“MAURICIO ALEJO RAMIS BARQUET” September, 2009, p.147 By Casey Ruble

Bubble, 2009, c-print In the context of a year marked by global instability of various kinds, Mauricio Alejo's work, with its ephemeral character and insistence that everything in life IS bound to fall apart, suddenly seems prescient. For "The Limits of Fiction" the Mexico City-born artist presented videos, photographs and mixed-medium installations—mostly devoid of color—that capture the fragile moment between climax and collapse. In the looped video Endless Sphere (2008), for example, a perpetually spinning peso set against a white backdrop indefinitely prolongs the viewer's guess work about whether it will land on heads or tails. The C-print Tower (2007) depicts a column of iridescent soap bubbles that reaches a seemingly impossible height without popping. In Bubble (2009), also a C-print, a billowing white sheet appears to float midair in a white kitchen. Ironically, the most visually cumber- some pieces in the show were the most conceptually rigorous. The installation Holding on Tight (2009) consisted of two books—Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space and Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space—embedded in each other via interleafed pages. (If books could hug, this is what it would look like.) They were suspended at eye level by thin white ropes stretched diagonally across the room from floor to ceiling. Although the ropes threatened to pull the texts apart, the interleafed pages kept them locked together. The point seemed to be that Marxist-inflected production doesn't preclude poetry, but this could have been communicated more economically. Similarly, the rather brilliant installation Breathing (2009) would have been even better with less physical mass. Here, eight translucent plastic bags, attached to dear tubing that ran under the gallery door to the street, subtly inflated and deflated with gusts of wind outside. The piece eloquently described the flux between external and internal and, with its visual association to life-sustaining medical technology, pointed to an

uneasy relationship between sustenance and suffocation, but the multiple bags and bulky tubes seemed a bit de trop. The simple elegance of the installation Tunnels (2009), on the other hand, took one's breath away. This piece began anticlimactically as a round mirror installed near the door of the gallery that reflected a leafless tree silhouetted against the white sky. It continued, revealing nothing of much interest, with four additional mirrors mounted high on the walls of the gallery's first and second rooms, above the other artwork. Finally, deep in the last room, which was unlit as if the room were empty, a small mirror hung near the ceiting caught the reflections of the others to reveal an unexpected glimpse of the winter sky that stretched above you when you first entered the gallery. In the midst of so much suspension—spinning coins, bubbles ready to burst—a way out suddenly seemed possible, and as you exited the gallery, you found yourself looking up.

MAURICIO ALEJO "Space that Is Time" December, 2007 p. 169 By Federico Monslave There’s only one instant, and it’s right now. And it’s eternity. They say that time is eternal while it lasts; the action’s apparent fleetingness is prolonged or reproduced with the help of instruments like photography and video. The medium thus becomes a memory captor—memories that refer to realities, realities that are misleading. This exhibition of works by Mauricio Alejo (Mexico City, 1969) plays with this dichotomous notion of time: the fleeting and the eternal. Following a series of self-imposed limitations (type of lighting, composition format, etc.), Alejo creates a feeling of corporeity in the objects he depicts, and it is closely related to the medium. Different simulacra of time are created depending on the device used: in still photographs time stretches out in the viewer’s imagination; in videos, the narrative recreates an illusory action and space in real time where things that were… turn out to be something else. The central concept behind the series of pieces Alejo shows in Space that Is Time is the object’s intrusion within space. But the object here does not directly refer to the notion of the objet trouvé, nor is it an accidental or spontaneous documentation. Instead, it is a dialogue that features four constants: the everyday object as a symbolic and sculptural element, its relationship with the personal space where the idea arises, the temporality of the action and the austerity of the composition. Space that Is Time will remain open from August 4 to September 1, 2007.

