NinaJohnson

Curated by Benjamin Godsill

“Painting isn’t an aesthetic operation; it’s a form of magic designed as a mediator between this strange hostile world and us, a way of seizing the power by giving form to our terrors as well as our desires.” – Pablo Picasso

From time-to-time we all need some form of talismanic protection. As individuals, sure, but even as a collective, as a community, as a world aflame we need something greater than ourselves to protect us; perhaps from ourselves. We yearn for a connection to something beyond the work-a-day concerns of how much, when, who, and how. We yearn for a form of magic; a thrilling connection to the universe that supersedes our needs and substitutes them for genuine desires; something to hold and protect us in the deep dark night of contemporary life.

Art might be all affect and no effect, but maybe that isn’t, and shouldn’t be, what art is for – what it is for is no less important. Art can mediate and spiritually protect us from the hostile world, and that is what the varied practices in this exhibition do. Using different vernaculars of abstraction, these artists create moments of magic, a space outside the logic of ourselves and our world, to posit ephemeral forms of knowing and being. The images, objects, and forms collected in this exhibition are not meant to be mediative. Many are rowdy and verging on violent. They do, however, require and allow the viewer to focus and to look. They invite participation and link us to a world larger and more interconnected than merely material.

A Form of Magic is what art can be, and what, collectively, the artists in this exhibition construct in various forms. Working across materials and idioms, but with a strong through-line of abstraction, the various practices assembled here show a steadfast commitment to new ways of being. For each of these intergenerational and widely exhibited practitioners, who range in age from 40 to 89, this will be their first time being publicly exhibited in Mexico.

– Benjamin Godsill, May 2022