Exploring an art fair can be overwhelming, so from Órbita Art Magazine we're sharing our two favorite projects on display at the fair that we recommend taking your time to appreciate. The first, located on the first floor to the left of the entrance, is the project presented by Travesía Cuatro gallery, where Guadalajara-born artist Jorge Méndez Blake engages in dialogue with the work of Peruvian artist Jorge Eielson in his series "Desmantelar el lenguaje" ("Dismantling Language"), in addition to unveiling the previously unseen piece "Haiku," in which the apparent lightness of poetry (in this case, the Japanese haiku) supports the heavy machinery of a 1979 Ford LTD Crown. In the "Desmantelar el lenguaje" series, Méndez Blake draws inspiration from Eielson's work, which reinterprets the traditional Andean quipu as an alphabet and a new expression of contemporary visual language. Méndez Blake "buries" Eielson's poems within a series of paintings based on the colors of each letter in the "quipu alphabet." Every letter, every period, and every comma in this series of paintings corresponds to a poem that the artist dissects to create abstract compositions. The work of Jorge Méndez Blake, one of Mexico's most important artists both nationally and internationally, is in itself an act of poetry that is absolutely worth stopping to observe, understand, and un-understand.

The second is located on the second floor of the fair, and you can find it under the name Islera. Islera is an independent platform for outreach, artistic experimentation, and cultural cooperation, founded in La Merced in February 2020. The platform's proposal at Estación Material explores memory and the out-of-sync experiences that overlap within the same place across time. The project's home base is actually an old house, where participating (women) artists are invited to live and experiment while working on their art. Memory, nostalgia, and a sense of mystery and dread permeate the works presented in this exhibition. Spoons traditionally collected by grandmothers become agaves, plants, and insects that seem to come from another plane, alongside paintings hung in the background that, the longer you look at them, the more unsettling yet familiar elements you find.

The fair will be open to the public this weekend on Friday the 25th from 5:00 to 9:00 pm, Saturday the 26th from 1:00 to 9:00 pm, and Sunday the 27th from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm. To purchase tickets and check the full schedule of activities, visit https://material-fair.com/es/platform/estacion-material-vol-5/