SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA.- This fall the San Diego Museum of Art presents a groundbreaking group exhibition of contemporary Mexican artists who find themselves at a crossroads between global art movements and the current national setting. Titled Axis Mexico: Common Objects and Cosmopolitan Actions, the exhibition features significant works by the current generation of Mexican contemporary artists, and as such, it contributes new knowledge on the subject. The exhibition is organized by the San Diego Museum of Art and is curated by SDMA curator of contemporary art, Betti-Sue Hertz, with the support of major grants by The Rockefeller Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

"Axis Mexico not only complements SDMA’s burgeoning collection of Latin American art, but continues a series of major exhibitions of Mexican art that began in the spring of this year with José Clemente Orozco in the United States, 1927-1934. With the Museum situated at the cultural crossroads that is the Mexican-U.S. border, these exhibitions enable us to fulfill our mission of presenting the cultural heritages of our entire community," says SDMA executive director, Don Bacigalupi.

Axis Mexico reveals Mexico as an axis for the circulation and exchange of art and ideas, while addressing: issues of location, the surface qualities and visual aspects of objects in the environment, and conceptual approaches to spatial or social situations. Many of the paintings, sculptures, photographs, installations, and videos included in the exhibition use conceptual strategies to reference everyday life and material culture as a vehicle to insert cultural specificity into the globalized language of contemporary art.

This approach, first articulated by conceptual artists in the U.S. during the late 1960s, Latin American Neoconcretists of the 1950s and 60s, and French Situationists of the 1950s and 60s, to name a few, has had a significant impact on contemporary artists. By reaching back to these older trajectories, the artists represented in Axis Mexico have been able to free themselves from more recent developments in Mexican art and focus on deep tendencies in the global avant-garde.

Artists participating in this noteworthy exhibition include Eduardo Abaroa (in collaboration with Ruben Ortiz Torres): video and sculpture; born in Mexico City (1968), lives in Los Angeles and Mexico City; Francis Alÿs: video installation; born in Antwerp, Belgium (1959), lives in Mexico City (since 1987); Carlos Arias: textile wall hangings; born in Santiago, Chile (1964), lives in Mexico City (since 1975); Gustavo Artigas: performance; born (1970) and lives in Mexico City; Iñaki Bonillas: installation and photography; born (1981) and lives in Mexico City; Mariana Botey: video; born in Mexico City (1969), lives in Los Angeles;
Fernanda Brunet: painting; born in Mexico City (1963), lives in New York City and Mexico City; Monica Castillo: video and digital image; born in Mexico City(1961) and lives in Mexico City and New York City; Claudia Fernandez: photography; born (1965) and lives in Mexico City; Silvia Gruner: video installation; born (1959) and lives in Mexico City; Gonzalo Lebrija: digital photography; born (1972) and lives in Guadalajara; Marcela Quiroga and Georgina Arizpe: performance; live in Monterrey, Mexico; Domingo Nuño: digital image; born in Tijuana (1959); lives in New York City; Ruben Ortiz Torres (in collaboration with Eduardo Abaroa): video and sculpture; born in Mexico City (1964), lives in Los Angeles; Daniela Rossell: photography; born (1973) and lives in Mexico City; Jaime Ruiz Otis: painting and sculpture; born in Mexicali, Mexico (1976); lives in Tijuana, Mexico; Santiago Sierra: installation; born in Madrid, Spain (1966), lives in Mexico City. All of these artists to one extent or another (and sometimes paradoxically) refer to some aspect of a specifically Mexican approach or source. As nationalism is consumed by globalism, an exhibition of Mexican art becomes an international project and invariably includes artists living both inside and outside of Mexico.

While Axis Mexico is influenced by artists, curators, art historians, and art critics working inside Mexico, the interpretative framework and breadth of the project has been designed to give U.S. audiences an overview of significant trends that are connected to widely known and accepted precedents in global contemporary art.

Installed within a large exhibition space, the work of each artist will be featured as a separate section, presenting a coherent sampling of his or her production. The spatial organization of the exhibition as well as the wall titles, labels, and didactics—written in both Spanish and English—support the value of each artist’s contribution to the group presentation. Thus, the unique contribution of each artist to the larger dialogue is given full attention.