PHANTOM/GHOST

Constantly immersed in a deluge of digital imagery, today we witness both the pervasive presence of artworks online and their radical transience—images can be recombined, altered, or forgotten within seconds. In this ever-shifting reality, Walter Benjamin’s classic text "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" takes on renewed significance: What remains of the aura, the social resonance, and the uniqueness of artworks?

In contrast to this ephemerality, the exhibition foregrounds the resilience and physicality of the printed image. Printing, in this context, always entails a process of transformation. The artistic concept is translated into a printable material that simultaneously absorbs and resists it.

The title PHANTOM/GHOST evokes all states of transition, be they amorphous or concrete, enigmatic, manifest, or inconspicuous, and further alludes to Mexico’s Day of the Dead. This tradition holds deep significance in Mexican culture and can also be found, in various forms, across many other cultures and religions around the globe. The exhibition engages, in multiple ways, with the question of how we maintain a personal connection to what has preceded us, and how we construct meaning individually in circumstances where meaning can no longer be derived from a single, let alone a unified, lived reality.

The artists from Mexico City, Berlin, and Los Angeles draw upon the distinct influences of their respective environments—the structures, modes of thought, and artistic contexts that surround them. In this way, the exhibition becomes a site of convergence for diverse perspectives. The editioned works constitute individual articulations through and about the material, entering into a dialogue that is both reciprocal and authentic.

Each work is available for purchase at 2150 Mexican pesos/115 US dollars/100 euros or can be exchanged for another artwork in the exhibition. In this way, the principle of reproducibility becomes a further form of dialogue. The works bring together tradition and contemporaneity, materiality and idea, inviting the audience to encounter art and society anew, through the lingering presence of ghosts and phantoms.