Moris in ARCO

A x E News talks to Mexican gallery owner Gustavo Arroniz

By Elvira Rilova

Arroniz Arte Contemporaneo opened in Mexico City back in 2006 with a view in mind to make more room for a new breed of artists from Mexico and Latin America. His prime drive always hinged on the support and tracking of the artists’ careers both in the local and international scenarios. Based on the use of drawing for the development of their works, the artists represented by this institution rely on an assortment of forms of expression, including painting, photography, video, sculpture and installations. During the latest edition of the ARCO Madrid International Fair of Contemporary Art, the Gustavo Arroniz Gallery unveiled artworks by Mexican artist Ismael Moreno (Moris) in Solo Projects: Focus Latin America, a section oriented to showcase the region’s emerging art. The exhibit was sponsored by AECID (Spanish acronym for Spanish International Development Cooperation Agency). A x E News had a chance to interview Mr. Arroniz.

Gustavo, you present your gallery within the Solo Projects section in which you came up with Moris the artist…

He’s a 32-year-old Mexican artist, today’s most important young Mexican artist. His work speaks of peripheral situations, the street problems, their language codes, the power relationships and everything related to survival in this form of expression.

What kind of artists do you take to your gallery in Mexico D.F.? Do you focus your attention on Mexican art or are you aware of artistic proposals all across Latin America?

They are most young Mexican artists who are 30 to 35 years of age, but quite lately I’ve been working with other artists. I represent two Argentineans and a Peruvian, and I also work with a Colombian. My gallery is always displaying the Latin American arts and I never rule out the possibility of let Europeans and American into my catalog. But right now, they are mostly young Mexicans.

This is your first time in ARCO. What do you make of this experience?

The experience is good and positive. I hope to do a lot of business. The Solo Projects idea is to give an in-depth look at an artist and those are the perspectives we followed with Moris: the promotion of his work among institutions and curators dealing with the contemporary art.

Now the mandatory question in this year’s ARCO: I don’t know whether the crisis is hitting as hard as it’s hitting here but, how are people living this in Latin America?

We’ve always been in crisis in Mexico, therefore we’re no strangers to this (he chuckles). We’re used to crises and to making ends meet, and since we’ve never counted on any kind of support, this crisis doesn’t make so much of a difference. So, we zero in on displaying rather than on selling, because that’s a hard thing to do here. We’re focused on promotion… Latin Americans have been well acquainted with crises for a mighty long time (he chuckles again).

How do you see today’s arts?

We’re living some incredible moments in Latin America now. There are many young artists, from my generation, extremely interesting and with top-quality works, and I’m afraid that has to do with the fact that these artists always work under crisis situations, therefore there’s no difference in the sense that they don’t have to change the way they work, as it could happen here, for instance. So, that’s somehow a kind of edge they have because they’re used to working with little help. For the time being, I believe we’re going through a very interesting period with plenty of exchanges among artists. Art galleries like mine, which make presentations in fairs like this, are more or less always the same, so we know one another and have built on some close ties among us. But in general terms, there’s a lot of exchange going on, and not only among blocs of artists from the same region, which is something so good.

The Gustavo Arroniz Gallery is located in Plaza Rio de Janeiro No. 53, Colonia Roma, Mexico City. For more information, visit www.arroniz-arte.com.