Performance-enhancing substances: A guide to Material Art Fair 2017, Feb 9 – 12

, 8 February 2017
focus

The annual Material Art Fair is on at Mexico City’s Expo Reforma, opening February 9 and running to February 12.

The event is held in the convention centre in the neighborhood of Juarez and organised by Cologne’s Natalia Hug Gallery, Detroit’s Michael Jon & Alan, London’s Laura Bartlett Gallery and Mexico City’s joségarcía. The 2017 edition has commissioned Mexico-City-based architecture studio APRDELESP to design the layout, which will host around 50 galleries and other independent, artist-run spaces, as well as a series of events talks and performances.

Candice Lin, ‘A Hard White Body’ (2016). Detail. Courtesy the artist + Current LA, Los Angeles.

Running parallel to the fair are a number of exhibitions at various locations around the city, including Thank You for Believing in Me group show, presented by Ruins Magazine, and Metahaven‘s Information Skies solo exhibition, presented by Future Gallery  at Edificio Humboldt. There will also be Dawning, featuring Markus Selg, Lewis Teague Wright, with a performance by Diego Salvador Rios, presented by Attilia Fattori Franchini and Yves Scherer at Capitán Gallo. 

Meanwhile, at the fair, will feature the inaugural program ‘IMMATERIAL’ programme, with “a selection of new and recent performative works by a group of international artists working with choreography and performance.” Some aqnb recommendations include Cally Spooner‘s Warm Up (2016), performed unannounced by Sanna Blennow, at various locations throughout the fair, and Dora García‘s The Artist Without Works: A Guided Tour Around Nothing (2008), performed by Michelangelo Miccolis and Fernando Estrada at Salón Mercurio and Salón Yacatecutli, both from February 9 to 12. Mårten Spångberg will also preform Digital Technology (2016) at the ground floor lobby on February 11.

Lewis Teague Wright, The cold winds that launched across violent waves met me as I took a walk to find my thoughts (I)’, (2016). Installation view. Courtesy the artist + Lodos Gallery, Mexico City.

The work of these artists and more will be at the centre of conversation for ‘Firing Protocols in Today’s Art’ at Discussion Laboratory, where participants, including Spångberg, Michelangelo Miccolis and Simon Asencio among others, will discuss how performative art can “act as counter-narratives to the overriding meta-narratives that very much carry today’s socio-political environment” in the upstairs lobby on February 11.

aqnb‘s recommended booth and artists go as follows, below:

Diego Salvador Rios, Dave Miko, Adriana Lara and Lewis Teague Wright &c @ Lodo Gallery, Mexico City
Daniele Milvio @ ExoExo, Paris 

Daniele Milvio. Courtesy the artist + Exo Exo Gallery

Candice Lin @ Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles
Guy Church, Ron Ewert, Sondra Perry @ Good Weather Gallery, North Little Rock
Rehana Zaman @ Syndicate, Cologne 
Jesse Harris @ Cooper Cole, Toronto

Yautepec, Mexico City
Springsteen, Baltimore
Lodos, Mexico City
Lulu, Mexico City
joségarcía ,mx, Mexico City
Et Al., San Francisco
Alter Space, San Francisco

See the Material Art Fair website for the full programme and details.**