PABLO VARGAS LUGO PRESENTS EXHIBITION AT THE MUSEUM OF ART AND HISTORY OF GUANAJUATO

In the words of curator Cuauhtémoc Medina: "An important part of Pablo Vargas Lugo's work is concerned with portraying the intersection between the languages, techniques and conventions with which science represents natural phenomena and their mythical and imaginative counterpart. The works presented in this exhibition are specifically concerned with representing our link with the two stars that dominate our sky, which are the foundation of all mythologies, govern every life cycle and underlie the vast majority of our habits and beliefs. This is where the multiple facets of our relationship with the Sun and the Moon come into play: the first is an inscrutable, generous and terrible divinity, an inexhaustible emitter of energy, producer of capital, source of problems and solutions to dilemmas unimaginable a few generations ago; and the other is the paradigm of fragmentation, capturing the imagination with the periods that govern its appearance and disappearance, the enigmatic and immutable drawings on its face and its antagonistic relationship with the star that dominates the daylight hours.

Nothing embodies this relationship as dramatically as an eclipse of the Sun. These are phenomena in which an extreme accuracy of observation and scientific prediction, and the most pronounced sensitive and visual excitement coincide. However, the modern divorce of science and art, the contemplation of the conjunction of the stars and the sudden experience of darkness on the earth superimpose poetic anticipation and calculation. Together with the mimicry and seduction of animals and plants, they represent one of the most eloquent examples of the expressiveness of the world. Together with fertilization, birth and death, they are one of the radical events of all cosmogony. They are also a marker and symbol of the fickleness of fortune. For ancient cultures, the setting of the sun was an anticipation of the end of time: a trigger for all kinds of omens and prophecies. Today, the dates of eclipses hundreds or thousands of years from now offer the only absolute certainty we have about the future at a time in history when all prophecy appears a priori cancelled".

Throughout his career, Pablo Vargas Lugo (Mexico City, 1968) has exuded a repertoire of resources that make images and references resonate in other registers, awakening unease or amazement at the encounters that these displacements bring about.

His work borrows motifs from disciplines such as astronomy, cartography, epigraphy, natural history, archeology, space technology, musical or cinematographic language. His drawings, sculptures, installations and audiovisual works refer us to the mystery of writing, the fragility of conventions and the persistence of millenary traditions in unexpected attire. Through meticulous and unusual technical, visual and conceptual alignments, he projects them back into the viewer's imagination as elements close to our everyday reality.