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“Sensacional” Mexican Design: Centro Cultural de las Artes. SLP, MX / Diary # 3

“Sensacional” Mexican Design: Centro Cultural de las Artes. SLP, MX / Diary # 3

One of the best ways to see a city is through its advertisements, especially when hand made. Perhaps we’re feeling this way because increasingly there is a blurred line today between street artists branding their legal/illegal work on the street with social media tags or websites that lead to products to purchase – effectively functioning as advertisement.

Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Currently at the Center for the Arts of San Luis Potosi (Centro de las Artes de San Luis Potosi) the “Sensacional” exhibition invites you to witness the graphical and design interpretations you’ll find on the streets of nearly every neighborhood – and you’ll feel welcomed. Walking through the galleries and seeing the figures, fonts, and colors it is like sampling daily flavors and emotions you’ll find on Mexican streets – a vernacular discovered in the design and imagery on gas stations, corner groceries, signage, flyers, packaging, labels, posters, and announcements of all kinds. The images are often with intense color schemes, skewed proportions, and humor; a pleasing sense of humor specific to the culture that includes the writer with the reader and doesn’t sting, but may sing.

Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A traveling exhibition begun nearly 20 years ago with the publication of a book named “Sensacional” the show is organized by Juan Carlos Mena, Oscar Reyes and Déborah Holtz of Trilce Ediciones México. It has traveled to many cities since 2003 – including Glasgow (UK), Pasadena (US), Washington (US), New York (US), Boston (US), San Francisco (US), San Antonio (US), Zaragoza (Spain), Alexandria (Egypt), Bogota (Colombia), Zacatecas (Mexico), and Mexico City. Here in San Luis Potosi we were very glad to see many of the cultural influences that form the aesthetic of the street all joined together – with categories that meld trade, food, aesthetics, nationalism, religion, animals, transportation, machismo, burlesque, music posters and Lucha Libre.

Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Eclectic and entertaining, the vernacular of comics appears frequently in many images hand-created by untrained artists who function as advertising agencies for a client list that includes mechanic shops, churches, food sellers, liquor sellers, mariachis and wrestling expositions. Violating all kinds of corporate, copyright, and art school/trade rules, these idiosyncratic graphics are untouched by the blanded global commercial aesthetic, making them somehow more authentic, human and, definitely, pleasing.

Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sensational: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)
Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)
Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)
Sensacional: Mexican Design. Centro Cultural de las Artes. San Luis Potosi, Mexico. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For more details about Sensational: Mexican Design and Centro Cultural de las Artes, San Luis Potosi, click HERE

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