Comunidad Guest DJ: Enrique López Llamas

Enrique López Llamas (b. 1993, Aguascalientes, Mexico) explores current phenomena through the appropriation and reinterpretation of strategies and visual imagery from art history and his personal experience. His debut solo show in the United States is on display at Black Cube HQ from September 25-January 16, 2027.

A million more things to keep me awake introduces three major bodies of work: The Magician, a newly commissioned, large-scale, hand-painted sculpture activated by disco ball motors; Glow on, a selection of suspended glow-in-the-dark, low relief sculptures; and Lo visible, lo invisible, a single-channel short film. Blending humor, nostalgia, and a mix of personal and art-historical iconographies, López Llamas constructs an enveloping constellation of works in which the relationship between presence and absence is centered. Ghostly figures, disembodied limbs, and narrative speculation operate as recurring motifs through which the artist stages the instability of perception, inviting viewers to inhabit the porous threshold between material presence and imagined possibility.

The exhibit invites in a number of musical partnerships, from the title’s relation to Geordie Greep’s “The Magician,” to the music played over the short film (blending Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” into Willie Colon’s “Oh que sera?”).

Learn more about Enrique, and check out what he’d add as as soundtrack to the show below!

Q: What do you do?

I make melodramatic “moments” about failure and anxieties that present themselves in mediums like video, installations, paintings and sculptures.

Q: Tell us more about your background, and how you honor your work.

I was born in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Then went to Guanajuato for art school and have been living in Mexico City for the last seven years. To me, the only way to approach what I do is by showing up at the studio everyday. Whether to literally make stuff, listen to music, watch movies or even doomscroll on my phone. To think, and try, and do, and edit, and then repeat.

Q: Why does representation matter in your work?

I play, collage and remix with a wide variety of motifs and elements throughout my work. I think that the way that we relate to images in our times has sort of flattened them and sort of erased their context, and so I try to fragment them and make with them this devices, that we call art, to unfold narratives and experiences for the viewer. Then they get the chance to project onto them and raise questions about their place that we share in this wild wild moment of our world.

Q: What’s one way the community can uplift voices like yours?

The best way to support and uplift creative communities is by showing up. To come, look and experience the work and ask yourself questions about what you are seeing.