Alma Allen: Nunca Solo - by Stephanie Cristello (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Site-specific sculptures in dialogue with pre-Columbian works, from a midcareer American artist known for his use of natural materials

This catalog follows the 2022 exhibition of works by US-born, Mexico-based sculptor Alma Allen (born 1970) in Diego Rivera's iconic Museo Anahuacalli in Mexico City. Through 26 newly commissioned sculptures installed among the volcanic architecture and grounds of the museum, this volume delves into Allen's ongoing engagement with time, form and hybridity. The publication features more than 70 illustrations alongside a long-form interview with the artist by exhibition curator Karla Niño de Rivera, an analysis on site specificity by world-renowned architect Mauricio Rocha and an essay concerning the mythologies shared across Rivera's and Allen's work by curator and critic Mimi Zeiger. The symbolic and ritualistic potentials enacted by Allen's contemporary intervention are in dialogue with Mesoamerican culture. Informed by the unique experience of how time is perceived at Museo Anahuacalli--where the ancient and present collide--the authors discuss different facets of the museum and collection (the Aztec goddess Coatlicue, the energy of Colima figures and these objects' historical use as portals into other worlds) in relation to Allen's work.

Review Quotes

A self-taught artist who began by selling small, hand-carved objects on the street, Allen interrogates his own place in the vacuum of art history in the only way he knows: by manipulating the nature of materials, a knotty, manifest language of the world. His results are beautiful--not for their fidelity to some truth about the material world, but for their wry, patient, even violent cross-examination thereof.--Christina Catherine Martinez "Artforum"