This exhibition continues Melanie Smith's investigation into the politics behind proverbs and fables in 16th century Flemish painting. Last year Smith organized the show 'Obscuridades Bucólicas' at La Tallera in Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City, for which she conceived a series of tableaux vivants restaging different scenes in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Brueghel the Elder's, that explored the morality of genre painting from a contemporary perspective. The seven activations of these iconic representations – which give the Paralelo show its title – were not only transferred back into painting, but also only recorded by security cameras that have now become an installation. This new exhibition expands on Smith's earlier interest in the tension between the pictorial representation and the moving image, and in the way they can both be distorted as soon as they shift cultural contexts.
- Magalí Arriola