In the Garden

Text

Pieces

Exhibition views

Curated by Magnolia de la Garza

An exhibition that proposes a revision of the collection based on the concepts of garden and landscape with the museographic design of LANZA Arienzo Abascal.

“In the garden” the plant world is substituted by a series of representations— installations, photographs, sculptures or paintings— to create spaces for encounter, contemplation, learning and reflection—where we can come to understand our history, question our present, and project ourselves into the future.

This exhibition was born out of a reflection regarding the relationship between museums and gardens not only as places that shelter distinct inner worlds, but also as cultural artifacts with utilitarian goals that have evolved over time in response to the needs of specific eras —as arenas for exhibition, reflection, investigation and discovery that at the same time, foster cultivation. Both are spaces that allow us to exist as a society.

According to the Brazilian architect and landscape artist Roberto Burle Marx, a garden is a spatial condition that enables community life and furthermore, a location where order is imposed on nature. This generates what is known as the garden paradox: while the illusion of close contact is conveyed to us, we are actually being separated from nature, because its essence is wilderness.

This exhibition—comprised of a selection of artworks from the Isabel and Agustín Coppel Collection—parts from different articulated themes, all related to the garden concept: landscape, nature, borders, and wastelands. The final section centers on representations of nature inscribed within the tradition of cartography, as well as our understanding of nature from a mathematical perspective.

The Garden

Gardens are cultural artefacts that make use of nature in order to attain symbolic and utilitarian goals. They date back to early civilization: records show that gardens have existed since ancient Egypt and Babylon. Their history teaches us that gardens come in many kinds, and that their designs and purposes have been modified over time in keeping with the political, philosophical, social, economic, and technical transformations of different eras.

One of the defining characteristics of the garden is the idea of order and the quest to structure nature while at the same time, separating us from it. As fragments of the world, gardens are laboratories, sites for experimentation and hybridization: spaces for contemplation, study, recreation and especially, interaction.

The works in this section reference a variety of elements that compose or inhabit gardens.

Borders

The origin of the word garden comes from the French gart, which means fenced in and is also related to the ancient German gardïn, which means a closed space. Hence, from its etymological origins, the garden is linked to the concept of barriers or limits. It is a terrain that has been delineated and therefore, separated from cultivated fields and the rest of nature; thus, fences or surrounding walls form an essential part of the garden.

The works that comprise this section allude to inside versus outside as defined by these architectural borders.

Vacant Lots

Vacant lots are spaces created by processes of territorial fragmentation throughout the 20th and 21st centuries up until the present day. These terrains are not considered to be productive in that they are neither industrial nor agricultural; they do not form part of either structured cities or nature reserves.

The shapes that configure these spaces are not romantic ruins amid a picturesque landscape but rather, undefined forms characterized by degradation. This section is dedicated to spaces that produce a sensation of bewilderment and expectation as a result of their lack of use or indetermination, characteristics that cause vacant lots to present themselves as alternative critical spaces, given that they oppose the rational logic of urban planning.

Nature

The concept of nature has been studied since Antiquity, generating different referential definitions and perspectives that range from scientific to philosophical, from geographic to aesthetic. In a broader sense, nature refers to all existing things and phenomena, except for human creations.

According to the German philosopher George Simmel, nature implies a conceptualization of totality. He stated that when we separate or frame a fragment, it is no longer nature because it has been wrested from the whole. Simmel proposes that in the West, since all representations of nature are merely a framed and isolated part of that whole, they have been transformed into a cultural construct known as landscape.

Landscape

The landscape is a modern concept associated first and foremost with painting and literature. Hence, from its origins, it has always been mediated by culture: our vision of territory or nature. Having been conditioned by cultural context, the concept of landscape is therefore not universal; indeed, there are cultures that have no word for it.

The landscape may present itself as immense or miniscule, however, a setting and a spectator will always be necessary in order for it to exist: a point of view, a representation, a poetics.

The artworks in this section combine different approaches to the landscape and offer us abstract, reflexive gazes toward this genre, distanced from those of a more picturesque panorama.

Cartography and maths

During the 17th century in the West, technological, scientific and philosophical changes took place in terms of our vision of nature and its representation. The colonization of territories that occurred a century earlier and the creation of new trade routes brought about a demand for more precise cartographies with the objective of measuring, understanding, calculating, and dominating nature.

Also during the 17th century, parting from the discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton and other scientists, mathematics started to be used in the Western world as a tool to understand and speak of nature in accordance with the idea that the universe is determined by this science.

In this section, we find works by different artists who have revisited cartography, systems of measurement and even mathematical approaches to the representation of the natural world with aesthetic and poetic objectives, rather than scientific or technical ones.

