Breadth Orozco (above), along with Warhol and Koons, feature in the show
Over the past two decades Mexico City has emerged as a player in the international contemporary-art scene, with a clutch of world-class artists, cutting-edge galleries and deep-pocketed collectors — of which juice tycoon Eugenio Lopez is the most important. Located at his family's sprawling Jumex juice factory just outside the capital, Lopez's Colección Jumex is a priceless assemblage of works by blue-chip local and international artists ranging from Gabriel Orozco to Andy Warhol. It is unequaled in Latin America.
The first ever Stateside exhibition of pieces from the collection, entitled Where Do We Go from Here? , runs through March 14 at Miami's Bass Museum and will be a highlight of the city's winter cultural season. Organized in four key areas — urban anthropology, artist profiles, art with texts and art within art — the show features everything from conventional paintings and drawings to illuminated neon texts and installation pieces, and is an unusual offering for the Bass, which typically shows major European paintings, sculpture and tapestries in its sleek, Arata Isozaki-designed pavilion.
With important names like Daniel Guzmán, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Jorge Méndez Blake and Orozco taking center stage, the exhibition is decidedly, and understandably, Mexico-heavy. But by juxtaposing these talents with international contemporaries — from Jenny Holzer to Paul McCarthy, Kelley Walker to Jeff Koons — the Bass has "been able to bridge these creative cultures," enthuses executive director and chief curator Silvia Karman Cubina. The result, she says, is "a very exciting dialogue between past and present." See bassmuseum.org for more.