MONTERREY.- When describing his artistic practice, Ernesto Solana recounts his passion for collecting objects, his fondness for the exploration of landscape, nature, and a growing interest in the instincts that overdetermine us as a species. As if they were amulets endowed with magical powers, his works seem to collapse several narratives and visual references that allow thematic readings and associations, such as his interpretation of the concept of anthropocene -the present geological era whose beginning is understood as the period during which human activities began to affect the climate and the environment- the Linnaean taxonomy system, his admiration for the scientific installations of the American conceptual artist Mark Dion, as well as for the practice of the legendary Ana Mendieta.

The various bodies of work that Ernesto has created, and which are presented in each of the three galleries of the gallery, propose multiple narrative readings in their relationship to each other. A series of photographic compounds made up of framed photographs and wall vinyl surround the perimeter of the first room. They are photographs of clay sculptures made by the artist as well as other objects from his personal collection. Small fragments of human bodies - legs, busts, etc. - of pre-Columbian character, anthropomorphize the found pieces that they support (see Totemic Composite I to IV). The photographs are neat, taken with the same precision and attention to detail as the sculptures portrayed in them.

Solana's practice begins where an object —often an artificial or natural waste— stops him during a walk around the suburbs of Savannah, Georgia, or Guadalajara, Mexico, cities in which he spends his time. After taxonomic classification, the objects are then reconfigured into a sort of vertical tower that has something of Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone's Seven Magic Mountains, and something of a totem. "For me totemic is not so much about North American totemism - the typical colorful wooden sculptures often carved by the native peoples of northwestern Canada," Ernesto says, "but about the notion of endowing an object with new life and giving it reverence. And that is precisely what he seems to want to happen to his works in the context of the white cube of the contemporary art gallery: for us to pay them cult.

Totemic Figure (Offering I), for example, consists of a photograph of a stack comprising a basketball, pieces of sea turtle shell, macaw feathers, the lid of a plastic container, reptilian skin, and remains of animal bones. But the basketball is not an ordinary ball, like the one David Hammons would cover in charcoal and make it jump over a sheet of white paper, but rather a broken, deflated and useless ball. Conjured up by Ernesto's gaze, seemingly worthless objects are reassembled into a sort of amulet.

The second room contains a tentacular steel structure with arms that elegantly hold objects — deer antlers, ceramic transformer, plastic rope, marine snail, plastic tube. But the tentacular here is of the utmost importance: if taxonomic analysis and totemic stacking allude to the same one-dimensional human worldview of the eighteenth century that led to the creation of the concept of homo sapiens as his most precious product, the former serve as proof of an effort by the artist to question this structure of thought where man is the measure of everything.

But the most surprising moment of the exhibition culminates in A Chthonic Becoming (Medieta's Venus), where form is subjugated in pursuit of content. In a conversation, Solana tells me about his interest in Ana Mendieta's work, especially her earth-body performances, through which Mendieta combined the genres of Land Art, Body Art and Performance to explore her identity as a cuban woman immigrant to the United States. Exiled from Cuba at the age of 12, the land itself was the site - and the material - from which Mendieta was able to address issues of displacement, by printing her body in outdoor locations and then recording, through photography, video, and sculpture, its footprints on the land. Thus, this modest video made with a photographic camera, barely two minutes long, captures Solana approaching Rock Sculptures (1981). Carved by Mendieta in the caves of Jaruco Park, these bas-relief sculptures —which resemble petroglyphs— reflect an effort on the part of the artist to understand the stories of Taino's creation.

In the video, we see Solana undressing before the discovery of two of the eight sculptures carved by Mendieta; Bacayú (Lucero del día) and Morolla (Luna), after an expedition whose journeys deserve a separate text. In the same room, we see four clay sculptures inspired by the paleolithic venus, but with androgenic bodies, and a set of polaroids of Mendieta's venus, which include a self-portrait in which Solana's face barely emerges in a ghostly manner. If Mendieta, through her sculptures, paid homage to the goddesses of Taino creation stories and invoked the power of primitive art to express the immediacy of life and the eternity of nature, Solana, on the other hand, pays homage to Mendieta in order to propose a tentacular future for humanity, where binary representations of sex and gender no longer govern our identities, and where —following Donna Haraway— the human being becomes more “chthonic”, that is: “not precisely a celestial deities, nor a foundational being for the Ancient Olympic Games; not a friend of the Anthropocene or the capitalocene, and definitely not a finished being”.

Ernesto Solana works in different mediums like photography, sculpture and installation. His artistic practice is parallel to his research and explorations around the suburban belts of different cities in the US, Mexico, Northern Africa and the Netherlands. In his works, Solana discusses the tensions between natural and artificial realms and the way in which urbanization and colonialism have clashed both categories. He leaps from prehistorical fossil deposits; to early notions of biological nomenclature and display; to the normalization of industrialized waste within marginalized urban landscapes. Solana recently presented his solo show Taxon Drift in Non-fiction Gallery, Savannah, GA, and has been part of groups show like As to Be Inaudible at C/O Berlin, Berlin, Germany curated by Jörg Colberg; Salon ACME, in Mexico City, and Indocumentados in Guadalajara. He recently published his book titled “Systema Artificialis” where he explores the consequences of the anthropocene and the new forms of relationship between the notions of humanity and nature. Solana studied at ICP in New York and got his MFA in Photography at the University of Hartford, in Hartford, Connecticut.