In the present-future we move through, in which the days slide across our screens as we pay little attention to our planet’s ever-latent fragility, I wonder if it is possible to situate the body; to stop and observe the depth of what underlies the immediate. We might pay attention to the web of gestures that sustain life beyond its material beauty and, perhaps, find in artistic practices a kind of raft built upon of affects, memories, and desires: a raft on which to drift through these times.

The Surrealist André Bretton once affirmed that objects could embody unconscious desires and needs, shaped by the ego and projected outward. In this sense, the porousness of artistic work and each artist’s reading of the world might be a receptacle, a container of the power a seed holds in times of sowing. Perhaps in the barely visible fibers of matter it inhabits what drives other forms of thought, other ways of imagining paths by which to navigate the complexity of the present.

Here I attempt a reading of works from Colección Jumex which, rather than offering answers, evokes thresholds for exploring the intimate, the visceral, the passage of time, and the affective as profound and subtle gestures that emanate from the materiality of objects, even amid the multiplicity of stimuli that surround us. This selection unfolds as a series of open drifts, where the body and the materiality of things themselves invite presence and active listening, allowing the breath of imagination to emerge in unexpected ways.

In a more abstract sculptural exploration, the artist Claes Oldenburg—known for his soft large-scale sculptures—makes ordinary, everyday-use objects into the protagonists of his work. Using cloth and other soft-to-the-touch materials, as with the sculpture Soft Switches (1964-69)—a sculpture comprising a simple pair of light switches made of vinyl—the artist magnifies their scale and impregnates the environment with irony and strangeness.

In this same tension, between the scale of the human body and space, the artist Franz Erhard Walther creates Das Neue Alphabet [The New Alphabet] (1990-96), a series of 23 letters made of cotton canvas that question both the use of language and the materiality of its signs. One element of this series is Form S, a crimson canvas spread on a wall, tracing the serpentine form of the letter as if holding one’s breath, while time and the pressure of the gesture leave delicate marks on the musculature of the body.

It was within the transformative vocation proposed by the controversial artist Joseph Beuys—who maintained that the formation of thought is a type of sculpture in itself— and as a wink to Bourgeois’ work that French-Italian artist Tatiana Trouvé created Materasso [Mattress] (2010). In this piece, Trouvé makes an assemblage of subtle yet contrasting elements: a concrete mattress fastened tightly by two leather cords that keep it suspended only a few centimeters above the floor. The object’s apparent softness as a means of sleep is altered by its clash of textures, creating an ambiguous atmosphere that leads towards an oneiric maze where reality, dreams, and fiction intertwine like portals that unsettle the neutrality of space.

In parallel, though in contrast to the density of materials, the artist Fernanda Gomes works with “things”—as she calls them—that have been abandoned, dismembered, recycled, and stripped of meaning to produce unprecedented compositions and unrepeatable exhibitions. Her practice questions the limits between inside and outside, corresponding with the limits of public and private space, to the point of evoking, abstract intimacy that opens a new poetic dimension. ² Gomes’ sculpture Sem título [Untitled] (2010) embodies this approach: a thin aluminum and steel rod, slightly curved by the weight of gravity, subtly sculpts the atmosphere of the room. The edge of this cold material, as it grazes the surrounding air, emits a phenomenological aura barely perceptible through the presence of the entire body —an intimacy born of a minimal gesture unfolding in the solitude of space.

As the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty suggested, objects possess a relative permanence, existing insofar as they are perceived by a body. “It is an object, meaning that it is before us, only because it is observable: situated, in other words, directly under our hand or gaze, indivisibly altered or reintegrated with every move we make […] it is particularly true that an object is an object only to the extent that it can be separated from me, and, in the final analysis, disappear from my visual field.” ³

From this perspective, the sculptures of Tania Pérez Córdova burst onto the scene like unexpected presences, open to boundless projections of subjectivities. In her piece Persona recargada de la cabeza [Person leaning on their head] (2012), created using sodium alginate—a material commonly used to take dental molds—the artist captures the fleeting imprint of a body, letting the empty orifice function as a trace and a vestige. The sculpture’s outline thus manifests as absence and negative space, becoming a threshold out of which infinite narrative possibilities emerge.

Delving into the perception and very ontology of matter, Damián Ortega’s Organon 7 (2021) presents itself as an ambivalent sculpture. The apparent softness of the edges of each dense block suggests a tender texture, almost plastic and docile to the touch; this impression, however, becomes petrified upon establishing the cold and stiffness of the plaster and cement that make up the piece. In this way, what seems to be an epidermic organ reveals itself, crease by crease, as a compacted geological body.

Such is the case of the North American artist Liza Lou, who has maintained a commitment of affective care in her production processes, working responsibly alongside female artisans in vulnerable contexts who work with her in the meticulous creation of her pieces. This affective dimension rooted in collective modes of production and collaboration—can be glimpsed in the installation Security Fence (2005-2007).

At first glance, it imposes the ferocity of an enormous security cage made of barbs and rigid steel wire. Examining up close the meticulous artisanal labor that covers the entire piece in tiny beads of Bohemian glass, the metal weave acquires an air of subtlety, inverting the narrative. This violent device of capture is now subdued by fragile, diminutive elements that appeal to a form of care based on softness, tenderness, and affection.

In this way, the installation not only accentuates the delicacy of its interwoven materials but also, within its rigid fibers, preserves a social and ethical dimension that questions the violence of systems of confinement, proposing a poetics of subversion in the face of structures of repression.

¹ Lucy Lippard, “Hagámoslo nosotros mismos”, in Ideas recibidas. Un vocabulario para la cultura artística contemporánea (Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona: París, 2009), 41.

² Paulo Venancio Filho, “Lugares” in fernanda gomes, ed. Fundaçao de Serralves (2006).

³ Maurice Merleau- Ponty, Phénomènologie de la perception, (Paris, 1945), 103.

⁴ Robert Preece, “Digging Into the Guts: A Conversation with Damián Ortega” in Sculpture Magazine (2024).