colorists.
SOMBRA
Sombra is an architectural lighting studio founded in 2017 by Paola Jose in Mexico City. Its work responds to respect and protection of the night’s sky and searches to evoke feelings through shadows, contrast, night to reinvent spaces of light and shadow - dancing between poetry and practice.
Its creator, Paola Jose studied Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas and Architectural Lighting at Sweden’s Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, later founding Sombra to develop commercial, residential and tourist projects through investigations into geographies and night landscapes. She has gained international recognition in the London Design Fair, Lit Design Awards, Construlita Lighting Awards, and the Parque Lineal Ferrocarril de Cuernavaca competition.
In Sombra’s work, the fight against the unnecessary waste of light to claim and unify with the power of darkness is highlighted in the creation of balanced and measured spaces. The studio has been featured internationally with Archdaily, Dezeen, The New York Times, Coolhunter, Arc Magazine, Revista 192.
Ananas Ananas is a food-art studio founded by Verónica González (Mexico City) and Elena Petrossian (Los Angeles). They create temporary food artwork for spaces and events, working worldwide to design and produce dining experiences and edible installations for fashion brands, galleries, restaurants, design studios, artists, hotels and more. Their work also involves working sustainably and creatively to raise awareness of issues regarding the downfalls of food production and food waste.
Laura Berger
Laura Berger is a contemporary artist living and working in Chicago. She is inspired by rituals, symbols, nature, dreams, travel, our quest for self-development and freedom, and how we piece things together to create personal meaning and a sense of belonging to the greater whole. Her current work is centered around themes of interdependence and self-understanding, featuring figurative imagery and dreamlike minimalistic environments.
About her work, Berger states, "I'm interested in our search for a sense of belonging and meaning, and the way that pursuit interacts with our existential concerns within the larger world. I like to use painting as a way to explore questions that have no concrete answers -- ideas which exist on a more spiritual or emotional plane. Much of my focus has been on exploring alternate notions of family and connection -- through our ties to the global community, to our personal histories, to nature and to the unknown. The figures in my work are meant to represent everyone, and myself, with external identifiers of race and age removed. Sort of a drilling down to the more pure level of what makes us human and a representation on that soul level of where we're all the same and equal."
Exit Ceren
Ceren Arslan is a New York City based architectural designer who works with buildings, interiors, landscapes and experiences. She received her Bachelor of Architecture from Pratt Institute in 2018 graduating with a Top Honorable Mention Degree Project Award and has participated in travel studios in Berlin and Rome. She is one of the curators of the first alumni-run collaborative exhibition, Aesthetics of Prosthetics.
Ceren’s work derives from conceptual thinking combined with her artistic talents in illustration, collaging, painting, and fiction. Her amorous fou of textures, materials and patterns permeate through her work at all scales.
Ana Corrigan
Ana Luisa Corrigan is an artist based between Los Angeles and New York, working over various mediums of clay, paint and printed matter over the past 10 years. Raised in San Diego, California, and a graduate of Parsons School of Art and Design, Corrigan received a BFA in Communication Design, later pursuing a switch from screen to working three dimensionally informed by a desire to explore the spatial design focus of material and function. She describes her practice as an intersection between fine art and function through organic and figurative shapes. The fragility and integrity of clay as a material and practice where she values the exchange between process and time.
Dylan Dubson
Dylan Dubson Garcia is a Mexican artist working in painting, sculpture, installation and performance. He studied Fine Art at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago.
His practice is characterized by a stubborn refusal to be exceedingly specific or “unique”. Instead, the work is imbued with a playfulness that emanates to a multifaceted and inventive practice. In his recent sculptural series “Ghosts”, divergent canals made of translucent mesh repeatedly lead the viewer to visually enter and withdraw from interaction with the piece, creating an aesthetic link between the work and its larger environment. Dubson Garcia is involved in translating vagueness into openness, creating systems of multiple agencies in the process. The artists’ intention is to probe, through constructions and assemblage, the meaning and implications of the materials at large.
Recently he has been part of Decanto Mexico and the Crudo exhibition at the Plomo Gallery in Gallery Weekend Mexico, Decanto Mexico. He lives and works in Mexico City.
