nothing _____ can stay — Subtitled NYC

nothing _____ can stay

10.18 - 12.01.2024

Armando Guadalupe Cortés

Subtitled NYC is delighted to announce nothing _____ can stay a solo presentation by Brooklyn-based artist Armando Guadalupe Cortés.

nothing _____ can stay considers concepts of the afterlife and the cyclical nature of life and death. This installation-based work transforms the whole gallery space, inviting visitors onto a floor that tilts as they walk over it. Upon this tilted floor, visitors are greeted by a community of ceramic sculptures; a dog, an owl, small orbs and cylindrical vessels. The visitor's presence on the tilting floor animates the movement of each individual sculpture, which move in their own unique orbit, determined by augmented wheels, skewed weights or their inherent built form.

Within the exhibition, the artist alludes to several cultural references and concepts of the afterlife such as the idea that dogs are the guides of the afterlife and protect souls as they begin their journey into the unknown. Another concept nothing _____ can stay contemplates is the belief that space itself is the zone of the afterlife. In particular, the dark center of the Milky Way that obscures the center of the galaxy from Earth, is a place for souls to reside in the afterlife. As each ceramic sculpture makes its idiosyncratic rotation around Armando's manufactured center of gravity within the gallery, they invoke the spinning of the stars and the mysterious center of the galaxy where souls arrive after death.

Diverting from Armando’s usual mode of sculpture-making and performance, nothing _____ can stay includes a video work mounted on UFO-eqsue sculpture that also moves in circular motion. The video, titled, Pajarito in Space, depicts a torito - a pyrotechnic sculpture and syncretic figure in Latin American celebrations - typically features a cardboard bull surrounded by a wooden armature decorated in flags and banners. The armature gets covered in fireworks and when ignited, the bull and its scaffold turn into a blazing display. The video takes on the perspective of the torito, who witnesses the fiery brigade until only a single ember is left burning. “Parjarito,” meaning little bird in Spanish, refers to a famous bullfighting bull who notoriously flew into the stands, killing two spectators. Eventually Parjarito was stabbed to death. The video moves away from the traditional celebratory connotation and instead evokes a low budget sci-fi film that considers the fate of the bull. As the video fades to black, the audience is left wondering if they’ve just witnessed Parjito’s departure into the darkness of the Milky Way.

While confronting a serious topic of mortality, Armando employs elements of play as the audience’s presence initiates the seesawing motion of the floor, sending the objects into their spinning. The uncanniness of the space, its objects, and their movement, the strange little circus Armando has communed, juxtaposes the serious topic of mortality. In this playful interaction, the artist affords agency to the visitor, who sets the pandemonium in action, as well as the ceramic sculptures, who are emboldened to follow their own course.

-Text by Caroline Taylor Shehan

Armando Guadalupe Cortés was born in Urequío, Michoacán, México and raised in Wilmington, CA. He holds a BA from UCLA, 2012, and a MFA from Yale School of Art, 2021. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His work explores themes of endurance and repetitive labor through object making, storytelling, and performance, which employs forms and methods from his native hometown in México and contrasts them with elements of his life in the United States.

All photos courtesy of Subtitled NYC, New York