Neither silent nor empty

ULRIK LOPEZ MEDEL

General Expenses, July 10 – Sepember 15, 2026

Many months after the carnival has ended, glitter still rubs onto the hand coming out the pocket. It is a stubborn presence, reminding us of the vitality of the falsely banal, and of the explosion of life that takes place when we stop living through repeating days. Sometimes it is difficult to find beauty in the traces of the residual, but an unremarkable appearance might conceal an unexpected power. Glitter is the indicator of an event: something happened there. And it is not the vestige of an ancient life seeping into the stupor of our present, but a sign of the very force that sustains us.

The Yoruba, and their diasporic syncretic traditions, understand the power that dwells within things and invoke it through their ààlè: assemblages of different materials that inhabit the limits of what we call an “object.” An ààlè may be filled with trash, leaves, rags, sticks, and debris; it may sit atop a pile of wood, be hidden among bushes, or be tied to a tree branch. Where its separate elements might lack a specific function, when integrated into an ààlè they become a talisman, designed to protects its creator from death, theft, or misfortune. Disregarding modern semiotic conventions, the ààlè appears to us as a forced assemblage of “things” that does not result in a concrete object, and yet is imbued with intention, agency, and narrative.

Similarly, the glitter that keeps appearing in our pockets reveals that profound tension between presence and power that organizes the forces that give life to our world. Every day, countless similar expressions pass inadvertently before our eyes: the residual trace of glue from a poster, or the unrecognizable outline of a sun-faded print, organize the surfaces of our present from the past. Ulrik understands this phenomenon well, and for this reason, his work explores the hidden vitality of material gestures within our visual horizon. Each form is the distinctive mark of an event, a force, or a desire: a cluster of palm seeds is submerged in wax and transformed into an opulent artifact; the textured pattern of a food grater seeps into an ornate head—a recurring symbolism in Ulrik’s work; and a paper sculpture, reminiscent of an elegant Japanese akari, secretly holds the recent relief of a public transit driver.

Ulrik Lopez Medel’s material gestures play with the unsuspecting semantics of matter to evoke a fleeting and complex line of thought. The exhibition Neither silent nor empty is an encounter with Ulrik’s intimate methodology, which begins by identifying the “ghosts of use” that persist in the forms around us and give life to our experience. Notoriously, this exhibition does not bring together a series or a sequential body of work; on the contrary, it is a constellation of objects that explore multiple material strategies that underpin Ulrik’s artistic practice: assemblage, copying, casting, collage, papier-mâché, watercolor painting, and metal embossing. As with the ààlè, the addition of disparate gestures is a deliberate act, and their intensity is manifested precisely through their integration. The result is an assemblage of playful, formal, and conceptual strategies that connects the unexpected power of the material with a sprawling artistic vision—one that is both a personal story and an attitude toward the world.

—David Ayala-Alfonso.