Curro y Poncho know how to work a room – throughout the four days of NADA Miami Beach 2011, the namesake gallery owners (“Curro” is a Mexican nickname for Francisco, and “Poncho” for Alfonso) kept their booth in flux, consistently re-curating the walls with an oscillation of photography, works on paper, paintings and mixed media pieces by a coterie of emerging and predominantly Mexican artists.
Paddle8 caught up with Francisco “Curro” Borrego, Alfonso “Poncho” Arroyo and their third-in-command, Carlos Guizar, over a few glasses champagne in the Paddle8 Study at NADA over the weekend, and learned more about what is considered the blue-chip gallery of Guadalajara. Old friends and photography partners Curro and Poncho opened the gallery in 2008 on the 13th floor of a tower in Zapopan. They designed a program in close collaboration with their artists and friends, and seek to avoid pretension and maintain a sense of accessibility and democracy. They show art that is serious in quality, but the energy is casual, welcoming and often playful.
A few highlights from Curro y Poncho’s ever-changing NADA booth include a massive flag constructed out of colorful photocopied pages with political imagery resembling vintage cartoons, by L.A.-based artist Juan Capistran; Luis Alfonso Villalobos (a local from Guadalajara) evokes magical realism, blending the severity and order of architectural drawings with the superimposed chaos and abandon of wild beasts; Octavio Abúndez writes pseudo-aphoristic and eerie poems on menu-boards; Francisco Ugarte plays with the effects of light and (again) architectural space by wrapping beds, bookcases and other domestic objects in tin foil; and Fernando Palomar explores his obsession with boats and books in photographs from a comprehensive inherited library in Mexico.
Visit Curro y Poncho’s space on Paddle8 here
Collect from NADA Miami Beach 2011 on Paddle8 through December 11 here