Untitled (Oaxaca), 2009

Black paint and black glass sheets
Instalation view
Oaxaca Contemporary Art Museum (MACO)
Oaxaca, Mex.

Photo credit Francisco Ugarte

Watch instalation video

The intervention consisted of two actions, ”the first consists of painting black all the spaces and cavities that lead to the patio; achieving with this simple resource to give corporeality to the light that penetrates and to forcefully establish the polarity between inside and outside. Once in the courtyard, the contrast between the white of its walls and the gloom of the interior spaces, marks a strong rupture that causes the massive walls (up to one meter thick) to be perceived as thin perforated sheets. The second action consists of the square installation of two black-tinted glass walls. Its location, parallel to one of the corners of the patio, generates a narrow corridor of no more than 60 cm. wide, which allows the viewer to take a journey that, again, exalts the confrontation of contradictory terms. On this occasion, to the experience, visual and tactile, lived simultaneously and in close proximity by those who circulate through this tunnel that has one face (uniform, smooth and cold) of industrially manufactured glass and another (irregular, rough and warm) of masonry manually executed, adds to the reflective effect of the glazed surface that obsessively reproduces its opaque counterpart ...”
Carlos Ashida.