David Eardley
David Eardley is a writer, cultural curator, and interdisciplinary artist. He is the founder of Pink Essay, a creative studio exploring the world of interiors and redefining furniture design.
In his Self-Construction series, his work asks what does it mean to consciously construct one's own identity? Here he explores the simultaneous relationship between the physical act of construction and the nonphysical act of self-construction through a series of sculptural chairs built from a quantity of single units.
André Feliciano
André Feliciano is both: artist and art-gardener.
As an art-gardener, cultivates the Floraissance Vivarium. As an artist, creates in the field of the philosophy of photography (which was the base to develop the idea of the Floraissance itself).
A cultivated person is someone interested in art. And what about art itself? Can it be cultivated? There can be no question that art often appears in pieces of wasteland, like weeds, growing in the cracks, between other fields of knowledge. But the seed must be scattered, blown into flight, until germinating into a new plot of land, so that everyone perceives it. It does not suffice for only the expert, the gardener, to know that there are dormant seeds in a piece of land; we have to see the shoots. When they emerge, we'll be in Florescentism, André Feliciano envisions. “Just as a tomato plantation is cultivated, the nature of art is being cultivated”, the art gardener asserts. Whereas in the tomato plantation the whole process of preparing the land for the plant's growth takes 3 months, in art, the artist says, it takes 3 centuries. “Today, the seed of the nature of art has already been planted, but the plant has not yet bloomed. We don't know what the fruit will be, or when it will come.”
When Florescentism arrives, which in André Feliciano’s theory, is a kind of graft between spring and renaissance, a mixture between the times of nature and of art history, art will no longer be intelligible only to the cultivated and the cultivators; it will be alive and a part of everyone’s lives. The ill-fitting term “contemporary art” will give way to a more specific name, and “florescentic art” is one suggestion.
Thomas Glassford
Thomas Glassford studied art at The University of Texas at Austin, where he received his BFA. He moved to Mexico City in 1990, and joined a young avant-garde of Mexican, European, and American artists living in the city. Since the early 1990s, Glassford has used everyday materials, ranging from gourds to broomsticks, anodized aluminum to melamine plates--to create architectural or installation-scale works. He transforms these materials into rhythmic and often abstract creations, reminiscent of Minimalist sculpture and Op Art paintings of the 1960s.
Mauricio Guerrero / La Metropolitana
Designer and photographer, in 2008 he co-founded the design-solutions collective La Metropolitana in Mexico City. The studio’s creative and productive development have allowed it to engage with projects on multiple scaled dimensions — from public works in museums and parks, to restaurants, stage settings, accessories, graphic design and, most notably, furniture design and production. With a diverse team of more than 60 professionals, La Metropolitana has consolidated itself as a creative and economic center within Mexico, combining centuries-old artisanal woodworking techniques with technological innovation possibilities, all produced by highly skilled craftsmen.
Guerrero himself says “I believe in art’s ability to tell stories through an image, to capture details and unexpected moments. I firmly believe that to be amazed one must observe with care”
La Metropolitana is a collective focused on generating solutions through creativity and design.
Founded in Mexico City in 2008, the studio has since been focused on developing creative and productive abilities that have allowed it to approach projects of multiple scales — from public works like museums and parks to restaurants, stage settings, accessories, graphic design and, most notably, furniture design and production.
With a diverse team of more than 60 professionals, La Metropolitana has become a consolidated source of creative and economic progress within Mexico, combining centuries-old artisanal techniques with technological innovation, all produced by highly qualified craftsmen.
Exploring and understanding the boundless possibilities of different types of wood has driven and characterized the studio’s work.
Ingrid Culebro Brown / HILA
Ingrid Culebro Brown is a product designer based in Mexico City
Laurel I is a lamp that explores the relationship between two bodies. Each one with its own shape and its own texture, as they intersect they create a whole greater than any one of them. This union is the result of the harmony between the volumes, their dimensions, the weave of their fabrics.
