Over a decade ago, Eduardo Sarabia journeyed from California to Guadalajara to visit a ceramics factory. He ended up staying and subsequently steeping his art in narco-culture. If ‘Mexico’s narcos have their front pages and their murder ballads’, then Sarabia ‘has given them a craft tradition’, writes Travis Diehl in a recent frieze feature on the artist. The folk traditions and histories of northern Mexico – particularly their handmade textiles and ceramics – give form to the artist’s vibrant commentary on the local and the global and on the war on drugs. He’s well-known for his reappropriation of talavera pottery which he populates with the motifs of narco-culture, from scantily dressed women to AK-47s. I’m also looking forward to what Michaela Eichwald will bring to the space. Taking the unremarkable, sometimes nasty detritus of life and then imbuing it with another presence seems like Eichwald’s solution in the worn, muddied smears of her oil and acrylic on canvas, which might also be touched by other matter like cement, as well as the plastic bags containing eggs, coins or watches which the artist then sets in resin.
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