City of dreams, a critical look at the accelerated contemporary life

Fatigue appears as a repeated scene: sleeping bodies on public transportation, in classrooms and offices or in chaotic and disorganized rooms.

In that ambiguous territory between sleep and exhaustion emerges City of dreams, pictorial exhibition by Denisse Canel that proposes a critical look at contemporary life and its accelerated rhythms in room 3 of the Academia de San Carlos, of the Faculty of Arts and Design (FAD) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

The exhibition brings together 17 pieces, mostly large format, in which the artist explores urban scenes marked by everyday wear and tear.

The characters appear asleep in classrooms, rooms or work spaces; others abandon themselves to rest in environments that reveal a constant tension between desire, consumption and exhaustion.

“I’m interested in the viewer feeling identified with the scenes; that’s why I prioritize large formats, almost on a one-to-one scale, that allow them to enter the image,” Canel explained in an interview with The Day.

Between realism and the absurd

Denisse Canel (Tlalnepantla de Baz, state of Mexico, 2002), a graduate of the FAD, said that the series arises from research carried out for more than two and a half years, in which she has observed how exhaustion appears in areas of social life.

“It’s a topic that touches me directly. I myself live within that rhythm, and painting became a kind of resistance.”

Canel works mainly with oil, aerosol and acrylic on large surfaces that he builds from his own photographic references.

He assembles sets, hires models and records scenes that he later transforms into pictorial compositions, in which realism coexists with absurd elements.

One of the most visible features of the series is the predominance of the color green, present in murky and slightly disturbing atmospheres. That tone condenses a symbolic ambiguity that runs through the exhibition.

“Green is usually associated with nature, but also with illness. I am interested in that contradiction,” he explains.

The title of the exhibition also responds to this ironic logic: “when we think of a ‘city of dreams’ we imagine an ideal place.

“I’m talking about a city where desires and aspirations live that seem increasingly distant while people live in constant exhaustion.”

The exhibition city ​​of dreams It can be visited from Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in gallery 3 of the Academia de San Carlos (Academia 22, Centro Historico neighborhood). It will conclude on April 17.