Inspired by the lamps in my mother's kitchen, this piece seeks to revalue wicker, a material that was an important part of my environment growing up. A material made of natural fiber, abundant, and functional: its characteristics were for my mother and her generation reasons for lack of care towards the objects made with it. These same characteristics are what I seek to claim today as essential for the construction of objects that, when produced by hand, can have dignity and permanence in the user's environment.
In Tequisquiapan, Francisco weaves Laurel using rattan sticks that measure between 1 and 1.2 m. Moisten each wand so that it acquires flexibility and can be woven into a metallic structure, made in blacksmithing and enameled in the color of the reddish earth where I am from. Knit the inner body first, then the outer body. At the end of the weaving, a flame passes over it, without burning. Finally, let the lamp dry in the sun for three days.
Adrian Leverkuhn
Adrian Leverkuhn is a Chicago based multidisciplinary artist working in painting and digital media. His work ranges between oil painting abstractions to software-driven installations. His inspiration comes from the interplay of history, subjectivity, and what is currently known as complexity science, the collection of theories and conceptual tools used to study dynamic, non-linear systems. While his projects often employ video, sound, and software, painting remains central to his practice, as he considers it “the richest, most well-documented visual record in existence, no matter the hemisphere”. He has exhibited and his Palimpsest, his first solo exhibition at Chicago’s Thomas Masters Gallery in 2010
Since 2017, Leverkuhn has been working on “Fluid Alliances”, artworks standing at the intersection of software and painting. His recent work Light Touch (2021) and Volition (2022) brings together These self-contained electronic lightbox installations display perpetually changing environments built on certain rules of interaction, generating a near infinite number of scenarios. These projected images of human bodies move and interact in space, converging and diverging continually.
He is based between Lisbon and the U.S..
Ben Noam
Ben Wolf Noam was born in Cambridge, MA, in 1987, and received a B.F.A. in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design in 2009
He has exhibited throughout America, Europe and the Middle East. His first solo show “The Infinite” was shown in October 2021 at Galeria Mascota in Mexico City. Additional prior exhibitions include The Breeder Gallery (Athens), Suzanne Geiss Co. (New York), Museo di Capodimonte (Naples, Italy), SADE Gallery (Los Angeles), Metropolitan Art Society (Beirut, Lebanon), 10 Hanover Gallery (London, England), and others. He has had performances commissioned by Night Gallery and PS1 MoMA. Ben Wolf Noam’s visual, curatorial, and performative work has been presented in The Observer, Vice, T Magazine, ArtFCity, Art in America, Artforum, Nylon, Purple Magazine and many others.
Taeko Nomiya
Born and raised in Mexico, photographer Taeko Nomiya connects her dual nationality of Japanese parents and Mexican birth. Growing up in a space where photography was treated as an act of reflection, seeing things in two different lenses foregrounds her practice in double exposure. Her work puts forward the parallel perspectives brought from belonging to two places simultaneously, exploring the status and experience of having Japanese parents, whilst being born and raised in Mexico. In this sense the preconceived ideas, concepts, and idiosyncrasies of ‘Japan’ and ‘Mexico’ are put on full display to present two countries and cultures coexisting in a single mindspace.
She most recently exhibited at MAIA Contemporary in Mexico City, an exhibition that dealt with her questions regarding identity and self. Two years prior her photographs had never been seen by the public, “these photos are postcards of a peculiar world in which until recently I was convinced that there was only one inhabitant. A world that could not be real, because it was only real to me. A world in which Mexico and Japan are not two countries at opposite ends of the globe, but a single hybrid reality that coexists in a single mental space”. Only through exhibiting did she realise many others like her shared the same feelings behind the dual representations. This socialized effect of her work has transmitted her personal identity to others who share the experience of being two things simultaneously.
