Nicolas Comment, 'Mexico City Waltz'

Waltzing with Nicolas Comment through this exhibition, we are invited to match his pace through the South American artist’s residence that produced his experimental images and texts. The story of his art is primarily his personal story, that of a Frenchman in Mexico – a photographer who, even before he stepped off the plane, was determined to understand something of the country through the writings of other outsiders. To this end he read Kerouac, Lowry and Artaud, immersing himself in the visions of other Westerners and taking the works of these ‘foreigners’ as a spiritual guide – foreigners who had travelled through, experienced and written about Mexico with deep sensitivity. ‘Instead of taking drugs like those three visionary poets, I’m going to intoxicate myself with literature,’ he wrote before taking his leap into the unknown. Here, we leap with him.