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Installation view
Max Payday, 2023
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Nancy Lupo Max Payday

Morán Morán is pleased to announce Nancy Lupo’s exhibition, titled Max Payday, at the gallery in Mexico City. The exhibition features a video and a new series of sculptures created by Lupo during her recent artist-in-residence at Casa Wabi on the Oaxacan coast. In addition to these new works, she presents Banquet, a large-scale textile piece (2018-2023), composed of tiny pellets and bits of materials glued to fabric sewn into covers for the four different cars she has owned and driven throughout her life. This grouping of sculptural works sits in the space amidst subtle architectural interventions. Lupo describes the installation as “scripted” by an extended first-person text that is dispersed throughout the gallery.

The exhibition’s title, Max Payday, is a found piece of language describing the current wave of catalytic converter thefts occurring around the world which happened to Lupo at the beginning of the year. In this context, she makes use of several converter shells that were sourced in Mexico City. These shells are the valueless remnant after the precious metals’ honeycomb structure has been smelted and transformed into a new economy. The “cats” (as mechanics in the US often call them) enter into a dialogue with new iterations of Lupo’s tellers series, based on forms derived from temporary tent structures, while also referencing the origami fortune-telling game for children and the job title of a bank worker who handles daily financial transactions. The grid composition of these small sculptures, made from toilet paper and glue, collapses and distorts under their own accumulated weight, creating a new kind of game with endless associations.

One of Lupo’s main concerns in Max Payday are cyclical situations, of weather, of emotional scenarios and the transmutation of value. The exhibition references the bioluminescent disturbance in bodies of water and the golden layer that appeared to her in the landscape as mangoes ripened and rotted while she worked en plein air. Lupo often pays attention to these kinds of weather-related circumstances. From her perspective, her engagement is prompted not by one specific type of occurrence but rather by a subtle, beguiling electricity that is often combined with a serendipitous confluence of visual and contextual events. It is not exactly “the spiritual” that she is concerned with, but rather the ways in which various excesses, often related to capitalism, desperately work to fill up voids of unknowability.


Morán Morán se complace en anunciar en su sede de la Ciudad de México, una exposición de Nancy Lupo titulada Max Payday. Se exhiben un video y una nueva serie de esculturas creadas por Lupo durante su reciente residencia en Casa Wabi en la costa oaxaqueña. Además de estas nuevas obras, se presenta Banquet, una pieza textil de gran escala (2018-2023), conformada por pequeñas bolas y fragmentos de materiales pegados sobre telas, las cuales están cosidas entre sí siguiendo la forma de los coches que Lupo ha conducido y poseído a lo largo de su vida. Este grupo de obras escultóricas se sitúa en el espacio rodeado de sutiles intervenciones arquitectónicas. Lupo describe esta instalación como “guionizada” por un extenso texto escrito en primera persona disperso en la galería.

El título, Max Payday, es una expresión encontrada que describe la actual oleada de robos de catalizadores que se produce en todo el mundo y que le ocurrió a Lupo a principios de año. En este contexto, utiliza varias carcasas de convertidores procedentes de la Ciudad de México. Éstas son los restos sin valor que quedan después de fundir la estructura de panal de los metales preciosos para transformarlos en una nueva economía. Los “cats” (como suelen llamarlos los mecánicos en los E.E.U.U) dialogan con nuevas iteraciones de su serie llamada tellers, cuya forma se relaciona con estructuras temporales de carpas, al mismo tiempo que evoca el juego de suerte del origami para niños, y el cargo de un empleado de banco que se ocupa de las transacciones financieras diarias. La construcción de la cuadrícula de estas pequeñas esculturas, creadas a partir de papel de baño y pegamento, se encoge y se derrumba por su propio peso acumulado, convirtiéndose en un especie de juego con un despliegue infinito de interpretaciones.

Una de las principales cuestiones que aborda Lupo en Max Payday son las situaciones cíclicas, del clima, de los escenarios emocionales y de la transmutación del valor. La exposición hace referencia a la agitación bioluminiscente de los cuerpos de agua y a la capa dorada que se le aparecía en el paisaje a medida que los mangos maduraban y se pudrían mientras trabajaba en plein air. Lupo suele prestar atención a este tipo de circunstancias meteorológicas. Desde su punto de vista, su compromiso no está motivado por un tipo específico de suceso, sino más bien por una electricidad sutil y seductora que a menudo se combina con una confluencia fortuita de acontecimientos visuales y contextuales. No es exactamente “lo espiritual” lo que la llama, sino la forma en que diversos excesos, a menudo relacionados con el capitalismo, tratan desesperadamente de llenar los vacíos de lo desconocido.