G. T. Pellizzi
G. T. Pellizzi was born in 1978 in Tlayacapan, Morelos. He studied Philosopy at St. John’s College (New Mexico) and Architecture at The Cooper Union (New York). From 2004 to 2011 he was one of the founding members of The Bruce High Quality Foundation, with
whom he exhibited at the Whitney Museum and MoMA PS1 in NewYork, Centre Pompidou de París, Proyecto de Arte Contemporáneo Murcia, and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, as well as various galleries in New York, Zurich, Berlin and London. He hasexhibited as a solo artist at Mary Boone Gallery, The Watermill Center for the Arts in New York, Revolver Galeria both in Lima and Buenos Aires, Sala Siqueiros in Mexico City, el Museo Amparo in Puebla and el Centro de las Artes de Monterrey. He has participated in groupshows in the Kunsthalle of Vienna, the École des Beaux-Arts and Jeu de Paume in Paris, el Museo del Barrio in New York, la Bienal de las Americas in Denver, Pacific Standard Time at the Craft and Folk Art Museum in LA, and La Tallera in Cuernavaca among others. In 2016 he was awarded the Inga Maren Otto Fellowship at the Watermill Center.
Louis Poulsen
Founded in 1874, the Danish lighting manufacturer Louis Poulsen creates products that encompass the duality of design and light. Every detail in the design has a purpose and every design starts and ends with light. Louis Poulsen offers a range of lighting aimed at the commercial and domestic lighting markets, with lighting fixtures and solutions for both indoor and outdoor applications. In close partnership with designers, architects, and other talents such as Poul Henningsen, Arne Jacobsen, Verner Panton, Øivind Slaatto, Alfred Homann, Oki Sato, and Louise Campbell, Louis Poulsen has established itself as one of the key global suppliers of architectural and decorative lighting. The company has a global presence with showrooms in Copenhagen, Miami, Oslo, Tokyo, Singapore and Dusseldorf.
Poul Henningsen designed the three-shade system during 1925/1926. The first lights using the system were designed for an exhibition in Paris. His work with Louis Poulsen continued until his death in 1967. Throughout his life, PH sought to create glare-free lighting; aiming to direct light where it was most needed, and creating soft shadows while using incandescent bulbs as a light source. PH 4½-3½ Glass Floor is a member of the three-shade family and is one of 19 versions available today. Approximately one thousand different models have been produced over the years and consisted of table, floor and wall lamps, as well as a number of different chandeliers, which were popular in the 30s for lighting private homes with high ceilings. There were countless combination options. The lights were available in different colors, as well as a range of sizes. The first shades were made of metal with a painted undersurface, such as white, gold or silver depending on whether diffuse, warm or cold light was desired. Glass was later introduced for the three-shade system. In addition to the downward-directed light, glass lamps illuminated the room. PH was the first person to pursue a scientific approach to light and use the logarithmic spiral as a basis. By using a design based on the logarithmic spiral he achieved an even distribution of light over the entire curve of the shade. This even light distribution, together with the diffuse reflection through the glass, made it possible to control glare and shadow.
Pia Riverola
Born and raised in Barcelona, photography has played an ever-present role for Riverola since her youth when her grandfather gifted her a Minolta point and shoot. She used this camera to capture her immediate surroundings, preserving memories and moments of rare beauty in daily life that would otherwise vanish or be lost altogether. It is by this same principle that continues to guide her method today, engendering her work into a beautiful tapestry of colour. Her stunning representations are filled with a nostalgic quality, almost dreamlike, and show a command of light with subtle kaleidoscopic tones, reminiscent of early era colorists.
SOMBRA
Sombra is an architectural lighting studio founded in 2017 by Paola Jose in Mexico City. Its work responds to respect and protection of the night’s sky and searches to evoke feelings through shadows, contrast, night to reinvent spaces of light and shadow - dancing between poetry and practice.
Its creator, Paola Jose studied Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas and Architectural Lighting at Sweden’s Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, later founding Sombra to develop commercial, residential and tourist projects through investigations into geographies and night landscapes. She has gained international recognition in the London Design Fair, Lit Design Awards, Construlita Lighting Awards, and the Parque Lineal Ferrocarril de Cuernavaca competition.
In Sombra’s work, the fight against the unnecessary waste of light to claim and unify with the power of darkness is highlighted in the creation of balanced and measured spaces. The studio has been featured internationally with Archdaily, Dezeen, The New York Times, Coolhunter, Arc Magazine, Revista 192.