Living in My Art-room: Felipe Ehrenberg
Galeria Baró is honored to pay tribute to the renowned Mexican artist Felipe Ehrenberg, who passed away in May of this year. Considered one of Mexico’s most provocative and important artists, Ehrenberg had a prolific career spanning more than fifty years. This exhibition will feature works from Baró’s collection, the artist’s first and principal gallery representation.
Opening on September 21 at Jardins, the show presents both historic and recent works, including installations, publications, performance documentation, paintings, collages, posters, drawings, and films. Despite his complex conceptual discourse, Ehrenberg was deeply committed to mass communication, never abandoning figuration in his work. Nevertheless, many of his artistic proposals were so controversial that they altered the course of Mexican art.
As the founder of the prestigious publishing house Beau Geste Press and a participant in the Fluxus movementduring his self-imposed exile in England (1968-1976), Ehrenberg is recognized as a pioneer of sculptural walks and a major advocate for mail art and artist books.
In the 1970s, he performed public art actions in England and Mexico, some of which were documented in photographs and videos, to be presented in this solo exhibition. One highlight is a recorded conversation from 1970 between Ehrenberg and a Tate Gallery security guard, filmed as the artist attempted to enter the museum as an artwork—his face covered by a hood. This video was later acquired by Tate itself.
A conceptual icon, performer, provocateur, and perpetual innovator, Ehrenberg’s practice spanned multiple fields, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, archiving, writing, teaching, politics, diplomacy, editing, acting, and traveling. He was an exceptional figure, capable of eliciting both admiration and rejection, making his life and art one inseparable work, defining himself as a "neologist"—a living artwork.
He came to Brazil for diplomatic reasons, serving as Cultural Attaché of Mexico in São Paulo, where he continued his artistic practice. In 2010, he was honored with a major retrospective, “Manchúria – Peripheral Vision”, at Pinacoteca, featuring approximately 250 works. He also had two solo exhibitions at Baró: Apocalipstick (2013) and Tocata e Fuga – Poemas Abstratos (2014), before leaving Brazil and returning permanently to Mexico.
In Brazil, Ehrenberg moved across many cultural spheres, particularly within cinema. As an actor, he appeared in the Brazilian filmmaker Beto Brant’s Crime Delicado, reaffirming his provocative stance. In the film, a scene in which he appears nude, portraying an artist painting a nude model, led to his dismissal from his diplomatic position. Beto Brant, a close friend of Ehrenberg, later made a documentary about Apocalipstick, Ehrenberg’s first exhibition at Baró, as well as another film, Zócalo, documenting a project the artist produced in Mexico. Both films will be screened in the gallery’s annex.
