During my trip to Austin last week, I managed to find time to hit a few art galleries. The Mexic-Arte Museum on Congress is featuring an exhibit called The Huge and the Small, where several pieces caught my eye. The exhibit mixes large and small works, including Gustavo Monroy‘s “Totem,” a large five-pieces work that appears to be a meditation on the Garden of Eden myth
On the small side of the equation, I flashed back to some of the tiny Dutch paintings I saw in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Xavier Esqueda’s “La Fertilidad Incipiente” was excellent and I really liked an ipod piece by Jose Antonio Hernandez Vargas. It was called “A Negra,” and featured a swirl of flies buzzing around the screen of a video ipod forming the letter A. It was the music playing in the background that first drew me to it. Never figured out what it was, though. Haunting. Or maybe hypnotic is a better description.
And then I drifted into an exhibit called “Retablos: Miracles on the Border.” Great stuff. The retablos are done on wood or metal by people who want to thank a saint for a miracle. The retablos range from the poignant to the rough-hewn. My favorite told the story of a man who petitioned St. Michael the Archangel so the documents for his pickup truck would come through. The retablo, on metal with spots of rust showing through, thanks the saint for interceding and ensuring the paperwork was delivered. Behind the steering wheel of a pickup truck sits the petitioner, a pleased smile on his face.
There were numerous retablos of this sort. It was amazing to drift through them and read these people’s tales of personal miracles, many of which were tied to immigration to the U.S. from Mexico.
The museum itself is strange in a good way. It’s small, almost claustrophobic, with low ceilings that often forced me to duck lights when I was standing in front of the retablos. It has a very cool gift shop that managed to liberate a few dollars from me. Definitely worth checking out if you happen to drift through Austin …
