Leonel Salguero’s (b. 1989) work shows his interest in the perception of time and its relation to the solidity (or softness) of things. This fascination with the time of media and materials has led him to explore a wide variety of disciplines -drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, music, performance-. For Salguero, time in art is expressed in the way different disciplines impose specific rhythms of thought and production. This allows him great mobility in formal terms, fluctuating freely between smooth and chaotic rhythms; between abstraction and figuration.

Salguero tends to generate objects that are not static, but fragile and dynamic, that shift the attention towards the temporal dimension of things, making evident the instability (or softness) of reality.

Recent exhibitions include “Cold Pleasure, Warm Touch”, Peana, Monterrey; “Kaviar”, Lagos, 2019; “Pintura Fresca”, Edison 137, 2019; “End of residency exhibition”, Lagos, 2019; “Nuevo Manifiesto del Cine Mexicano”, Lodos, 2018; “Cerrajería", Lockup International, 2018; “Mutualistic Symbiosis”, sodA, 2018; “Todo lo (fshlw) sólido (plsh-plop) se desvanece (rrwrrwrrw, plsh) en el aire” with Michael Ray-Von (5to piso, 2017). 

Michael Ray-Von (b 1988) received a BFA from CalArts in 2012. Subsequently, he spent 7 years in Mexico City, before moving to Basel, Switzerland, where he is currently pursuing an MFA at the Institut Kunst. He is a member of the Oa4s collective and was co-director of Otros Obras, an artist-run space in Tijuana, Mexico.

Michael Ray-Von is a multidisciplinary artist who works with the creation of objects as well as digital formats and performance. He constantly collaborates with other artists and friends.

His work considers the difficulties of human relationships with our social and physical domains. His most recent exhibitions are “i. Orderly Bloomst Folds” at Palmera, (Bergen, Norway), “Tunnelscape”, at New Works, Chicago, and his end-of-residency exhibition in Lagos, with Leonel Salguero (2019).

Leonel Salguero & Michael Ray-Von

In residence from September 10, 2018 to January 17, 2019

Leonel Salguero and Michael Ray-Von share a studio and work together on an exhibition towards the end of their residency. Their project in Lagos is the continuation of a conversation that began when doing an exhibition together in 2017, a project that considered the poetics of meteorological and astronomical phenomena.

“There seems to be a limit to the crispness of the illusory vision –it sort of glimmers. A hallucination can only be experienced indirectly, as from the corner of one’s eye. And this supports a suspicion that the object of hallucination derives from a transcendent field (though a discerning observer will recall evidence to the contrary).

I believe that an object is rather a shadow of a potential object, the latter being the most pure substance of cognitive inference, and our vehicle to the future and to the past. Hallucination, or other perceptual deception, allows the perceiver familiarity with speculative reality, if for only a brief moment. One gains indirect access to a stratum of potentiality, as well as an awareness for potency as the bridge to, and from, actualization.

The works present the impression of a narrative without assembling that narrative from any specific reality (or imaginary) and without allowing that narrative to ever really resolve. It has been said that paintings are like windows, but in the case of these works I’d say they act somewhat more like portals, insofar as a mirror is a portal, complete with all its warps and distortions.”

— Michael Ray-Von