Carmen Argote, “Brincolin”, (2016).
There is a misty sentimentalism nestled into every aspect of Carmen Argote’s art practice. For her solo exhibition Mansión Magnolia at Shulamit Nazarian Gallery, curated by Seth Curcio, she traveled back to the mansión that her family owns in Guadalajara, Mexico, and took up residence there for a few months. While residing in this French-inspired neoclassical space built in 1890, she uses photography to examine the psychological tension between familial memory and present-day reality.
Formerly a domestic residence, Mansión Magnolia is now a commercial space that her aunts rent out for events. Her father had an idea that this place would eventually become a family home again, but that’s not at all what happened to it. In playing with this distance between fantasy and reality, Argote makes both physical and psychic spaces for herself in this in-between, casting light onto otherwise unseen crevices that offer clues about the class systems at work within the mansión.
Read more at http://www.craveonline.com/art/981319-exhibit-spaces-carmen-argotes-familial-memories#Rf4ycAcmb749se7d.99
