Damian Ortega, began his career as a political cartoonist. After a stint with the master Gabriel Orozco within Taller de los Viernes (The Friday Workshop, a sort of Factory à la Andy Warhol), the disciple Ortega becomes a distinguished artist while retaining the playfulness and activism of his previous one. career. From everyday objects he deconstructs, Ortega deals with subjects such as globalization or the consumer society and their effects on local cultural particularism. His legendary work, Cosmic Thing, presented at the Venice Biennale in 2003, is a perfect example: a Volkswagen Beetle, dismantled, and carefully suspended in the air, piece by piece. Long produced in Mexico, the Beetle was the most popular car there. Wielding the art of satire, he defeats this totem of consumerism and broken promises of economic neocolonialism to a population in search of progress. After many years of absence, Damian Ortega will open his next exhibition at the end of April 2021 at the Kurimanzutto Gallery in Mexico City.
