Maximizing the objecthood of painting by placing it on the level of more genial objects of décor, José León Cerrillo sabotages utopic notions that spawn autonomous, ambivalent objects. By literalizing painting’s discursive function and its social character, his installation practice raises issues of relative value and taste, inviting the painting to literally match the couch. Paintings, plants, sculptural fragments (or disassembled paintings) and wall dividers are incorporated to posit art and décor in indistinguishable measure; they live together. Plants act as “quasi- democratic stand-ins,” for objects whose use value, however limited, is at least popular. His works strive to insinuate an occasion for painting within a more fluid system, interrupting the passive indifference of its pleasures.

Selected solo exhibitions: 2001: La Panadería, Mexico City; 1999: Contemporary Art Gallery, Mexico City.
Selected group exhibitions: 2002: Generation XYZ, Fitzroy, Toronto; 2001: Painting As Paradox, Artists Space; 2001: Las molestias son temporales, las mejoras permanentes, Carillo Gil Museum, Mexico City; Choose Your Own Adventure, Leroy Neiman Center/ Columbia University, New York; Do it, Carrillo Gil Museum, Mexico City.