February 19, 2026 – April 4, 2026
CDMX – Gallery

Following his 2022 solo exhibition, 𝘊á𝘭𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘰 𝘌𝘹𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘰, at our gallery, we are pleased to present new works by Javier in 𝘛𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴 𝘥𝘦 𝘳𝘶𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘴 𝘥𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘰, 𝘰 𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘯𝘢.

“If archaeology as a scientific discourse claims that it is possible to make ruins speak from and on behalf of the past, for Javier Fresneda, ruins exist only in the present. Contingent, fragmented, manipulated through various material supports, dislocated in time and space, the remains of the past in Fresneda’s work, ultimately inaccessible, reveal the archaeological gesture as a sensual, speculative, and libidinal practice.

The exhibition is structured around a series of images that are canonical in the official narrative of Mexican history and geography: reliefs from the archaeological site of Palenque, drawn by Guillermo Dupaix and Luciano Castañeda in the context of the Royal Antiquarian Expeditions of 1807; representations of typical Mexican landscapes from Carl Nebel’s beautiful book Viaje pintoresco y arqueológico (1840); studies of Mexican historical caricature from the 19th and 20th centuries; the painting El Abrazo (1980) by Jorge González Camarena, picturing the “embrace” between the two cultures that gave rise to the Mexican nation.

Fresneda conjures up these different moments through visual essays that, far from fixing the past, multiply the possibilities of approximation to it, without renouncing precision and technical mastery. Above all, Fresneda is an accomplished artist who does not limit himself to offering conceptual challenges and riddles: his work has its concrete beginnings in his curiosity and wonder at the alchemical possibilities of matter and takes on meaning as he experiments with new processes and materials. (…)»