During my latest trip to Mexico, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Museo de Art Contemporaneo de Monterrey MARCO. One of the three featured exhibitions currently on view is Mesocosmos. An exhibition curated by Gonzalo Ortega exploring the reinterpretation of the universe and it’s ambiguity. The exhibition gathers five contemporary artists exploring intuition as a fundamental tool to our own understanding. This knowledge known as “Mesocosmos” comes through our senses, intelligence, etc and helps us define the micro and the macro. Mesocosmos is the dimension between macrocosmos and microcosmos. Mesocosmos is therefore, the human point of view.

The exploration for what is humanly impossible to define or even understand makes for a very interesting exhibition where artists utilize the mediums of video, installation, sculpture, drawing, and photography in order to generate interpretations of the macro and the micro. At times, blurring the lines between what we perceive as being of this world or outside of it. This ambiguity of understanding, feeds the works of the exhibition. Constellations, starts, gallaxies, black holes and the like may very well be a reflection over a wet surface, a microscopic object or an abstract surface texture. The artists in the exhibition are are Nibal Catalan, Alex Dorfsman, Thomas Glassford, Francisco Larios and Mauricio Limon.

Utilizing fluorescent light, Thomas Glassford recreates a giant start floating in the middle of one of the gallery rooms. The contrast of bright radiating light against the deep blue walls invites the viewer to walk towards the sculpture just like flies are attracted to a fly light trap. There is something about the presence of light that makes us interested to it. Once inside the gallery space, one has a sense of being at the birth of a cosmic star somewhere in the universe. Perhaps, one could also feel as if the luminous start is a microscopic atomic nucleus.  It is in such mixed of perceptions and illusions that Mesocosmos challenges the viewer’s understanding of our very own concept of placement within the context of an expansive universe.

In the other hand, Dorfsman presents us with a duality of existence by juxtaposing the macro and the micro within a single work. Each work delineates an understanding of two similar universes within one reality. That which we understand as being here on planet earth and that which is as perceived as being outside of us, the universe. Nevertheless, both the in and out are all part of the same. It is based on our own perception of where we are that such implications are made.

Overall, Mesocosmos is an excellent exhibition that expands our own idea of who we are and explores the relationship of the microcosmos and macrocosmos.

Visit MARCO: http://www.marco.org.mx/