Press Release
Text by Diego Sanchez
Ramon Saturnino's first exhibition in the United States, at Frankfurt Ordorica, consists of one sculpture, and four photographs, each individually titled bulgaria;mexicali, the same title as the exhibition. The name itself is an idea borrowed from the poetry of Gerardo Arana who has never visited these locations, but finds them inextricably linked in the position they bear in one’s mind. A kind of association that results when our imagination is influenced by inarticulate popular media.
Compressor, the large-scale sculpture, is made up of thirty-seven walls stacked together. The artwork’s dimensions (270 linear meters subdivided among thirty seven 7.3m walls) exactly match the exterior perimeter of a billiard hall, Club 128, once owned by Saturnino’s great-grandfather in Oxnard, California. A place he never visited; this legacy accessible (or refracted) through the subjectivity of his family’s memory.
The sculpture, featureless and monumental, obscures its origins in the Saturnino’s family history. The personal elements behind the work are rendered entirely invisible by the starkness and scale of its material presence. The sculpture nearly consumes the entire gallery, leaving barely any space for the photography. The framed works brace themselves against it, some find shade, others retreat into the corner. The way the sculpture physically imposes itself should demand our skepticism. Perhaps it’s Saturnino’s invitation to pop the bubble of monumentality. After all, It’s just drywall and metal framing that will be disassembled at the close of the show.
The photographs surrounding Compressor are taken by Saturnino in his hometown of San Luis Río Colorado, a border town in the Sonoran desert. In them we see various images of disintegration: a barren desert landscape, fraying fences, overgrown vegetation, the corpse of a dog. If Compressor is the opaque, quantitative representation of a familial space, then the photography in bulgaria;mexicali is specific documentation of the artist’s hometown that almost relinquishes any personal affinity. Their perspective is remote. They don’t make any attempt at explanation or hierarchy of importance. Anything we could infer about their subjects, about the location, would be speculative.
The show, bulgaria;mexicali, is dizzying. The sculpture imposes and withholds. The photography depicts, but does not describe.
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Ramón Saturnino (b. 1999, San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora, Mexico) is an artist whose installations, sculptures, and photography transform devices of social and territorial ordering into abstract forms. Saturnino’s recent solo exhibitions include Aquí No es Así (Lodos, Mexico City, 2025) and 5 fotografías por Ramón Saturnino (Jet Lag Taxi, Guadalajara, 2024). His work has been included in the group exhibitions Vasos Comunicantes (G.A.M., Mexico City, 2025), Columna Rota (Museo de la Ciudad de México, Mexico City, 2025), Manual Intuitivo (Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, 2025) and La Casa Ideal (Proyectos Multipropósito, Mexico City, 2024). His work has been recently acquired by Colección Jumex, among other private collections.
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