It is with great pleasure that we announce La Volonté de la Volupté an exhibition of new work by renowned Mexican artist Martín Soto Climent, opening in the presence of the artist in our Paris space. Soto Climent is well known for his surrealist manipulation of images and objects. His practice refers to the forms of the body and the psychology of desire embedded within an economy of consumption. By re-contextualizing ever so slightly and executing delicate re-arrangements by ways of appropriation and juxtaposition his works often have the humble quality of the ready-made or appear to be fragile assemblages exploring issues of temporality, desire, decay, and marginality. Soto Climent creates objects, installations, sculptures and photographs sourcing materials and imagery from the quotidian and his interventions into everyday objects are occasionally temporary.
La Volonté de la Volupté will be Soto Climent’s third solo-exhibition with the gallery and, similarly to El Sendero de la Poeta, a large survey exhibition recently on view at the Museo de la Ciudad de México in Mexico City, it unites several different bodies of work in the artist’s oeuvre, from the seminal Gossip series to drawings, photographs, painting and objects made of leather, wood and metal.
Spanning from Greek mythology to Freud, Eros, the god of love, and Thanatos, the god of death, are viewed as mutually exclusive opposites. Soto Climent’s work argues the opposite – they are both flesh and they are one and the same, not parallel but interlaced and interdependent. His works are nor objets trouvés nor ready-mades, he manipulates matter in a way that appears surrealist but speaks to intimacy, with gestures at once subtle and powerful.
Martín Soto Climent was born in 1977 in Mexico City and lives and works in nearby Tepoztlán. A major survey exhibition of Martín Soto Climent’s work was presented at the Museo de la Ciudad de México in Mexico City in 2023. In France, his work has recently been featured in the solo exhibition Amatl in 2021 at Andréhn-Schitpjenko and in group exhibitions at Les Franciscaines, Deauville (2022), the Carmignac Foundation (2021) and the Palais de Tokyo (2016). He has recently had solo exhibitions at the Hessel Museum of Art, Hudson (USA), Museo Universitario del Chopo Mexico, Museo Pietro Canonica Rome, Kunsthalle Wintherthur, El ECO Museo Experimental, New Jersey Musuem of Contemporary Art and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil. His works are included in numerous collections such as the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA, the Hessel Museum, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, USA, the Colección Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico, the Loewe Foundation, the MCA Chicago, USA, the Migros Museum, Zurich, Switzerland, the MOCA, Miami, USA, and the François Pinault Foundation, among others.
