OMR

Mauricio Alejo

04 Aug - 01 Sep 2007

© Mauricio Alejo
Crack, 2002
Video
00:24 min.
(MAl 114)
MAURICIO ALEJO
"Space that Is Time"

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.