{"id":675257,"date":"2026-09-06T11:42:29","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T11:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/675257\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T11:42:29","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T11:42:29","slug":"artist-transforms-discarded-materials-into-art-about-life-and-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/675257\/","title":{"rendered":"Artist Transforms Discarded Materials Into Art About Life and Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Installation<\/p>\n

Gabriel de la Mora: La Petite Mort. MARCO 2026. Photo by Arthur Mora.<\/p>\n

Mexican artist Gabriel de la Mora<\/a> turns discarded materials<\/a> into meticulously crafted works that explore transformation, time, pleasure, and death. His exhibition La Petite Mort at Museo de Arte Contempor\u00e1neo de Monterrey<\/a> (MARCO) brings together more than two decades of his practice.<\/p>\n

Curated by Tobias Ostrander<\/a>, the exhibition presents works made with materials including eggshell, human hair, and butterfly wings<\/a>. Rather than following a chronological order, the show is divided into six thematic sections that trace different ideas within de la Mora\u2019s practice.<\/p>\n

The title La Petite Mort refers to the connection between pleasure and death. It also reflects the artist\u2019s interest in transformation<\/a>. Materials that have reached the end of their original purpose become something new through his process.<\/p>\n

My Modern Met spoke with de la Mora about the exhibition, his unusual materials, and the ideas that have shaped his practice. Read on for our exclusive interview.<\/p>\n

\"Installation<\/p>\n

Gabriel de la Mora: La Petite Mort. MARCO 2026. Photo by Arthur Mora.<\/p>\n

The show is built around six sections: the body, erasure, heat, the edge of desire, touch, and the pleasure of the viewer. How did that structure come about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tobias Ostrander, the curator, can speak to this better than I can, but from my side: we worked on this exhibition for close to three years. I gave Tobias access to files from all my work between 1996 and 2022, and later sent him some newer series I\u2019d been working on. In the end, he selected 87 works spanning 2003 to 2025\u2014covering 22 of my 30 years as an artist.<\/p>\n

From that material, he chose the exhibition\u2019s title and decided not to present the work chronologically, but instead organized it into six thematic groups: the body, erasure, heat, the edge of desire, touch, and the pleasure of the viewer.<\/p>\n

I really loved the result\u2014the museography, and the visual and conceptual dialogues it creates between works from different periods, materials, and series. Brilliant.<\/p>\n

What drew you to the title La Petite Mort as a way of reading two decades of your work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I like the title because it holds so many different readings. Tobias tried to explore a new reading of my work and my proposal as an artist\u2014one that hadn\u2019t been done before\u2014around the sensuality and eroticism present in some works across different series. There\u2019s also the connection between the title and orgasm, as a form of visual and aesthetic pleasure.<\/p>\n

For me, La Petite Mort is also connected to the line between pain and pleasure, and to the idea of both life and death\u2014of something appearing or being born alongside its opposite: something disappearing or dying. That tension runs through the monochrome, the abstraction, and the image, through light, through time, through control and its absence.<\/p>\n

La Petite Mort, then, is a line between the formal and the conceptual.<\/p>\n

\"Installation<\/p>\n

Gabriel de la Mora: La Petite Mort. MARCO 2026. Photo by Arthur Mora.<\/p>\n

You often use intimate materials like human hair, butterfly wings, and eggshell. What draws you to materials that carry the trace of a body or a life?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Everything is created and is here to accomplish a function and a service. When this happens, and becomes what remains, the end of something transforms into the beginning of something else through art\u2026<\/p>\n

Everything is changing all the time, in constant transformation, until the end. And from that new end, it will become something else\u2014over and over again\u2014until it disappears. And with that disappearance, it will be reborn as something else once more.<\/p>\n

If I could reduce art to just one word, it would be transformation.<\/p>\n

Can you walk us through your process for one piece, from finding the material to the finished work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The beginning of any work starts with an idea, written in my notebook. Sometimes the same idea appears over and over on different pages and dates, in different notebooks, in different years\u2026 until this idea goes through research. Once I find the material to do it, I ask restorers for advice, to see what will happen to the selected materials through time, and if it\u2019s possible to use them, and how to use them to create a piece\u2014testing tools, support materials, etc. Then we practice the process a lot before starting piece number 1. After checking everything about that first piece, if everything is fine, we start the second one and start a new series. Sometimes the idea creates a piece, the piece creates a series, and in the end this new series usually creates a new medium.<\/p>\n

We document the process of each piece through written information, videos, and photos, and it is part of the archive of the work and the series.<\/p>\n

The titles of the works are amounts \u2014 numbers \u2014 and these numbers are the counting fragments of each work. Numbers do not need translation; they are pure information. They are global, universal, the same everywhere.<\/p>\n

Your work seems to balance obsessive, controlled labor with materials that are naturally fragile or decaying. Is that tension something you think about consciously?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A teacher told me once that there is no art without obsession. This teacher was Robert C. Morgan, during my MFA at Pratt (2001\u20132003).<\/p>\n

