“Today I Feel Well”

This exhibition borrows its title from the microstory “Fecundidad” (Fertility), by writer Augusto Monterroso, and includes works by François Bucher, José León Cerrillo, Mario García Torres, Christian Jankowski, and the Tercerunquinto collective. In its entirety, “Fecundidad” reads: “Today I feel well, like a Balzac; I am finishing this line.” Monterroso’s story speaks of the act of writing as well as its history, just as the works in this show reflect on the construction of artwork and the process of perception. Captura holográfica. Tepoztlán (Holographic Capture. Tepoztlán), 2010, a work by Bucher, comprises a serpentine branch exhibited in the gallery; in an artist statement, Bucher equates the artistic act of taking the branch from the Tepozteco mountain with what he deems a spiritual act—capturing a snake while in a “suprasensorial” state. For each work in the series “What I Still Have to Take Care of,” 2010, Jankowski selects one of the items from his to-do list, then uses the words that outline the task to construct a neon text piece. In Borrador (Eraser), 2010, the Tercerunquinto collective reflects on the relationship between gallery and artist by asking the director of Proyectos Monclova to erase three of their drawings. In A continuous present and using everything and beginning again, 2007, Cerrillo reflects on silk screen as a medium and questions the idea of reproducibility. Meanwhile, in a two-channel video, García Torres writes a letter to the viewer in which he ponders his own work methods. The epistle is penned during the three-minute duration of the Super 8 film cartridge registering his deed. The letter finishes with: SO, I WILL JUST START WRITING, AND WHEN THE FILM ENDS, THIS LETTER ENDS TOO. The title of the work is the text of the letter itself, a sort of tautological cycle based on the complementary acts of writing and reading.