The first solo exhibition in Mexico City by young Ecuadorian artist Pablo Andino opened during the city’s art week, but it did even better a few days after all the hubbub had ended: “Like a tiro, a clavel(Like a Shot, a Carnation) excelled at capturing the hangover. The atmosphere of the installation seemed loaded, the air smoky, the floor slightly sticky. In the middle of the room stood a strange structure, an open circle of concrete, each half of which was secured by a curved balustrade. It was a nod to the idea of a sunken dance floor, or one of those ridiculously restricted VIP areas where three or four miserable rich kids bounce off-beat with their paid mates, bottles at the hand.
The rest of the exhibition skirted the periphery of this esoteric structure, remnants of a fantasy party suggesting only obliquely bodies or the remains of sensual and greedy consumption. On the walls hung four unusual sconces, shaped like fried turkey legs and bearing candles dripping their milky wax everywhere. They had been made from wooden vases containing a single flower stem, Panko coated and fried whole before being flipped – flowers hanging from what is now the bottom. It is difficult to express how strange and yet well located these objects were. They’re all about the unnecessary boundary crossings, shitty decisions, even about what to eat, that humans make when they’re drunk, stoned, or hungover. Nothing can get you through the aftermath of this kind of physical and psychic crisis like one of those disgusting and unhealthy fried animal meals. In fact, these pieces are not really works, and they were not for sale; they were just fat torches guiding our way through this dense and intense experience.
Karaoke with cuentas (Karaoke with Beads, all works 2023), one of three pieces created in collaboration with writer Carolina Benalcázar, further develops the relentless motifs of the party. The piece is modest: a spreadsheet printed on transparent paper with a pair of scribbles cut out of it, pinned to the rectangle framed by a rubber shoe sole. “There is no void to fill,” according to Benalcázar. “There’s no star to return to / there’s no tape to stick / there’s no sleep to survive last night’s salt.” Nothing really makes much sense – something I appreciate; after all, what makes sense in a party spiral? Penas con pan (Sorrows with Bread) is a special little work, featuring two flowers painted on an MDF panel that has been breaded and fried, then framed in steel. Ojos nuez #1 And #2 (Walnut Eyes #1 and #2) are two striking sculptural compositions. The centerpiece of each is two eyes made of walnut shells filled with rum and sealed with resin, surrounded by small white wooden stars. The eyes and the stars in #1 rests on a cloth-wrapped knife—only its tip menacingly visible—above an amorphously shaped rubber sole cutout; In #2 they hover over an old T-shirt that belonged to the artist’s mother. Estrella caida (Fallen Star), the main element of the exhibition, sat at the very back of the gallery. The huge star carved from teak wood, with three of its six points broken off, was leaning against a huge smoke machine that periodically began to huff and puff, turning the space into a cavern of noxious sensations.
Andino really captures the lingering smells and warped, jittery experience of substance use and the absurdity of ritually subduing your body – religiously, almost. Partying, he suggests, can be a deeply individual experience that also requires a collective environment of mutual self-destruction. Luckily for us in art, we can also call it work.
