Proyectos Monclova presents the exhibition Modern Mystic by Mexican artist Edgar Orlaineta.

An exhibition that focuses on the artist's interest in different references and representations of spiritual mixing, mysticism and occult sciences. The exhibition brings together works from at least three different series; The first is Lintels, a body of work in which the image of the crucifix is intertwined with the eyes of God from the Wixárika cosmogony. Triangles, in addition to being a sacred symbol for this people, are linked to representations of sacred mountains as a symbol of closeness to heaven. Furthermore, the artist adds the lintel to these works, as it is an important element in Western architecture that helps support the structural weights in buildings.

The exhibition also includes the Tokonomas series, wood carvings for which the artist takes as reference traditional Japanese houses and spaces designed solely to house aesthetic and spiritual objects, such as: paintings, calligraphy, floral arrangements, poems, among others. In parallel, the artist relates this idea to spaces typical of Catholic architecture, such as the niches in which altarpieces, sculptures or decorative objects with an important symbolic charge are placed. Each of these works responds to a particular theme, which can be intuited from its titles and which arise from the artist's lines of research: design, architecture, modernism or art theory.

Finally, he presents the piece Modern Mystic, a mural carved in wood that offers us a universe of universes, in which the recreated symbols and shapes refer to different alternative thoughts, and in whose unprecedented forms they invite us to build an intimate and lateral universe, overlapping to reason and intuition in similar proportions.

Edgar Orlaineta (Mexico City, 1972) lives and works in Mexico City. Orlaineta focuses his artistic practice on hybrid sculptural forms that echo modernism, popular culture, and specific historical moments. He primarily explores postwar design and architecture: movements in which biomorphic figures predominated due to their strong influence of surrealism. In his works, the perception, symbolic and economic value of things – industrial objects that at one point were mass produced, despite their original intentions – are questioned, by incorporating artisanal elements or by assembling objects from daily life that They lack historical relevance. When the objects in Orlaineta's sculptures lose their functionality, cult or historical value, and are presented open to a new imagery, they replicate the legacy of the historical avant-garde.

— Proyectos Monclova