MASA GALERIA 'THE LAST TENANT' BLURS THE LINES BETWEEN ART, DESIGN, AND HOW WE EXPERIENCE TIME

Art, México
MASA Galeria 'The Last Tenant'
On exhibition March 18 to May 9, 2021
Photography by Fabian Martinez and Noel Higareda
Exhibition Photography by Tom de Peyret courtesy of MASA Galeria


PRESS PLAY TO EXPERIENCE THE SOOTHING SPRINKLER AT ‘THE LAST TENANT

MASA walks the blurry line between art, design, collectible design and experimental design. In its fourth iteration, MASA Galeria presents The Last Tenant on exhibition through May 9, 2021 in México City. The collective founded by Age Salagõe, Héctor Esrawe and Brian Thoreen “is a nomadic project offering space for discourse about design”. Each iteration of MASA includes works by Mexican artists or work that is created in México by international artists. 

The experience of entering The Last Tenant begins with the abandoned home at Las Palmas 1145 in las Lomas de Chapultepec where the exhibition is installed. Exquisite locations have become a signature for MASA Galeria. The soundtrack heard on repeat is the surprisingly soothing sound of sprinklers reminding you that the gallery is in fact a large home turned modern ruin surrounded by kept gardens, Jacaranda trees, overgrown vines, abandoned roof tiles seen outside the gallery windows. Curator and Artist Mario García Torres provides a haunting speech about the last tenant of the home at Las Palmas 1145, reflecting on time, materials, memory, and the remnants of life that we leave behind.

“He wasn’t buoyant, most of the time. Or so they believed. In fact, he refused to allow himself to. It was a matter of taste. In the same way, he was never in a rush. All those things implied a certain mundane flair he wasn’t interested in feeding. If any, he had time on his side. He liked to wait for things to make sense. Days and months passed by, and he was barely seen leaving the house. It was believed his skin felt younger than it should, due to the fact that he disregarded the calendar. That’s what the neighbors mostly talked about. It was not about his solitude, but the look of his skin. It was them, that actually turned his days into a myth. Nobody knows precisely for how long he lived here. It was music that informed about his presence. Other than that, it was silence. Only the sprinklers disturbed that monotony. The neighbors fantasized the garden watering had become the tenant’s way of knowing the time. The caretaker moved around the house in a persistent rhythm as well and barely saw his boss. It was an agreement, a speechless contract. They almost never crossed paths; when one left the room, the other followed on the other side of the house, in a ballet of sorts. After a long weekend, when the caretaker arrived back to work he realized with surprise the house had been emptied. Cleaned. And no one was on sight. No inhabitant, no furniture, nothing. He kept on working, regardless, waiting for years, but nobody ever returned. There was not a goodbye, not a note, nothing. Forgotten in one closet was a small closed cardboard box. It contained photographs, some souvenirs, and written notes, which have been installed in the kitchen of the house. They are the only clues, a fragmented version if so, that could tell about the life and interests of the man who lived in this house. The works of art and design displayed here form, altogether, a portrait of sorts, from afar; things that I imagine would have pleased The Last Tenant.”

— Curator, Mario García Torres

 

ROOMS STUDIO ‘SIMPLE EYE CHAIR’ 2021. PHOTOGRAPHY BY FABIAN MARTINEZ.

EXTERIOR VIEW, JORGE YÁZPIK "SIN TITULO" 2020. PHOTOGRAPHY BY TOM DE PEYRET.

ANA PELLICER ‘COLLAR DE OAXACA’ 1981
RUBÉN ORTIZ TORRES ‘CUBISMO SENSIBLE’ 2019
GELES CABRERA ‘CALAVERA’ 1985

The last tenant provokes visitors to pause and reflect on time itself in relation to the artists and designers’ practice. The curation includes works by Geles Cabrera, whose career spans over 60 years and is known to be the first woman to practice sculpture professionally in México. ‘La ciencia como la realidad, siguen siendo platónicas2018 by José Dávila is an installation that stands still in extreme tension on the verge of movement. ‘Cubismo sensible’ 2019 by Rubén Ortiz Torres invites the visitor to observe over hours in order to witness, the urethane and thermochromatic pigment used in his pieces, change color as the room heats up throughout the day. If some works demand the audience to stop for a moment to be considered, others have been themselves waiting for us to catch up with them, and make them pertinent to our time. In that sense, The Last Tenant, becomes the space for which these manifestations work and hope for.”

BRIAN THOREEN 'UNTITLED COFFEE TABLE, CONSOLE AND SCREEN' 2021

ANA PELLICER ‘VESTUARIO PARA NAHUI OLLIN’ 1991

INSTALLATION VIEW, MARIO GARCÍA TORRES 'ESCENARIO I' 2021. PHOTOGRAPHY BY FABIAN MARTINEZ.

EWE STUDIO ‘ALTAR TABLE #7’ 2021
ROOMS STUDIO ‘SIMPLE EYE CHAIR’ 2021. PHOTOGRAPHY BY NOEL HIGAREDA.
THE BACK ROOM CURATED AND STYLED BY EMMANUEL PICAULT OF CHIC BY ACCIDENT

 

 

 

 

MASA Galeria
’The Last Tenant’
curated by Mario Garcia Torres
By appointment only