Gonzalo Lebrija, Miracle of the Eternal Present, Palm Springs Art Museum, Californie
2022
This exhibition surveys more than two decades of work by Mexican artist Gonzalo Lebrija. Using a wide range of mediums—photography, video, sculpture, and painting—Lebrija reframes familiar objects or activities, sometimes altered only slightly, to imbue them with poetic and symbolic force.
His works are generally unified by his search for evidence of higher meaning or transcendence. At times, he finds this transcendence through stasis: Cuban cigar smokers captured in a moment of repose offer a counterpoint to the agitated state of a modern, consumer-oriented society.
He also finds extraordinary meaning in heroic figures like charros, traditional Mexican horse riders, with their majestic costumes and their virtuoso rope work. Lebrija is always looking for moments of interruption, breaks in our everydayness, events that introduce into modern society a sense of the miraculous.
