Mana Contemporary Presents Mana Highlights

“Cuarto Negro-Cuarto Blanco” (“Black Room-White Room”), 2016 were conceived like an open-ended dichotomy in which both pieces are complementary and opposite at the same time. By the same token, they can be seen as a diptych or as independent pieces. One of the basic tenets of his work is that it’s never confined to one meaning or interpretation, to leave space for the spectators to have their own interpretation, which in turn is added to the many layers of meaning I want my pieces to acquire. Another component in my work and in these pieces in particular is the sense of re-ínvention and self-regeneration. In the case of Black Room, the black panels are made with a Nanotechnology Material which, if it gets scratched, it will regenerate itself by applying heat to the “wound”. On the other hand, Black Room-White Room can be seen as different states of mind or a transition between the two. Another connection, from an architectural point of view, they both have a diagonal cut, which could be seen as light entering the rooms under the door. This was part of the process in the conception of these pieces, and an unexpected one at that wich goes to the most important tenets of my practice, which are the Process and Poetry. About Alberto Montaño Mason was born in México City in 1953. In 1973, he moved to London, England, where he earned a BA degree at Chelsea School of Art, class of 1977. He then moved to Paris, where he studied at Atelier 17 under William S. Hayter, 1977-1978. In 1981, he settled in New York City, where he started a career as a painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. Montaño Mason has had museum and gallery solo shows in New York (PS1, 1987, among others) and Mexico (Museo de Arte de Queretaro, Galería OMR, Galería Ramis Barquet, among others). He has been included in several museum group shows in New York, Washington, California, Texas, among other states in the US, México, and Europe. After a deep personal loss in 1990, Montaño Mason went through long periods of mourning, traveling, and studying, in a quest for survival and revival into a new way of expression, a process that took several years. In 2003, he set up a studio in México City and began a second career in Conceptual Photography and Video, among other techniques. In 2010, he had his first Museum solo show at the Museo de Arte de Querétaro in México. He had a studio at Mana Contemporary until 2020 and he is now based in Mexico City. In 2025, he had a solo show at the Museo Juan Soriano in Cuernavaca, Mexico, with the project “Juegos Iconoclastas.” This project consisted of harvesting old playground equipment from a rural pre-school in Mexico and, through a grant from Fundación Jumex, installing new ones and deconstructing the old ones into sculptures, some of which are in the Museo Jumex’s permanent collection. Courtesy of the Mana Collection.