Héctor Zamora and Erlea Maneros Zabala at Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City

The Museo Experimental El Eco is a meeting place for the arts in Mexico City. Inaugurated in 1953, the museum seeks to offer various contexts for new artistic practices and the development of cultural knowledge.

Currently, El Eco presents two exhibitions with the artists Héctor Zamora and Erlea Maneros Zabala. In this episode, the director and curator of the museum, Tobias Ostrander, provides us with an introduction to the two exhibitions and the Museo Experimental El Eco.

Héctor Zamora’s new installation titled Offered Paradises consists of a multitude of brightly colored inflatable castles, arches and ramps that are normally rented to entertain childern. Zamora has filled the whole central patio with these mini-architectures.

Erlea Maneros Zabala conceived an exhibition that is based on the historical archive of Mathias Goeritz, the founder of El Eco. She recontextualized found images and texts in the form of photographs and drawings, creating individual works that form a part of an installation produced for the Sala Mont of the museum.

This is the first segment from Mexico City, by our new correspondent Jacinto Astiazarán.

Héctor Zamora and Erlea Maneros Zabala at Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City. Introduction by Tobias Ostrander (Director and Curator, El Eco). January 26, 2011. Video: Jacinto Astiazarán.

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Press releases:

PARAíSOS OFRECIDOS
From January 26 to February 13, 2011
With his new installation titled Offered Paradises, Hector Zamora has filled the central patio with a multitude of mini-architectures, the brightly colored inflatable castles, arches, mountains and ramps that are normally rented to entertain children during birthdays or other family celebrations. These funny forms counter the seriousness of the “Emotional Architecture” of El Eco and of modernist abstraction in general. The project additionally offers a strong critique of the extravagant festivals the government has produced in recent years in Mexico City. The spectacles of parades, ice-skating rinks and snow in the Zócalo, these “offered paradises”, evoke sites of wealth, travel and leisure that are inaccessible to the majority of the population of Mexico and as such represent “castles in the air”, unreachable aspirations.

ERLEA MANEROS ZABALA
From January 26 to February 13, 2011
Originally trained as a painter, Erlea Maneros Zabala has developed a conceptual practice that analyses and deconstructs how images are put together, while concurrently addressing the contemporary cultural implications of the diverse forms and mediums she engages. Her works address abstraction, but often through the use of figurative material. They involve appropriation, reproduction and seriality. With her project for El Eco she worked with the historical archive of Mathias Goeritz, recontextualizing found images and texts in the form of photographs and drawings, creating individual works that form a part of an installation produced for the Sala Mont of the museum.

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