Gallerist José Kuri on Keeping Faith in Mexico City

Imagine picking up a Gabriel Orozco artwork for the price of a spoon. Or a Rirkrit Tiravanija when all you went out for was a fresh tube of toothpaste. At kurimanzutto's first exhibition, Market Economy, which opened in August 1999, this was a reality for 24 hours.

In a rented market booth at Mercado Medellín in Roma, Mexico City, the gallery's artists took to the stand selling wares made from materials found in the market itself. They priced each artwork to compete against rubber gloves, spatulas, and other market mundanities.

Eighteen years later, in 2017, Orozco transformed the Mexico City-based gallery into an OXXO, the most wide-spread convenience store in the country.

For 30 days, its entire 6,000-odd inventory was up for grabs in exchange for 'Oroxxo$'—a fictional currency made using facsimiles that combine a Mexican peso with a U.S. dollar. And available to the vetted collector, Orozco added a selection of 300 goods—from Jumex juice and Kellogg's Corn Flakes, to packets of Trident gum and Camel cigarettes—brandished with colourful logos mimicking his geometric abstract paintings: semicircles and quarter-circles in red, gold, white, and blue.

For José Kuri—one half of kurimanzutto—it was his waistline that proved to be the biggest concern.

'The temptation to pop down from the gallery's office for an afternoon snack was all too much,' he joked. That, and the municipal authorities who came knocking three times attempting to close the exhibition down.

But for the veteran gallerist, who set up his 'nomadic enterprise' with his partner Mónica Manzutto, and under the auspices of Orozco, this participatory dynamic has guided the ethos of his gallery to become the city's hottest destination for contemporary art during Mexico City Art Week (7–11 February 2024). But the ride hasn't always been easy.

'It was a desert,' Kuri said, speaking on the Mexican art scene in the 1990s. 'You could count on one hand collectors in the city and I would call them up for every show.'

Eugenio López Alonso was one of them. As the sole heir to the Jumex Group—Mexico's favourite fruit juice, which lines the shelves of OXXO stores, including Orozco's—López became a 'guardian angel of art' founding the nonprofit Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo to exhibit works from his collection. Aurelio López Rocha, his wife Pepis Martínez; Isabel and Agustín Coppel; and the collector and curator Patrick Charpenel who now sits as executive director of El Museo del Barrio in New York, followed.

As for galleries, kurimanzutto was founded in 1999 in response to an absence of spaces dedicated to contemporary art in Mexico. Consequently, there was little support for the up-and-coming generation of young Mexican artists trying to make a living.

So for those first to the party—José and Mónica for one, alongside Jaime Riestra and Patricia Ortiz Monasterio of Galería OMR, one of Mexico City's oldest contemporary galleries—this meant relentlessly promoting their programme both at home and abroad.

'When we started out, it was rare to have collectors come by the gallery. Instead, Mónica and I would jump on a plane and travel for three months, selling our artists to the world.'

'We would turn up to museums and collections to meet collectors and curators with massive binders full of our artists' portfolios. We looked like we were selling carpets! This was before we were all connected via computers and OVRs and Zoom, of course.'

One amusing anecdote when carting around Porto, saw a young José turn up empty-handed to meet Vicente Todolí, then curator of Serralves Museum and later director of London's Tate Modern, having left the binder on the bus.

All the while Mexico grafted too. Institutions doubled-up, curators doubled-down, and art fairs grew—Latin America's largest, Zona Maco (7–11 February 2024), is now in its 20th edition with 200-odd participating galleries—while the influx of artists from abroad who have been priced out of studios (in New York), voted out of Europe (in the U.K.), and in need of some sun (Scandinavia), have all transformed the country into a Mecca for creative energy and output.

Yet while this infrastructure no doubt helped kurimanzutto's pursuit to raise awareness for Mexico's burgeoning scene, José's steadfastness in the artists he touts is the ultimate triumph.

Aside from their latest addition, a brilliant young Mexican-based painter Ana Segovia, kurimanzutto's programme is far from the wet painting fanfare paraded throughout convention centres around the globe.

'First and foremost, the gallery is led by passion,' Kuri says. 'Obviously, we have to make it work—it has to pay for itself—but we're happy to go into uncharted waters.'

Until he started exhibiting paintings in 2004, Orozco was predominantly practising 'relational aesthetics' (not the easiest of sells), aligning him with one of the gallery's most celebrated artists, Rirkrit Tiravanija. José recalls a particularly memorable show where Rirkrit transformed the lofty gallery into a convivial meeting area, cooking amongst palm trees, hammocks, and ping-pong tables set up throughout the space.

If it was ever viewed as a risk, it's one that's paid off. His 'family' of artists have been recognised with shows at some of the world's top museums—notably, one of his earliest recruits, the Mexican visual artist Abraham Cruzvillegas was awarded the Herculean task of filling Tate Modern's Turbine Hall for its inaugural Hyundai Commission in 2015.

At the time of writing, it was announced that Ana Segovia will participate in Venice Biennale's 60th International Art Exhibition Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere (20 April–24 November 2024) curated by Brazilian art historian/curator Adriano Pedroso.

While stunts such as the aforementioned OROXXO exhibition saw a staggering 1,343 visitors scour the makeshift aisles on its highest recorded Saturday.

His secret? 'Faith', José muses. 'I always had faith in Mexico City as it was full of the most important ingredient for success: brilliant artists.'