The de la Torre Brothers deliver a feast for the eyes—and warnings for the future—in their witty and maximalist exhibition at McNay Art Museum.
de la Torre Brothers: Upward Mobility
March 1–September 15, 2024
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio
Einar and Jamex de la Torre’s witty and maximalist installations issue warnings about dystopian futures in their recent exhibition at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio. For their first solo exhibition in San Antonio, the sibling artist duo delivers a feast for the eyes accompanied by some unrelenting cultural criticism. The Guadalajara-born brothers are known for their surreal montages of objects and media, specifically their glasswork, culminating in immersive installations.
De la Torre Brothers: Upward Mobility is split into four galleries. In one room, hand-blown glass sculptures and lenticular prints combine culture and mythology, with figures of luchadores (Mexican professional wrestlers) made of nopales (cactus pads) next to renditions of whimsical swamp creatures from Slavic legends. Traditional or Indigenous Mexican symbols, such as the prickly pear cactus, are integrated with contem-porary references to Chicano culture, like the rim of a lowrider car, as can be seen in the work Mi Chicano Corazón (2023).
In another gallery, two large-scale lenticular prints depict a scene of destruction at the hands of “Coatzilla,” a fusion of the Japanese sci-fi monster, Godzilla, and the Aztec goddess of life and death, Coatlicue. Within a city wasteland, the monster fights “Mictlanteputin,” a combination of Russian president Vladimir Putin and the Aztec god of the underworld, Mictlantecuhtli.
One large room is staged like a dining room with an extravagant twenty-foot-long banquet table as the centerpiece. However, instead of tasty hors d’oeuvres, the plates are filled with mutilated human body parts, like excised eyeballs, brains, and hearts. Deranged, anthropomorphic objects and animals are placed on the table much like side dishes. Glass and resin renderings of antique dolls and infants appear gelatinous upon the platters, drenched in bright red liquid. Food and gore are indistinguishable. The title, Le Point de Bascule (2024), directly translates to “the tipping point.” The brothers are issuing a warning about overconsumption, which is represented by gluttony and cannibalism.
In the final gallery, an installation titled Colonial Atmosphere (2002) depicts a speculative future where Mesoamerican civilizations have colonized both land and outer space. A post-Columbian astronaut appears next to a moon lander in the form of an Olmec head, with the Earth covered in flames in the backdrop. The de la Torre brothers address issues within politics, history, capitalism, and consumerism with unapologetic humor and wit. Their futuristic and fantastical visual language holds a mirror up to all of us, individually and collectively. It is, in the same respect, a call to action.
