Laurencena

Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL)

Realismo Aumentado

Publication

Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL)

Date

November 14, 2012 – May 2013

Venue

Tacuba 8, Centro Histórico, Mexico City

Poster for the Realismo Aumentado exhibition at the Museo Nacional de Arte

The Museo Nacional de Arte presented the exhibition “Realismo Aumentado de Hugo Laurencena,” developed specifically to create a dialogue between the MUNAL’s permanent collection and the works created by the artist, showing the links that exist between the art of the past and the present.

The exhibition brought together large-format works by Laurencena in direct dialogue with selected pieces from the museum’s permanent collection. The artist’s hyperrealist work, developed over decades in New York and Mexico, found in the MUNAL an exceptional setting in which to bring the Latin American pictorial tradition face to face with a contemporary sensibility.

“Realismo Aumentado” (“Augmented Realism”) refers to the way Laurencena’s painting goes beyond simple photographic reproduction: his works capture textures, reflections, and materiality with a precision that transcends photography itself, proposing a new reading of everyday objects.

The show was covered widely in Mexico City’s cultural press, including Chilango magazine’s arts calendar, which described it as an exploration — “through Mexican objects” — of themes from the imaginary of Mexican culture.