Tariff anxieties are no match for buoyant mood at Mexico City’s Zona Maco – The Art Newspaper

Crowds of VIPs crammed the aisles of the sprawling Centro Citibanamex in Mexico Metropolis on Wednesday (5 February) for the preview of Zona Maco, which boasts greater than 220 galleries throughout a number of sectors. And regardless of a collection of rocky geopolitical occasions main as much as the honest, fears of US president Donald Trump’s threatened 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico—now suspended for at the very least a month—did nothing to dampen the temper or industrial exercise.

“A whole lot of Individuals have been asking if we’re apprehensive about tariffs, however I feel the people who find themselves most scared about tariffs are Individuals,” says a staffer on the stand of native powerhouse gallery Labor. He provides: “The primary day has been superb, very numerous, with folks from the US, Canada, Europe and likewise Russia.”

The gallery’s stand on the honest is a gaggle presentation that features a wall of works by the French artist Étienne Chambaud, who additionally has a concurrent solo present at Labor’s area within the Miguel Hidalgo neighbourhood. Chambaud’s wall-based works on the honest include discovered icon work he purchased at vintage shops and has almost fully obscured with gold paint, heightening their gilded brilliance. The items are priced between $14,000 and $31,500 every.

One other pillar of the Mexico Metropolis scene, OMR, is likewise displaying a gaggle presentation highlighting lots of the best-known artists on its roster, together with the Los Angeles-born and Guadalajara-based Eduardo Sarabia, the Swiss artist Claudia Comte and the Danish collective Superflex.

“At some festivals we take a really focused or targeted method, however Zona Maco is a big honest the place we need to exhibit the breadth of our programme,” says Louise Carla Sala, a director on the gallery. “As one of many metropolis’s greatest galleries, folks wish to us, so we really feel we’ve got a duty to indicate one of the best of our artists.” She provides that the honest is especially vital for cultivating the subsequent technology of home collectors: “There are some Mexican collectors, particularly youthful ones, for whom that is their one time annually to make main purchases.”

Along with fostering youthful consumers, many sellers on the honest commented on the prevalence of museum teams plying the aisles—in search, maybe, of future acquisitions or concepts for upcoming programming.

“Probably the most buoyant of any version we’ve attended”

“The primary day of Zona Maco has been a really optimistic shock; we’ve got seen quite a lot of collectors and museum teams that made it a really thrilling second,” says Malik Al-Mahrouky, a gross sales director at Kurimanzutto, one other of the town’s most influential galleries (which additionally now operates an area in New York). “The variety of nationwide and worldwide teams and purchasers that had been current, along with the standard of the collections they characterize, has made this among the best editions.”

The gallery reported gross sales of works, ranging in value from $3,500 to $90,000, by Gabriel Orozco—whose main solo exhibition at Museo Jumex, Politécnico Nacional (till 3 August), opened a number of days in the past—Roberto Gil de Montes, Danh Vo, Leonor Antunes, Bárbara Sánchez-Kane, Gabriel Kuri, Dr Lakra, Damián Ortega and others.

Sean Kelly, which has places in New York and Los Angeles, additionally reported sturdy gross sales on the finish of the primary day—from works on paper by established figures like Marina Abramović, Roni Horn, Idris Khan and Sam Moyer (ranging in value from $10,000 to $40,000) to a portray by Kehinde Wiley ($225,000) and a canvas by Janaina Tschäpe (within the vary of $100,000 to $125,000). The gallery additionally discovered properties for items by a number of artists it’s displaying in Mexico for the primary time, together with Anthony Akinbola, Brian Rochefort and Ana González.

In keeping with Sean Kelly, that is the strongest begin to Zona Maco in his gallery’s seven appearances there. “The temper of this honest is probably the most buoyant of any version we’ve attended,” he says, noting the presence of many museum teams from the US and collectors from across the globe. “We’re promoting throughout the board—to Individuals, Mexicans, collectors from the Center East and elsewhere.”

One other gallery headquartered in New York, Cristin Tierney, additionally had some gross sales and powerful curiosity on opening day at its stand, that includes a cross-generational group of abstractionists. It’s the gallery’s fourth time taking part within the honest and, in keeping with director Candace Moeller, that constant presence has been key to constructing relationships with collectors in Mexico and additional afield who return to Zona Maco yearly.

“They know who we’re, they usually have a longtime relationship with us and our programme,” she says. As for the stand’s deal with abstraction, she provides: “The historical past of artwork and design in Mexico Metropolis is slanted in the direction of abstraction. Summary work, and notably portray, may be very in style—abstraction is king right here.”

The honest is certainly replete with compelling summary works, together with in its Fashionable artwork sector, the place exhibitors are providing works by, amongst others, the Venezuelan artists Jesús Rafael Soto and Carlos Cruz-Diez and the Argentine sculptor Julio Le Parc.

The Tempo stand is a tribute to Mexico Metropolis’s king of daring color and geometric abstraction in structure, Luis Barragán, with its bright-pink exterior and heat orange inside. The technique seems to have paid off, with the gallery reporting a half-dozen gross sales through the VIP preview, together with a piece on paper by Nigel Cooke for $110,000, a portray by Kylie Manning for $100,000, a ceramic and metal sculpture by Arlene Shechet for $75,000 and three works on paper by Robert Nava for $40,000 apiece.

