The Unexpected Universe of Every Day
In relation to his videos Mauricio shared the following reflexion with us, that was part of an interview he gave:
Recently I was interviewed by Katrin Steffen. She asked me what I thought of the idea of my videos being surreal. The question caught me off guard; not that I was completely unaware of this, let’s say, approach to my work - other people have made the same observation - but it was the direct, straightforward way in which she formulated her question that struck me.
It is interesting that, until then, I had been resisting calling my work surreal. I don’t know why. I just unreflectively didn't like the idea, but once the question was out I had no option but to come to terms with what I was so stubbornly denying.
Answering it was both liberating and enlightening. I came to understand that, indeed, there is a strong surreal element to my work, probably “á la Magritte” as in “This is not a Pipe” (as opposed to “á la Dalí”, whose work I dislike; it is too spectacular for my taste).
Either way, what I can say is that I’m not trying to open a door to the unconscious, but to a more obvious and factual world that is still surprising, because it actually exists and is just hidden in plain sight.
These lines show a desire to offer a new way of looking at a universe that is hidden behind the false transparency of the photographic language.
In several of the works presented here, our reading of a still image is transformed—thanks to the passage of time—into something completely different. The surprising elements in the universe are infinitely more casual. Gravity, in an unforeseen twist, belies the lightness of the air.
In all of them, the passage of time is a necessary element to show that photography can be a map of the reality but is not equal to it, like for example in the piece World: the world that not stops to move is different from the world that not stops to move around it, and in turn different from our world that also does not slow down.
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Mauricio Alejo (Mexico, 1969). He earned his Master of Art from New York University in 2002, as a Fulbright Grant recipient. In 2007, he was a resident artist at NUS Centre for the Arts in Singapore. He has received multiple awards and grants, including the New York Foundation for the Arts grant in 2008. His work is part of important collections such as Daros Latinoamérica Collection in Zürich . His work has been reviewed in important journals, such as Flash Art; Art News and Art in America. He has had solo exhibitions in New York, Japan, Madrid, Paris and Mexico. His work has been shown at CCA Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts in San Francisco; Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid and The 8th Havana Biennial among other venues. He currently lives and works in New York City.
