recent stuff 2

We have been to a few exhibitions as well these weeks, one was at the College of San Ildefonso where we have earlier seen the Vik Muniz exhibition. This time we saw two new things: one was called "Viento del Oeste, Viento del Este" which basically comprised of 20th century Spanish art that is in a way or other related to Mexico. They did have one Miro, one Picasso, and one Dali painting which they heavily advertised (of course) but mostly they were unknown artist with a wide variety of styles some of which I really liked, others were pretty schematic. But the other exhibition which we saw by chance only was a very interesting retrospective of Julio Galán, a Mexican artist who lived in New York for awhile. I did not know anything about him before, but I became a fan. It's hard to describe his stuff because it's really complex with lots of influences that melt into a very personal style. He is called a neo-expressionist by critics mixing very subjective, autobiographical motives (a la Frida Kahlo) with surrealist imagery and gay themes full of allegories from fairy tales and childhood fantasy. He used to hang out with Andy Warhol in New York for awhile but I don't think that pop art influenced him much, although his later works use multiple registers and materials. I am posting a picture here to give you a sense of this. Both me and James really liked his stuff, especially the earlier ones.
We also went to the Anthropology Museum for the first time last week (it will need at least 6 or 7 visits). It was pretty amazing, James will write about it soon...