No Man’s Art Gallery is honoured to participate in Amsterdam Art Week with the exhibition “Las estrellas me iluminan al revés”, featuring a diverse collection of works by emerging Mexican artists. The group show is an extension of the gallery’s tenth international pop-up gallery in Mexico City and opens June 2nd at both gallery locations in Amsterdam.

“Las estrellas me iluminan al revés,” includes works by José Eduardo Barajas, Wendy Cabrera Rubio, Alejandro Galván, Alan Hernández, Alejandra España, Chavis Mármol, Carlos Martínez González, Ileana Moreno, RojoNegro (Noé Martínez Flores & María Sosa), Rodrigo Red Sandoval, María Sosa and María Vez. 

“Las estrellas me iluminan al revés” invites twelve artists to explore the inevitability of spirituality as a strategy to cope with the darker forces of life. Each work attempts to touch the realms of duality, magic or healing; relating to itself while at the same time being charged by external sources that are of more obscure nature.

The exhibition title, roughly translated as “the stars shine on me backwards,” takes its inspiration from the largest painting in the show by Alejandro Galván. The painting references the lyrics of Alfredo Guttiérez's "El Solitario," a renowned cumbia song portraying the unfortunate life of a desolate drunkard, to whom misfortune has become a constant companion. His melancholic existence is felt as if the stars have illuminated him in reverse. Having given up on life, the man preserves a sense of pride by attributing his misfortune to a reversed starlu. 

All of the works in the exhibition carry a similar charge of an elusive dark energy, each time conjured by another force: ancestors, symbols, mythical gods, astronomy, rituals or witchcraft. They prolong the natural movement and oral histories of magic that tie the intricate Hispanic, Indigenous, and African cultures of Central America and beyond. 

“Las estrellas me iluminan al revés” opens on June 2nd at 4pm and runs until 16 July 2023 on both gallery locations: Willem de Zwijgerlaan 327 and Bos & Lommerweg 88, Amsterdam.