Various Work 2002 - 2009 by Mauricio Alejo (December 15, 2009) 
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General Statement by Juan Antonio Molina Cuesta
This week I will show you seven artists, who are emerging in the Mexican photography scene. This is a cross cultural context in which the traditional borders of national identity are constantly transgressed. A static or homogeneous definition of this socio-cultural space is difficult due to the diversity of the subject matter of these photographers. Oscar Fernando Gómez’s photos are linked to his own experience as a taxi driver. For him taking photos is a part of the everyday life and it is something almost peripheral to the conventional art languages. Andrés Carretero, Omar Gámez and Alinka Echeverría research their subject and produce documentary work focused on uncommon subjects and environments, similar to what an anthropologist or social scientist would do, but making the most of their own aesthetically sofisticated visions. Complex space and time narratives are constructed by Oswaldo Ruiz, Mauricio Alejo and José Carlos Jurado, for whom the finest formal structure is a key to suggest their conceptual and philosophical concerns. This variety of aesthetic proposals match the wide range of nuances which make up the contradictory contemporary visual culture in Mexico and abroad. Juan Antonio Molina Cuesta is curator at Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City.
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Our poll "A photo essay always needs a great written story" closed. 267 people voted, 28% agrees, 72% disagrees. 233 people answered our follow-up question "Are you a photographer?" 82% indicated they are, 18% said no. Initially, negative answers to question #1 were almost 100% as was the pecentage of photographers among respondants. Then, when the level of non-photographers started to rise, the percentage of people indicating good text is always essential started to rise too. This seems to indicate that non-photographers think that adding good text to your photo essays is essential. In my opinion: if you want non-photographers to dig your work, you know what to do...
It is fair to say that there are three spaces where a photograph happens. The first one is the actual physical space. To put it simply: the one you and I live in. The space in which I make my camera click. The second one would be the surface of the photograph. Be it paper or screen. The third one, with all the ambiguity that it implies, is the mental space of the person viewing the photograph. This is where meaning is constructed. The third space will always remain obscure to me. I am left with no other choice than to work with the first two. Here, at least, I have some control. This is what I am interested in: facts and how they translate into photographs. How photographic time imprints its stillness unto the world out there. How everything becomes permanent, sculptural, once it has been touched by photography. I don’t want a photograph to be transparent I want it to be obvious and deliberate.
The following text was written by Michael Amy and published in Art In America, November 2006, owner of copyright: Brant Publications, Inc. Mauricio Alejo, who was born in Mexico City and lives and works in New York, records everyday objects that he sets up in absurd arrangements, or more dramatically modifies by cutting, staining or painting them, or submitting them to laws of physics. The actual constructions cannot be experienced directly, but only in the beautifully composed photographs and videos that they gracefully inhabit. His large C-prints (43 1/3 by 55 inches) go well beyond merely documenting the ephemeral. Their range of hue and tone is rich, their physical and spatial tensions manifold. Alejo's work is laced with art-historical references, most notably to Arte Povera. Alejo recognizes that some of the most interesting art results from "foolish" concepts and actions. For one image, he attached small clamps and clothespins of different materials to each other in increasing order of size, so that the smallest holds onto the next larger, and so forth, delightfully reversing the proverb of the big fish gobbling up the small (Chain, 2005). The largest clamp is attached to a white ceramic toothbrush holder affixed to a blue-tiled bathroom wall, in front of which the string of clamps and pins rises along an arc measured off by the grid pattern of the tiles. This humorous and oddly poetic image brings to mind Tony Feher's light touch, as does Empty (2006), in which thin, translucent plastic bags of different colors, all empty, are placed one inside the other in a standing configuration.
Mauricio Alejo (1969) lives and works in New York, USA / Mexico City, Mexico.
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Posted in category 649
probably one of the finest “conceptual photography” selection available here on The Black Snapper. simple and fascinating ideas, very well photographed. super good. viva mauricio alejo then!