Unafraid of robust subjects

One other distinct characteristic of the honest is its prevalence of works with overtly political content material—each figurative and summary. This can be a marked break from most festivals of Zona Maco’s dimension, the place sellers and artists are likely to shrink back from delicate topics.

Maybe most conspicuous on this regard is the stand of the Oslo-based gallery OSL Up to date, whose partitions are full of a 13-scroll set up by the Norwegian artist Vanessa Baird. Titled Misplaced Humanity. One Method Ticket to Mars (2024), it depicts a grim, gray panorama roiling with smoke and affected by bloodied our bodies and severed limbs and heads. On the backside of every scroll is the date she accomplished the drawing, and one includes a bright-yellow space with the textual content “finish the occupation” and “boycott Israel”.

The artist, holding court docket amidst her drawings all through VIP day, says the response to her set up had been largely supportive. “I’m not apprehensive about how the work is obtained,” she says. “I’m apprehensive about what’s occurring in Gaza—this isn’t a conflict, it’s a bloodbath.”

One other very well timed, eye-catching commentary is on view at Proyectos Monclova’s stand, the place the Mexico Metropolis-born artist Josué Mejía has unleashed a flock of cartoonish, prehistoric birds. His kinetic sculptural set up Presagios en vuelo sobre pisos de madera (Omens in flight over wood flooring, 2024)—with 5 mechanical birds product of paper with drawings on their wings and small dinosaur skulls for heads—is “a commentary on how all this, the artwork world, will depend on fossil fuels”, says a Proyectos Monclova staffer. He provides that the work has been acquired by a US establishment.

Within the honest’s Sur sector, dedicated to artwork from the International South, the Maryland-based gallery Rofa Initiatives has organised a three-person stand—that includes the Mexico Metropolis-born artist Amor Muñoz, the Chilean artist Francisca Rojas and the Peruvian artist Kukuli Velarde—that addresses problems with colonialism and migration. The stand contains figurative ceramics by Rojas and Velarde that reinterpret pre-Columbian kinds and methods to touch upon the endurance of Indigenous traditions, in addition to textile works by Muñoz and Rojas that convey subversive messages and histories by way of abstraction.

“The political state of affairs within the US is pushing folks to get out and see what else is occurring on the planet,” says Gabriela Rosso, the gallery’s director, noting that it’s her eighth time displaying on the honest and he or she has observed “extra English audio system than in years previous”. She provides: “A good like that is opening so many doorways, whereas doorways are being closed within the US.”

Additionally within the Sur sector, New York’s Palo Gallery is displaying a solo stand of work and works on paper by the Liberia-born, New York-based artist Lewinale Havette. The works—some ghostly and monochromatic, others vibrantly saturated—are knowledgeable by Havette’s childhood experiences as a younger woman migrating throughout West Africa along with her household. They’re priced between $1,500 for smaller works on paper, a number of of which bought through the preview, and $22,000 for the most important piece on view.

The gallery’s founder, Paul Henkel, says that “the honest has been unimaginable”, including: “We’re clearly a US gallery with European ties, so our fast motion was from the purchasers who already knew us and Lewinale Havette. Nevertheless, we bought much more engagement from Latin American collectors we’ve got by no means met than anticipated. The final vibe was passionate curiosity and confidence in shopping for from a gallery they didn’t know but, which was nice.”

The Istanbul-based OG Gallery, based in 2023 and targeted on Turkish artists, is taking part in its first honest within the Americas. “I’ve been working in galleries for 15 years. I’ve carried out all of the festivals,” says gallery founder Senem Ozgoren. “Mexico, like Turkey, has these hybrid traditions and extremely wealthy histories of archaeology and semiotics. I felt our artists’ work would discover an viewers.”

The gallery’s stand contains summary collages by Seza Paker, a big canvas by Yaz Taşçı, joyously riffing on conventional feminine nudes, and a collection of daring ceramic vases by Zeynep Solakoglu that characteristic elaborate mythological and art-historical references. Of the present political local weather and its doable impacts on the artwork commerce, Ozgoren says: “Now doesn’t really feel just like the time to do a good within the US.”

Ana Sokoloff, a founding associate of the New York-based advisory Sokoloff + Associates and a member of the Affiliation of Skilled Artwork Advisors, says that, more and more, collectors from the US and elsewhere are usually not solely travelling to Mexico Metropolis for its Artwork Week—which boasts Zona Maco and a rising area of satellite tv for pc festivals like Materials, Salón Acme, Distinctive Design X and Feral—however spending vital time right here.

“There are lots of people who’ve gotten second properties in Mexico,” Sokoloff says. “A whole lot of museum teams are strolling round—it feels a lot busier than different years, not simply the honest however the entire metropolis.” She means that your complete metropolis’s artwork ecosystem appears to be benefitting from new ranges of coordination and alignment, including: “The establishments, the galleries and the festivals have a fantastic synergy this yr.”

Zona Maco, till 9 February, Centro Citibanamex, Mexico Metropolis