Gabriel de la Mora: La Petit Mort is a thematic survey of the artist’s practice over the past 20 years. Gabriel de la Mora (Mexico City, 1968) is known for his transformation of materials through seemingly alchemic processes to create exquisite objects and alluring surfaces. Those processes can be highly crafted, such as the careful dissection and mounting of butterfly wings or human hair set into geometric compositions, or the painstaking reclamation of historic, weathered ceilings onto canvas. They may equally be the result of elemental forces of fire or water, that react with and erode paintings, prints and papers to the edge of degradation.

Curated by Tobias Ostrander, La Petit Mort engages with the attraction of surfaces of De la Mora’s works and looks beyond them to the unconscious drives and desires that have been a consistent theme in the artist’s practice. The title La Petit Mort, intimates two preoccupations–that of death itself, and that of ecstatic sexual pleasure, “the little death” being synonymous for the orgasm in French. The exhibition follows these and the related senses of loss and abandonment that run through De la Mora’s practice, through six nuclei of works that engage with the body; erasure; heat; the edge of desire; touch; and the pleasure of the viewer.