On view from June 7 through September 7, 2025, at
LABOR
Pablo Vargas Lugo (1968) presents his fourth solo exhibition at LABOR on June 7th, entitled OMEGA. The exhibition consists of a large bronze pocket watch hanging from a rope in the center of the gallery, accompanied by a trio of mandalas that seem to leap from their support. OMEGA refers to the measurement of time, its language, its place in consciousness, and the attempt to suspend, stop, or reverse it. It is also the sign of the end of time foretold in the Apocalypse, which contains the sacred syllable of Vedic traditions.
The clock hanging from the ceiling of Labor displays the Omega symbol that accompanied astronauts to the Moon and is worn by divers who dive into the depths, the mark of the prestigious Swiss watchmaking house founded in 1894 by Louis Brandt & Sons. By adopting the last letter of the Greek alphabet, they indicated that their watches represented the greatest possible advance in time measurement, the limit of precision and reliability. In that sense, this OMEGA is neither precise nor reliable, but it is in its own way a time machine: in the metonymic sense, it has a wind-up and complications, representing escape and a limit. It is a dead man with his box, a sun and a crescent moon; it is also an angular or torsion pendulum, a bell, a tool for inducing hypnosis, visiting other lives and regions of the subconscious. It is a hieroglyph of death and the suspension of time.
This installation is complemented by three collages on fabric and paper based on the alternating colored ribbons that adorn the margins of Tibetan mandalas. The lines that form these ribbons act as the walls that contain their architectures, representing the structure of consciousness, the path to enlightenment, and the very construction of the cosmos, respectively. In this case, the walls are empty, and the circles that make up the mandala seem to have been thrown out of place in an interrupted meditation, twisting and suggesting writing or the eruption of a three-dimensional space. The OMEGA exhibition is a humorous and ominous collection of reflections and embodiments on time, its passage, and its End.
LABOR
Opening: Saturday, June 7, 11:00 AM
Address: General Francisco Ramírez 5, San Miguel Chapultepec, Mexico City