I work on some series with total control, and other series without any control. I work with organic and synthetic materials.<\/p>\n

I tried this with the burnt paper series: something as ephemeral as burnt paper becoming eternal\u2026 and I did it!<\/p>\n

Making the impossible possible, through repetition and difference.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I do things with consciousness and sometimes without consciousness, with and without control\u2014something so precise and perfect, sometimes so free and imperfect\u2026 always exploring in opposite directions: forward and backward, over and over\u2026<\/p>\n

\"Installation<\/p>\n

Gabriel de la Mora: La Petite Mort. MARCO 2026. Photo by Arthur Mora.<\/p>\n

What connects the organic pieces to your pieces made from eroded architectural surfaces?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The connection runs in several directions, both bodies of work are experiments in painting without paint.<\/p>\n

This was also a breaking point in my career, I quit painting in February 2004, then returned to it in 2006 and again in 2013, not as an architect, but as an artist returning to architecture through material.<\/p>\n

The CaCO3 series uses fragments of white eggshell from chickens, echoing the ceilings, walls, and floors of houses from the late 19th century, architectural surfaces eroded and discarded after decades or centuries of accomplishing their original service and function. The butterfly wings series comes from that same impulse, extended into organic material: eggshells, then human and horse hair, then feathers, and finally butterfly wings, arrived at on August 19, 2019, a few months before COVID.<\/p>\n

Both bodies of work take something built to serve a function architectural or biological and let it become a surface for painting once that function is over. As a child, I always dreamed of painting with colors and patterns taken directly from nature, because there are no colors and patterns better than nature, not even with the best technology or artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

The accompanying publication ties your work closely to themes of death and eroticism. How do you feel about your work being read through that lens?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first time Tobias presented me with the title of the exhibition and the book, La Petite Mort, I felt a little uncomfortable, because of the connotation with orgasm on one hand\u2014and on the other, I liked the connection between death and pleasure.<\/p>\n

I read that the only instant a human doesn\u2019t think is during orgasm; there\u2019s also the connection with aesthetic pleasure, which has been present since the beginning and continues to this day in my artistic proposal.<\/p>\n

I see metamorphosis as a double birth and a double death: a butterfly born from an egg, then a caterpillar, then a cocoon, and then a butterfly\u2026 a double birth and a double death.<\/p>\n

Always in opposite directions\u2014forward and backward.<\/p>\n

An idea, a work of art, everything can generate beauty, pleasure, eroticism, knowledge, emotions. For me, beauty and knowledge\u2014the formal and the conceptual\u2014cannot exist without one another.<\/p>\n

\"Installation<\/p>\n

Gabriel de la Mora: La Petite Mort. MARCO 2026. Photo by Arthur Mora.<\/p>\n

Some works date back almost twenty years. Seeing them now alongside recent pieces, has your understanding of your earlier work changed?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Everything looks different and is the same idea over and over, each material gives a different answer, a different result.<\/p>\n

My first piece shown there is from 1972, when I was 4 years old, in kindergarten: a letter \u201cM\u201d exercise, forward and backward, showing my dyslexia. If you look at this first piece and all my work up until the last one, it\u2019s the same.<\/p>\n

The only way to be different is by being yourself, something that sounds so easy but is the most difficult thing to do and to be.<\/p>\n

This raises a question: when does an artist\u2019s career start?<\/p>\n

What do you hope visitors feel or realize by the time they reach the end of the exhibition?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The exhibition at Museo Marco in Monterrey could be seen from beginning to end, or from end to beginning, forward and backward. A dyslexic museography?<\/p>\n

Each visitor will experience the exhibition, and each piece, in a different way\u2014with or without information.<\/p>\n

I have received so many comments, in person and through social media, from people I know, followers, and people I don’t know in person. Their comments are amazing. Many of them have seen the exhibition \u201cLa Petite Mort\u201d at Marco several times, and there are so many comments going in different directions.<\/p>\n

To me, art is for everyone. The first impact of any art piece is visual, through the eyes. Then, after contemplation, it starts raising questions. And when something starts with emotion, and then makes you think\u2014that’s the best thing that could happen to art.<\/p>\n

Beauty and knowledge as equals.\n<\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n<\/blockquote>\n

Exhibition Information:
Gabriel de la Mora
Gabriel de la Mora: La Petite Mort
May 29, 2026\u2013October 25, 2026
Museo de Arte Contempor\u00e1neo de Monterrey
Zuazua y Jard\u00f3n S\/N, Centro, 64000
Monterrey, Nuevo Le\u00f3n, Mexico
\nGabriel de la Mora: Website<\/a> | Instagram<\/a><\/strong>
Museo de Arte Contempor\u00e1neo de Monterrey: Website<\/a> | Instagram<\/a><\/strong>
\nMy Modern Met granted permission to feature photos by the Museo de Arte Contempor\u00e1neo de Monterrey.
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