Inside Casa Wabi, at Calle Sabino 336 in Mexico City, the cool atmosphere created by the concrete walls and spacious rooms contrasts with the haze and heat just outside. Going up to the top floor of the left wing, one finds the installation Sentimientos Viscosos, a series of seventeen wax panels by artist Pablo Arellano, curated by Andrea Bustillos Duhart. The artist, whose practice focuses on materiality as an instrument to shape psychological and emotional states, uses sculpture and installation to construct situations in which closeness, intimacy, desire and repulsion coexist. Upon visiting the terrace space, the notion of being exposed and in the open air, while at the same time being shielded by walls surrounding the space, suggesting a more intimate ambient, particularly interested the artist. Initially, the installation had been conceived to work with stone or marble due to the damage that the environment could cause to the installation. However, this is precisely the reason why Pablo Arellano decided to work with fragile materials: the use of wax and flowers is not only exceptional on a technical level, but on a conceptual level these materials elevate the poetic and contradictory dimension of the exhibition.

Recalling the tradition of Greco-Latin sculpture and the "wet cloth" technique in marble sculpture, applying this technique to wax is related to the artist's artistic research around sensuality, the skin and its vulnerability. In the words of the artist: "Much of the work I had developed with wax is tied to my research on skin, wax is a material that has this capacity to adhere without detaching, almost like a membrane that serves as a covering or second skin." The artist explains that wax is a versatile material used in processes ranging from preservation to pop culture applications such as hyperrealistic sculptures of celebrities. "I was particularly interested in intervening the terrace in such a way that the wax panels would create a second skin of the space. This [second] skin has a fragility derived from the material itself, which, being exposed to the environment and the elements, undergoes changes that remind of moments of contact, fragility, vulnerability and emotional affect toward something else.”

A central term for this exhibition is "the viscous" or "viscosity." The artist plays with its literal definition — a thick, dense and sticky fluid substance that adheres to a surface — and with the ontological concept described by Jean-Paul Sartre. The viscous, as Sartre poses it mainly in his novels Being and Nothingness and Nausea, is a concept that describes the attraction and repulsion of human beings toward the past (the being-in-itself) and toward the present freedom of the individual (the being-for-itself). Through an abstract materiality, the past absorbs the being-for-itself and makes it lose its essence in favor of something else, such as traditional values, community or the world. In the novel Nausea, the main character, Antoine Roquentin, feels nausea precisely toward the absurdity of everyday objects and a material existence, while at the same time feeling attracted to it. This play of attraction and repulsion is something the artist employs to invite visitors to approach the seventeen panels distributed around the terrace. Each panel is different; beneath glazes of wax, flowers, branches and various objects are hidden. The exhibition, privileging the sensorial over the rational, is an experience that cannot, faithfully, be replicated in photographs; the layer of wax with a smooth and gummy appearance that covers diverse objects and plants generates in visitors the sensation of being able to sink their hand into the panels. This sensation of closeness is part of the artist's exploration to create intimate situations, as the curator describes it: "I thought about how to achieve a certain intimacy in an open space, and about replicating in wax details that suggest situations as distinct as marks on the skin or the preservation of fossil remains or natural objects.”

The artist also describes the installation as "highly corporal" due to its scale (the panels measure around two meters in height) and its capacity to envelop visitors completely. By being "enveloped" by the installation, the intention is to generate an attraction or seduction to touch the objects hidden by the wax. Exposed to the open air, the material itself generates a type of sweat and marks that are reminiscent of the human body, recalling sensuality and intimacy but also generating a sense of disgust and repulsion. Ultimately, this work is an invitation to observe one's own discomfort at finding oneself between the tension of these two opposing concepts.

Sentimientos Viscosos and the simultaneous exhibition Estado Post-Trauma by Perla Mata Chairez are open to the public for two more weeks, until July 5, 2026 at Fundación Casa Wabi at its venue at Calle Sabino 336. For more information, you can visit the Foundation's official page at the link ⚑¹⁰ https://casawabi.org/exhibiciones/sabino/.