Gabriel de la Mora: TNTR AA

The exhibition marks the first one of Gabriel de la Mora at gallery Perrotin, New York. The works on view are composed with peculiar materials such as feathers, egg shells, and human hair, which derive from de la Mora’s will to “quit painting” in 2004. From that decision on, the artist has been experimenting alternative modes of image-making: at a first glance, his pieces appear to be monochrome surfaces but, at a closer analysis they reveal their texture made of patiently collected and painstakingly arranged elements.

This meticulousness is evident even in the titles given to the works: they are all numbers, revealing their constituent parts. An example is the ongoing series of eggshell “paintings,” begun in 2013 and on view in the gallery. The fragments of eggshells become a symbol of the time spent accumulating and assembling them, in a process of maturation of which the egg becomes the metaphor.