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Pancho López celebrates 25 years of performance art with 'El picnic y la sobremesa' exhibition
🇲🇽 Mexico /Culture & Society

Pancho López celebrates 25 years of performance art with 'El picnic y la sobremesa' exhibition

From El Universal · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

In-depth Sources not specified Context piece
  • Mexican artist Pancho López is celebrating 25 years of performance art with an exhibition titled "El picnic y la sobremesa" in Cuernavaca.
  • The exhibition features his famous "picnic performances" from the late 90s and early 2000s, where he ate formal meals in public spaces.
  • López's work explores themes of food, social connection, and the body, with current projects focusing on coffee rituals and sugar.

Artist Pancho López is marking a quarter-century of his performance art career with "El picnic y la sobremesa," an exhibition currently on display at the Museo Morelense de Arte Contemporáneo Juan Soriano in Cuernavaca.

Food is the central axis of López's work.

Describing the core theme of Pancho López's art.

López gained international recognition in the late 1990s and early 2000s for his "picnic performances." These involved meticulously staged, formal meals, complete with suits, fine china, and elaborate dishes like chiles en nogada and paella valenciana, consumed in public spaces before crowds in cities such as Mexico City, New York, and Toronto. The artist revealed that this practice originated from a personal place: as a person with a weight problem at the time, he felt uncomfortable being seen eating.

The exhibition's first section delves into this "picnic" phase, showcasing 18 performances from around the world. It includes artworks, primarily ready-mades, such as the picnic basket and a mannequin dressed as López. The journey continues through a "salt room," featuring half a ton of salt on the floor and a collection of salt shakers gathered by the artist and his friends over a year. López explains that salt is ubiquitous, present in tears, sweat, flavors, and superstitions.

The children, who were then ten and twelve years old, described the perpetrator in detail and partially remembered the license plate of the getaway car.

— Police and Public Prosecutor's OfficeDescribing the crucial role of the children's testimony in the investigation.

The exhibition concludes with "Historias de café" (Coffee Stories), López's most recent project. This series highlights how coffee and its preparation rituals foster connections between people, even across language barriers, a concept he began exploring in Finland. López stated that he has always enjoyed "being part of something," which led him to performance art in 1995. He remains passionate about this art form after 25 years.

Salt is everywhere, tears, sweat, flavors, superstitions.

— Pancho LópezExplaining the significance of salt in his exhibition.

López plans to continue his exploration of food-related themes, with the exhibition traveling to Querétaro and Monterrey. He will also further develop his "Coffee Stories" series and create an installation dedicated to sugar. Reflecting on his artistic journey, López noted the connection between his early focus on elaborate meals and his later diagnosis of diabetes, seeing it as an ironic outcome that helped him achieve his weight loss goals, albeit at a cost.

I always liked being part of something.

— Pancho LópezExplaining his motivation for pursuing performance art.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by El Universal in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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