© Mauricio Alejo Crack, 2002 Video 00:24 min. (MAl 114)

“Mauricio Alejo at Ramis Barquet” November 2006, p. 211-212 By Michael Amy

Chain, 2005, c-print Mauricio Alejo, who was born in Mexico City and lives and works in New York, records everyday objects that he sets up in absurd arrangements, or more dramatically modifies by cutting, staining or painting them, or submitting them to laws of physics. The actual constructions cannot be experienced directly, but only in the beautifully composed photo- graphs and videos that they grace- fully inhabit. His large C-prints (43.33 by 55 inches) go well beyond merely documenting the ephemeral. Their range of hue and tone is rich, their physical and spatial tensions manifold. Alejo's work is laced with art-historical references, most notably to Arte Povera. Alejo recognizes that some of the most interesting art results from "foolish" concepts and actions. For one image, he attached small clamps and clothespins of different materials to each other in increasing order of size, so that the smallest holds onto the next larger, and so forth, delightfully reversing the proverb of the big fish gobbling up the small {Chain, 2005). The largest clamp is attached to a white ceramic toothbrush holder affixed to a blue-tiled bathroom wall, in front of which the string of clamps and pins rises along an arc measured off by the grid pattern of the tiles. This humorous and oddly poetic image brings to mind Tony Feher's light touch, as does Empty (2006), in which thin, translucent plastic bags of different colors, all empty, are placed one inside the other in a standing configuration. Libros (2006) shows a tightly packed stack of books on the second step of an apartment building staircase. The powerful diagonals of the staircase are accentuated by the three-quarter angle from which Alejo shot them. This work is reminiscent of Jannis Kounellis's stacks of roughly cut stones blocking doorways, while the lovely Flowers (2006),

consisting of a gas stove seen from above with its four burners throwing off evanescent blue petals of fire, reminds us of Kounellis's work with gas torches, in the DVD Powerless- ness (2006) we see a plunger that is suctioned to a wall. As it starts to release, the handle slowly rises, then flips down before the plunger falls to the floor. The suggestion of an erect penis suddenly deflated is unavoidable. This is playfulness coupled with an exacting formal rigor.

Mauricio Alejo Solo Show at Galería OMR, Mexido Issue no. 43 February - April 2002, p. 111-112 By Francisco Rivero Lake

Image 5, from the series Images for a better World/Gelatin silver print

One of the constant processes in the work of Mauricio Alejo (Mexico City, 1969) is to photograph objects of every day life which have been abandoned or have not been taken cared of. By doing this and by changing their dimensions, something photography can easily do, they also change contexts. As a result, the form does not merely define its function as it usually does, but it mutates to manifest its aesthetic quality. Alejo opts for large formats, switching from color to black and white, depending on his objectives and also on the series and on the specific point he wants to express. In Seis imágenes para un mundo mejor (Six Images for a Better World), Alejo chose black and white and, unlike his previous series, the object in question appears only in the photographic universe with a neutral background. Now the plastic figures are surrounded by their similar counterparts, making it difficult to tell which are the protagonists and which are the accompanists.

Alejo captures images of plastic molds and toys in Seis imágenes para un mundo mejor, and takes us back to childhood. The finished figures and the molds from which the toys will be produced, are charged with a nostalgic, evocative nature. For this show, Alejo used objects produced by the millions, before they had been used. Since they are still in the process of fabrication and have not yet reached the outer world, they do not have a personal history nor are they charged with anecdotes. This aspect allows the figures to manifest the idea rather than the object itself. In other words, the object is generic, it ideally represents all of its kind. This series makes this point very clearly. The

molds and objects in the process of production do not yet show the specific characteristics acquired by the objects once they have been exposed to the public. They, in fact, manifest the idea of mass production, the lack of individuality, before they actually acquire a personal history. That is why this notion makes me think that Alejo believes the ideal world, as represented, is in objects or beings that have not been corrupted by use value, that have not acquired a history because they are in a pre-natal state.

Each one of the images is titled. The titles help us understand the world Alejo is inviting us into: beauty, heroism, order, and landscape as paradise. To make the reading of the images easy, Alejo included a “help manual” for these series, where the values in question are reinforced with steps to be followed. The spectator will: 1. Reconsider the use and benefits of violence. 2. Ponder about the idea of order. 3. Ponder about the idea of progress. 4. Relate the idea of order with the idea of progress in their only possible permutations. 5. Aim for sexual neutrality in his/her friendly relations. 6. Meditate, reflect, compare, and shall present results.

By adding this guide, Alejo offers us a parameter not only to understand his images, but also to incite reflection about the present state of things. Without making value judgments, he incites us to think and meditate about the issues that may mean humanity’s monster or its hope. Alejo’s technique is surprising: the way he handles light, the composition of the pieces and its conceptual structure show the work of an artist who is totally committed to art. Considering his previous work and this present exhibit, Alejo shows outstanding tenacity and individuality.