NEW YORK: MARIANA CASTILLO DEBALL PRESENTS "POINT", AT KURIMANZUTTO
At the New York space of the emblematic gallery Kurimanzutto, Mariana Castillo Deball (Mexico, 1975) presents Point. Gathering her most recent productions, the Latin American artist uses artworks developed on paper and prints on other materials to illustrate the similarities between skin and paper.
Point highlights the intrinsic nature of the skin in relation to paper. From Castillo Deball’s perspective, paper, as a wrapper, has the same function as skin in humans, animals and plants. Established this connection, the Mexican artist exhibits grafts of a same skin in her works that extends to the layer that surrounds the thought in itself. A skin that can be shared by acting as a fabric spread between different bodies.
The exhibition begins with a Petlacoatl (a word that in the Nahua language means: mat woven of snakes pointing in all directions) drawing. This drawing, in the Nahua culture, represented an omen in the divinatory calendar. That person who gave with the mat had two possibilities: to die in the moment or, in case of sitting on it, to become a monarch. Later, Castillo Deball presents different representations of Xipe Totec, a god who uses the skin of a man as a cloak. "Xip" in Nahua means both "skin" and "cover". Thus, the artist plays with the concepts and puts human skin as a material that could be used for other purposes.
In addition, Point uses a series of book projects called Do ut des. These projects consist of books altered from their exterior that, once opened, present a common pattern. Each book is dedicated to a different museum in the world and contains an extended collage that shows the dimensions of the artworks in the exhibition space in relation to the human scale.
With an exceptional presentation in kurimanzutto -located in the heart of New York-, Mariana Castillo Deball presents a microcosm that dialogues directly with the aboriginal cultures of her region. Point will remain open to the public until April 6.