Curatorship: Magnolia de la Garza
Artists: Ansel Adams, Robert Adams, Saâdane Afif, Allora & Calzadilla, Francis Alÿs, Giovanni Anselmo, Leonor Antunes, Iván Argote, Lucas Arruda, John Baldessari, James Bateman, Lothar Baumgarten, Joseph Beuys, Karl Blossfeldt, Andrea Büttner, Johanna Calle, Julian Charrière, Dan Colen, Joseph Cornell, Gregory Crewdson, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Imogen Cunningham, Elena Damiani, Tacita Dean, Jimmie Durham, Elger Esser, Guillermo Galindo, Mario García Torres, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Kendell Geers, Isa Genzken, Luigi Ghirri, Nan Goldin, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Félix González-Torres, Ángela Gurría, Andreas Gursky, Petrit Halilaj, Jitka Hanzlová, Susan Hiller, Alfredo Jaar, Peter Keetman, Christoph Keller, William Kentridge, Anselm Kiefer, Irene Kopelman, Eva Kotátková, Alicja Kwade, Luisa Lambri, Zoe Leonard, Charles Long, Richard Long, Mark Manders, Íñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Patrick Martinez, Ana Mendieta, Mario Merz, Beatriz Milhazes, Tina Modotti, Armando Morales, Shirin Neshat, Rivane Neuenschwander, Gabriel Orozco, Irving Penn, Man Ray, Caio Reisewitz, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Miguel Rio Branco, Pipilotti Rist, Thomas Ruff, Anri Sala, Armando Salas Portugal, Sebastião Salgado, Wilhelm Sasnal, Monika Sosnowska, Thomas Struth, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Vivian Suter, Sofía Táboas, Su-Mei Tse, Álvaro Urbano, Danh Vō, Jeff Wall, Edward Weston, Mariana Yampolsky
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, MARCO, from 20 October, 2023 to March 3, 2024

Allora & Calzadilla

Graft

Recycled Polyvinyl Chloride

Dimensions variables

Mario García Torres

Inserción de la Cannabis Sativa en el Jardín Botánico

Bronze representation of the Canabis plant

Luigi Ghirri

Caserta (Serie: Paesaggio Italiano)

C-print, vintage (unique)

20.08 x 24.02 x 1.18 in

Tina Modotti

Rosas

Black and white photograph

12.00 x 16.00 in

Albert Renger-Patzsch

Mammillaria Angularis

Gelatin silver print

17.99 x 13.98 in

Danh Vō

We the People (detail), Fragment I5

Copper

81.89 x 123.62 x 17.72 in

Luisa Lambri

Untitled (Palácio da Indústria, 03)

Chromogenic print

41.34 x 36.22 in

Edward Weston

Tomato Field, Big Sur

Gelatin silver print

7.52 x 9.49 in

Gregory Crewdson

The Cobra

Digital Pigment Print

56.26 x 94.88 in

Elger Esser

Santa Caterina, Italy

Mural-sozed chromogenic print, front-mounted to acrylic framed

77.99 x 54.02 in

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle

Oppenheimer

DVD looped

4:39 min

Armando Morales

Selva tropical I

Oil and beeswax on canvas

82.99 x 65.98 in

Sebastião Salgado

Mentawai people on Siberut Island, Indonesia

Silver gelatin print

23.50 x 35.51 in

Thomas Struth

Paradise 14 (Yakushima, Japan)

Chromogenic print

70.87 x 83.86 in

Ansel Adams

Jeffrey Pine on Sentinel Dome

Gelatin silver print

6.73 x 9.25 in

John Baldessari

Landscape with Face

Three black and white photographs with vinyl paint, acrylic on borad

72.00 x 77.00 in

Elena Damiani

Fading field N15

Digital print on silk chiffon wood structure, black matte paint on wall

74.80 x 52.24 x 15.75 in

Alfredo Jaar

Field, Road, Cloud

3 Color Cibachrome prints; 3 black and white prints

40.16 x 275.20 in

Peter Keetman

Schneeinseln / Snow islands

Gelatin silver bromide print

11.38 x 15.43 in

Rivane Neuenschwander

One Thousand and One Possible Nights (N. 59 to N. 64)

Collage on paper

21.06 x 15.94 in

Caio Reisewitz

Praia do Cassino II

Chromogenic print

70.87 x 57.09 in

Wilhelm Sasnal

Petroleum

Oil on canvas

62.99 x 47.24 in

Christoph Keller

Herbarium Amazonas

Fine Art Prints on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Ultra Smooth

91.46 x 62.01 in

Armando Salas Portugal

Sin título (Selva de San Francisco, Colima)

Gelatin silver print

17.32 x 12.20 in