A new gallery in Mexico City’s San Miguel Chapultepec neighbourhood is turning one of the city’s modernist landmarks into a hub for art.

Pieces appear on concrete shelving next to windows, and under the light of glass bricks – the legacy of architect Carlos Herrera, who designed the building in 1981 as a home and studio. JO-HS founder and curator Elisabeh Johs, who’s also the founder of New York’s Trotter & Scholer, has renovated the building, setting it up as an exhibition space, shop and artist residency.

The gallery is currently hosting its first show, Vivarium, which brings together the work of eleven Latin American artists to explore the question of what art needs to survive. The exhibition focuses particularly on Mexican artists, such as Perla Krauze and Carlos Garcia Noriega Bueno, but the gallery plans to host international artists in the future.

Artworks are centred around ideas of time, nature, movement and material, and range from textile pieces and sculptures to installations and paintings. The gallery describes the show as ‘an opposition to the idea of a museum’, saying it’s ‘a place where one can keep something alive, in a traditional sense an ecosystem’. The exhibition is open until 30 November.

Governor Jose Guadalupe Covarrubias 46, San Miguel Chapultepec I Secc, Miguel Hidalgo, 11850 Mexico City, CDMX, Mexico

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