kurimanzutto: contemporary art between Mexico and NY

Architect Alberto Kalach converted a former lumberyard and industrial bakery into an exhibition space, keeping the wooden ceiling trusses and natural light

kurimanzutto: contemporary art between Mexico and NY

Kurimanzutto is a contemporary art gallery with two project spaces in Mexico City and New York. Mónica Manzutto, José Kuri, and Gabriel Orozco founded it as a nomad gallery in the late Nineties. Kurimanzutto settled first in Mexico City and then in the United States, pushing art outside of the traditional white cube. The gallery aims at allowing artists’ projects to exceed the potential of the gallery’s physical space, reaching outwards and engaging with alternative sites across the city.

Driven by the same desire to focus on the artists and prioritize creative innovation above all else, today the gallery represents thirty-eight Mexican and international artists, and continues to organize and support exhibitions in diverse cultural spaces, aiming at not being just a place for viewing and contemplation, but also at supporting criticism and research.

The birth of kurimanzutto: itinerant art in Mexico

Kurimanzutto’s first exhibition, Economía de Mercado, took place in 1999 and remained open to the public for less than twenty-four hours. In a rented market stall, thirteen artists displayed pieces they had created using materials for sale in the market, which were sold at prices comparable to other goods, such as kitchen utensils, foodstuffs and cleaning supplies.

Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco first proposed to José Kuri and Mónica Manzutto – hence Kurimanzutto – to create a nomad gallery. He was convinced of the potential of artists living and working in Mexico City and of the city itself. «He invited us to focus on artists and art instead of on a space», José Kuri recalls. «Since a space would have separated the artists and what they were doing. We started with artists we knew personally, people we grew up with, with whom we questioned the world and developed a vision. Those artists recommended other artists to us and our community expanded. We always hear what our artists have to say and they play a role in the development of Kurimanzutto’s network».

Gabriel Orozco pointed out to José and Mónica the need for a support structure that would allow emerging artists to develop their language and realize projects within their country as well as abroad. «We decided to use Mexico City as our exhibition space and for every project we looked for the right place to do it, giving art the context it needed». These included, for instance, a bumper car park, a supermarket parking lot, Mónica and José’s apartment, Los Manantiales restaurant in Xochimilco and the shipping container of a semi-truck.

kurimanzutto promoting a beyond-borders exchange of ideas

The gallery’s itinerant condition allowed artists to organize shows in unconventional places, which freed them up to experiment with different projects. Such flexibility also afforded the gallery collaborative opportunities, with artists and founders traveling abroad and hosting international artists and curators in Mexico City to develop projects.

From the very beginning, Kurimanzutto sought to foment conversations between the international and the local, establishing an exchange of ideas that transcended national borders: «In 1999, at a time when the Internet was not so diffused yet, we tried to overcome the lack of opportunities for artists in Mexico to sell their work. In order to do this, we needed to connect to a wider world».

In the early years, most artists participated in almost all gallery exhibitions. While each artist developed an individual practice, they also fed off each other’s work and the participatory dynamic of kurimanzutto, which gave them a sense of belonging and shaped the ethos of the gallery.

[envira-gallery id=”132320″]

kurimanzutto now: two cities, one mission

After ten years working with no fixed space, using their own house as both office and storage, Joséand Mónica felt the urge for «A space where we could gather as a community. Somewhere where we could offer to the community what we had nurtured. Moreover, during the years we had collected quite an archive, which we wished to offer to people doing research, so it felt like a natural step».

In 2008, kurimanzutto inaugurated its current gallery space at calle Gob. Rafael Rebollar 94 in the colonia San Miguel Chapultepec. Built in 1949, the building, which had housed a lumberyard and an industrial bakery, was renovated by architect Alberto Kalach, who converted the bulk of the structure into an exhibition space, conserving the original wooden ceiling trusses and ample natural light.

kurimanzutto, moving outside Mexico

Again, ten years afterwards, kurimanzutto felt the need to have a place outside Mexico to offer to the international community they were working with and opened a project space at 22 East 65th Street in New York City in 2018. «We were offering an inner sight of Mexico to the many people coming to visit us, but at that point we found it necessary to have an outer place where we could expand. We chose New York, which became an extension of what we do in Mexico». Then, in 2022, another space was opened at 520 West 20th Street in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York.

Located in two different contexts – and countries – the two spaces «give different meanings to art and artworks». But they share the same mission. Both in Mexico City and in NY kurimanzutto wants to establish connections between artists, institutions and art professionals who have accompanied the gallery across its evolution in order to develop the artistic currents that live and breathe in the two cities.

kurimanzutto’s vision: contemporary art as a need

For the kurimanzutto’s founders contemporary art is first of all a need. «I feel like I need to connect to the world through art, it is something that I have to live and to think. It’s a way of understanding the world I live in, a way of questioning where I am, what is happening and how I can act in this world», states José Kuri.

Therefore, kurimanzutto’s goal for the future is to contribute to building a better world though art, which they believe that can promote a critical vision and thus helping in challenging every kind of political, social and cultural issue.

An example is TITAN, an intervention into New York’s outmoded network of phone booths, conceived by Damián Ortega and Bree Zucker, which took place in 2020, just before the phone booths were definitively removed, during the global pandemic that left museums and galleries closed and restricted to viewers. The advertisements in the phone booths were replaced by artist-made posters, which called into question modes of communication along the Midtown thoroughfares where they were encountered. This open-air group exhibition took as its premise that a gallery may exist in open space, be accessible at any hour and remain free to all viewers.

Debora Vitulano