Luxury is personal
Arlette & Martine Syms
11 April – 16 May 2024
Preview days: 11 & 12 April 2024
12-6pm both days
project space, with Relaciones Públicas
@ C. Gobernador Ignacio Esteva 44, San Miguel
hosting Rose Easton
“Inherent in the idea of luxury is the notion of something being rarefied, or quite literally rare. Many of the things that we define as “luxurious” are, therefore, at best exclusive, and at worst exclusionary.
Characterised by a heat-forged alembic of painstaking craft, subtle wit, and geographical and historical specificity, the work of the multidisciplinary Mexican artist Arlette is certainly luxurious, but it is also deeply personal-its baroque intricacy and its frequent use of heavy-grade materials, including metal and volcanic rock, are offset by its ongoing exploration of deeply human themes and feelings. Amusement and arousal, in particular, emanate from surprising places in her sculptures, just as they sometimes take us by surprise in real life. With this in mind, it makes perfect sense that for Luxury is personal-a collaborative show for Condo CDMX—a new piece by Arlette appears in concert with three works by Martine Syms, another multidisciplinary figure whose practice combines theory, memoir, popular culture, gender politics, sex, and a wicked sense of humour. Like Arlette, Syms may show within the art world, but her practice is routinely energised by the desire to poke fun at its absurdity and self-seriousness; she is political and playful. In general, her output has the cool, scrappy, half-genius-and-half-bonkers vibe of an online fanpage for a pop star that is maintained by an academic.”
– extract from the exhibition text by philippa.snow
@roseeaston223
@relacionespublicas.art
@arrrlette_
@martinesyms
