iMuseo JumexNuevo Polanco
Álvaro Urbano: Helen
Álvaro Urbano's immersive homage to Helen Fowler O'Gorman and her botanical world, evoking Juan O'Gorman's Casa Cueva in the Pedregal de San Ángel.
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In 1969 Juan O'Gorman sold his house on Avenida San Jerónimo, built into a lava cave left by the Xitle volcano, to the sculptor Helen Escobedo. She demolished much of it and told an architecture magazine the cave was "uninhabitable, particularly in times of rain". Anyone who keeps a bucket under the ceiling every rainy season will half understand her.
Álvaro Urbano, a Berlin-based Spanish artist, made this installation for Gallery 1 from that lost house and from Helen Fowler O'Gorman's book of Mexican plants. You walk into what La Tempestad's Nicolás Cabral calls a light box, programmed to cycle through simulated dawns and dusks. Twenty-nine metal flowers hang over stone tiles, and the museum let Urbano lift part of its floor to sink a stone mural into it.
Cabral calls the room a time capsule and praises the flowers' jeweller's precision. Entry is free with no reservation, Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00, until 19:00 on Saturdays and 20:00 on the last Wednesday of the month.
Editor's pick
Álvaro Urbano rebuilds the botanical world of Helen Fowler O'Gorman, echoing Juan O'Gorman's Casa Cueva in the Pedregal. Shown alongside Raúl Silva's Gateway, and entry is free.
Look for
The 29 metal flowers
Floral sculptures suspended over stone tiles, drawn from Fowler O'Gorman's study of Mexican plants and made, La Tempestad says, with a jeweller's precision.
The sunken petromural
A mural of coloured volcanic stones, echoing the mosaics O'Gorman set into Casa Cueva, sits in the gallery floor where part of it was lifted out.
Dawn and dusk on a loop
Lighting Urbano programmed from his Berlin studio moves the room through simulated sunrises and sunsets.
The book on the slabs
A sculpted book rests on a pile of stone floor slabs.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Evening Visits
- Locals Who've Seen It All
- Nerding Out
With kids
Free Mini Domingo workshops for ages 5 to 11 (8 November and 31 January, registration required) tour this show, then walk the linear park on the old train tracks outside, mapping wild plants and cracks.
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Image credits
6
- Álvaro Urbano: HelenCourtesy of Museo Jumex
- Alexandre Estrela. RedSkyFalls: RéplicaCourtesy of Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC)
- El Códice de AzcatitlanCourtesy of Museo Nacional de Antropología
- Julian Rosefeldt. ManifestoCourtesy of Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC)
- Museo JumexFernando Marroquín / Fundación Jumex, CC BY 4.0
- Museo Soumaya Plaza CarsoDiego Delso / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0