Damián Ortega Presents His Exhibition The Rocket and the Abyss

From May 5 to October 2, the Palacio de Cristal of the Parque del Retiro presents the first exhibition in Spain by Damián Ortega (Mexico City, 1967). Titled "The Rocket and the Abyss" and inspired by the poem by Vicente Huidobro titled Altazor, o el Viaje en Paracaídas (Altazor, or A Voyage in a Parachute, 1919), the exhibition is a site-specific project developed for the historic building. It was curated by João Fernandes, deputy director of the Museo Reina Sofía. For its intervention in the Palacio de Cristal, Ortega revisits the Torre Latinoamericana in Mexico City. On this occasion, he turns it into a pendulum by inverting it and hanging it with steel thread from the highest point of the Palacio's dome. To render the structure, Ortega used printed leather, establishing in this manner a contrast between the flexibility and ductility of the material and the supposed solidity of the architectural construction. Its hollow interior contains a deposit of sand, which like a clock, and as the pendulum oscillates, frees the grains on the floor of the space drawing unforeseeable forms.