Mexican Artists Present Group Exhibition in New York: 'Twilight Chorus'

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On May 31, the art gallery The Chimney presented “Twilight Chorus,” a group exhibition co-curated with guadalajara90210, a Mexican organization directed by Alma Saladin. The exhibition features works by Mexican artists Héctor Jiménez Castillo, Mariana Garibay Raeke, Ilana Harris-Babou, Circe Irasema, Mario Navarro, and Marco Rountree.

Founded in June 2015, The Chimney serves as an exhibition and performance venue promoting multidisciplinary and international artists. The project is housed within the raw shell of its industrial architecture. Located at 200 Morgan Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, the venue hosts works that interact or contrast with the space to create immersive environments and dialogue with viewers. This approach is evident in “Twilight Chorus,” where works by Mexican artists completely transform the space to weave together—whether intentionally or not—a shared language.

Twilight Chorus evokes a phantasmagoric landscape where the musical and choreographic forms of the works are revealed. The selected pieces have diverse textures and expressive qualities that reveal the vitality and liveliness of materiality. They are visual poems whose playful and graceful forms spin and swirl, like the dancer's elegant movements. Their luminosity, fragility, and reflectivity appear, disappear, and transform in the viewers' phenomenological encounter with the works, making their performative function ephemeral and transient, just like the dancer's arrhythmic breath. Caught in its vital impetus, Twilight Chorus is a moment suspended in time.
- The Chimney

The exhibition features pieces such as “Rrrrrrrrrrradio” by Héctor Jiménez Castillo, who presents paintings that act as a visual musical score through juxtaposed sculptural boxes. Meanwhile, Mariana Garibay Raeke's pieces “What Remains” and “You feel like salt”—made from organic materials like cane, fibers, and plants—float, spin, and gently transform within the exposed brick walls.

Ilana Harris-Babou's ceramic lamps, “Untitled Lamp from Reparation Hardware,” are made of juxtaposed layers that seemingly melt and merge into one another, finding balance through their unstable, asymmetrical forms. Meanwhile, Circe Irasema presents “Pintura Cósmica no. 8: Johannes Itten [Full] Palette” and the series “Seis, Siete, Ocho y Nueve,” utilizing fabrics of various sizes with minimal markings to explore a unique color palette blended with makeup purchased in Mexico City.

Mario Navarro presents a piece that plays with spatial elements and deconstructs architectural paradigms through the interplay of balance, displacement, and subtle architectural intervention. In contrast, Marco Rountree’s pieces repurpose and transform organic forms, ranging from volcanic stones to Mexican gourds. Much like musical instruments, their lively, curvilinear shapes suggest rhythmic patterns.

With this in mind, we spoke with the exhibition's curators Clara Darrason and Jennifer Houdrouge—directors of The Chimney—who collaborated with Alma Saladin—director of guadalajara90210—to share more about how the idea for an exhibition of Mexican artists in this space came about:

Clara Darrason and Jennifer Houdrouge: We have been closely following guadalajara90210's program since their first exhibitions in 2017, and we were drawn to the unusual venues where they organized shows: a parking lot, a building under construction, and an old stable, to name a few. Their search for a symbiosis between art and urban landscapes echoed our own curatorial approach at The Chimney. We also share a strong interest in artists who question materiality and can work site-specifically. Last summer, we decided to collaborate in two stages: first, in Mexico City with the exhibition titled “El pabellón de las escaleras,” which featured over 50 artists in a building under construction, and second, at The Chimney with "Twilight Chorus," a group exhibition co-curated by guadalajara90210 and The Chimney.

Alma Saladin: guadalajara90210's curatorial approach seeks to adapt to new spaces—whether institutional or alternative—and to adapt to new contexts of production. We try to build collaborations with other organizations, convinced of the relevance of this modus operandi and the necessity of experimentation. We have followed The Chimney's activities over the past few years and are always impressed by their ability to transform this space, taking us to completely different universes through a rich selection of artists who work directly with the venue. It was a beautiful exercise to conceptualize and build this exhibition within a space that has such a distinct identity and powerful energy. It was also incredibly rewarding to collaborate with the team at The Chimney across borders.

Read more about the “Pabellón de las escaleras” exhibition organized by guadalajara90210 in Mexico City. For more information, visit The Chimney's official website here.