Dates

June 14 - August 26, 2023

Opening Reception

Wednesday, June 14, 5-8pm

Location

AV. HORACIO 1022, POLANCO
MIGUEL HIDALGO 11550
CIUDAD DE MÉXICO

Artist

Nancy Lupo

Installation Views

Installation view
Max Payday, 2023
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Installation view
Max Payday, 2023
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Installation view
Max Payday, 2023
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Installation view
Max Payday, 2023
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Installation view
Max Payday, 2023
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Installation view
Max Payday, 2023
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Installation view
Max Payday, 2023
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Installation view
Max Payday, 2023
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Installation view
Max Payday, 2023
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Artworks

Nancy Lupo
Cover (1994 Dodge Grand Caravan), 2018-2023
Covercraft DustTop car cover (1994 Dodge Grand Caravan), Henry Aluminum roof, tarpolypropylene plastic pellets, #40 tapioca pearls, Arrowhead Mills Puffed Millet Cereal, puffed quinoa, Spicy World Sugar Coated Fennel Seeds, Rani Sugar Coated Fennel Candy (Meeti Saunf), Wilton Sugar Pearls (White, Black, Silver), Gold Medal Virgin Expanded Polystyrene Bean Bag Refill, Silver Dragees 3mm, Daisy BBs 4.5 millimeter, War Inc. 12g Airsoft BBs (Camo), silver chaquiras, Sea Delta Sobo Craft and Tacky Glue, Fabric Glue and folding tables
Dimensions variable
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Nancy Lupo
Cover (2002 Chevy Blazer), 2018
Covercraft DustTop car cover (2002 Chevy Blazer), Henry Aluminum roof tar, polypropylene plastic pellets, Sea Delta Sobo Craft and Fabric Glue and folding tables
Dimensions variable
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Nancy Lupo
We are millionaires. I could buy a Tesla., 2023
Oil on catalytic converter shell, ribbon, plastic, toilet paper, PVA, pearl pigments, phosphorescent pigments, Balsa wood, paper and fly fishing line
29 x 23 x 5 inches
(74 x 59 x 12 1/2 cm)
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Nancy Lupo
Simulated breeze, 2023
Opening in wall, fans
Dimensions variable
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Nancy Lupo
Tours, A Tech, 2023
Oil on catalytic converter shell, toilet paper, PVA, pearl pigments, phosphorescent pigments, Balsa wood, paper and fly fishing line
16 x 24 x 4 inches
(41 x 62 x 10 cm)
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Nancy Lupo
FedEx Kinkos, a waiter on break, 2023
Oil on catalytic converter shell, toilet paper, PVA, pearl pigments, phosphorescent pigments, Balsa wood, paper, fly fishing line and sticks
14 1/2 x 28 x 5 inches
(37 x 72 x 12.5 cm)
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Nancy Lupo
I’m am all about houses., 2023
Oil on catalytic converter shell, toilet paper, PVA, pearl pigments, phosphorescent pigments, Balsa wood, paper, fly fishing line and sticks
24 x 30 x 4 inches
(62 x 77 x 10 cm)
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Nancy Lupo
I think they should be low, I mean we are guilty of it too., 2023
Oil on catalytic converter shell, toilet paper, PVA, pearl pigments, phosphorescent pigments, Balsa wood, paper, fly fishing line, sticks and metal crown
12.5 x 29 x 7 inches
(32 x 73 x 19 cm)
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Nancy Lupo
Colorado Royalty, 2023
Oil on catalytic converter shell, toilet paper, PVA, pearl pigments, phosphorescent pigments, Balsa wood, paper and fly fishing line
17 x 29 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches
(43 x 75 x 14 cm)
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Nancy Lupo
The archival quality of a feeling. Spices., 2023
Oil on catalytic converter shell, toilet paper, PVA, pearl pigments, phosphorescent pigments, Balsa wood, paper, fly fishing line and REX elephant ear tree seed pod
14 x 24 x 4 inches, without hanging seed
(36 x 60 x 11 cm, without hanging seed)
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Nancy Lupo
Untitled, 2023
Silver thorns, snake skin, plastic plag, unfolded carton box
12.5 x 8.2 x 0.5 inches
(32 x 21 x 1.5 cm)
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Nancy Lupo
Untitled, 2023
A REX thorn and a beetle that died in the gallery during installation on an imitation silver leaf
Dimensions variable
Edition of 10
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Nancy Lupo
Untitled, 2023
A REX thorn and a beetle that died in the gallery during installation on an imitation silver leaf
Dimensions variable
Edition of 10
Photograph by Gerardo Lando

Nancy Lupo
Shimmer, 2023
Openings in wall and Iphone video edited with personal audio archives
Run time: 13 minutes and 13 seconds
Dimensions variable
Photograph by Gerardo Lando