Olivia Foundation, Mexico City, Between Us, February 7 – September 8, 2024
Curated by Diana Nawi
Collection and Exhibition Management by Patricia Cariño Valdez
Between Us is the inaugural presentation of the Olivia Foundation, established by Jana and Guillermo González. Drawn from their collection, which includes a substantial focus on abstraction by women artists, Between Us presents works that engage in intergenerational dialogues as well as a selection of individual practices in-depth. Across the exhibition, abstraction is intertwined with nuanced, personal figuration and moodily imagined landscapes, undoing the bounds between genres throughout the galleries and within single works.
Situated in the intimate architecture of this historic building —originally built as a residence in the early 1900s and reimagined by Alberto Kalach and Carlos Zedillo—Between Us highlights shared formal languages that emphasize the gestural and evocative possibilities of painting across generations and contexts. Artworks on view span the second half of the twentieth century through the present; works by Helen Frankenthaler and Lee Krasner provide historical and conceptual grounding for the collection, while the Artist Spotlight features a 2024 painting commissioned from Sophia Loeb.
The exhibition begins on the ground floor with abstract gestural paintings by Cecily Brown, Jacqueline Humphries, Joan Mitchell, and Mary Weatherford, among others, that viscerally index the artists’ hand alongside a smaller selection of dense, meditative works by artists including Victoria Gitman and Shio Kusaka. Ascending the galleries, figurative paintings and prints that conjure psychic spaces and bodily memories emerge with major works by Rita Ackermann, Louise Bourgeois, and Tracey Emin.
The top two floors explore the formal relationship between artists whose works evade allusion to image and representation and those who use abstraction to depict the landscape as both an observed place and interior state. Artists including Jadé Fadojutimi, Shara Hughes, Mimi Lauter, and Chris Oli reflect the natural world as ephemeral and psychically charged. Throughout the exhibition, we witness abstraction as a mode of personal expression, a reflection of the sublime and the spiritual, and a vehicle for re-envisioning and recreating the world around us.
Featured Artists: Rita Ackermann Kelly Akashi Ruth Asawa Carol Bove Louise Bourgeois Cecily Brown Lucy Bull Tracey Emin Jadé Fadojutimi Helen Frankenthaler Marley Freeman Ellen Gallagher Victoria Gitman Adolph Gottlieb Roni Horn Shara Hughes Jacqueline Humphries Luchita Hurtado Lee Krasner Shio Kusaka Yayoi Kusama Mimi Lauter Sophia Loeb Brice Marden Violeta Maya Joan Mitchell Alice Neel Chris Ofili Jorge Pardo Howardena Pindell Avery Singer Charline von Heyl Mary Weatherford Jack Whitten Faith Wilding
The Olivia Foundation is an exhibition space in Roma, Mexico City, showcasing artworks from the Olivia Collection, whose focus is abstract art from the post-war period to the modern day. The works are united by their aesthetics and exploration of color, materiality, and form.