The Cultural Center of Spain in Mexico (CCEMx) presents a new exhibition as part of Proyecto1., a program of solo exhibitions by Spanish artists who live and work in Mexico. Launched in 2018, this initiative aims to showcase the latest trends and talents in the visual arts in Mexico City. Ascension and Fall: A Sacrifice (Ascensión y caída: un sacrificio) is the third exhibition in this program and the latest project by Navarre-born architect and artist Alberto Odériz.
In Ascension and Fall: A Sacrifice, Odériz continues previous projects in which he recontextualizes materials, construction debris, urban waste, or stones and rocks found either in the city (Nueve(punto ocho), 2018; Sísifo, 2017) or in their natural habitat (Dolmen. Levantar la piedra, 2018) to challenge the sculptural medium itself and the artistic mechanisms that legitimize it.
In this exhibition, the work functions as a laboratory that reproduces sculptural processes to question and deconstruct them in search of their core essence. It explores Mexica rituals as inspiration to conceive a project built around the idea of the fall—the fall as the conclusion of a prior act, the ascension; a fall that implies a rupture.
Within Mexica cosmogony, the deity Coyolxauhqui—discovered in 1978 just a few meters from where this exhibition is held—best embodies this duality of rise and fall. In this context, the myth, combined with its formal representation—the pink cantera stone bearing Coyolxauhqui's image—illustrates the transformation of a material into a symbol, taking on a ritual function linked to the concept of sacrifice.
Through archival work and research, the artist uncovers other "fallen" sculptures. For Odériz, the fall is a ritual movement. These fallen sculptures and monuments from different eras, discovered throughout the city, mirror falls conceptualized as sacrifices. They build upon the artist's existing creative imagery, fueling material and spatial experimentation within the galleries.
Visit the exhibition from February 20 to May 5 in Galleries 1 through 5 of the Cultural Center of Spain in Mexico (Guatemala 18 / Donceles 97, Centro Histórico, Mexico City). For more information, visit http://ccemx.org/exposiciones/
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About the artist.
Alberto Odériz (Pamplona, Spain, 1983). Graduated with a degree in architecture from ETSA Barcelona in 2008 and holds a Master's degree in Analysis, Theory, and History of Architecture and the City from UNAM, with a thesis on public space in Mexico City. He has lived in Mexico since 2010, where he combines his work as a sculptor with other disciplines such as urban planning (Consultorio Urbano) and teaching (directing the research seminar for the Master's in City program at CENTRO). He has recently held exhibitions centered on the theme of La inexplicable roca (The Inexplicable Rock), using sculpture to explore different actions humans perform on stones to give them meaning: the installation El Zócalo en la Plaza de la Constitución (2014); Casa manifiesto, a reconstruction of the ideology behind O’Gorman's first functionalist house (2017); Nueve(punto)ocho, on the relationship between objects and bodies (2018); Dolmen, levantar la piedra, in a town in northern Spain (2018); or the installation Y al final, una piedra in Lincoln Park (2018).
This article was written by ArchDaily Team. The translation is powered by AI.
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