TOLEDO DIEGO

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO [1964]

Constructions have been a constant feature of Diego Toledo's work ever since his volumetric reliefs from the series Mundo Animal (OMR, 1992) and Rastra (Museo Carrillo Gil, 1993-94) in which he combined organic and mechanical elements; in Sitio (OMR, 1995) and Mapped out (Radio House Gallery, New York, 2002), where he broached the problematic of language; and finally in his work on the issue of linguistic regions and hence specific dialects such as urban slang in the billboard series Te Tenemos Rodeado (Mexico City, 1998). 

Architecture for Events can indeed be seen as a turning point in Toledo's career as it represents a kind of synopsis of his concerns in terms of painting, objects, languages and symbols. Candidly displaying evidence of his research process, this series once again deals with the need for representation though it emphasizes his growing interest in volume and the object. 

A series of monochrome scale models presented as reliefs depict specific spaces. Unlike true architectural scale models, these pieces shed their horizontality and hence their condition as abstractions or models of actual places to become geometric studies that invert the spaces they depict. Toledo turns the viewers' perceptual process into an essential, necessary element for one's reading of the works by altering the volumetric logic of real space. Viewers thus complete the pieces by grasping their essence on a practically symbolic level of space as something more than simple images.