Surreal. Rodney Smith
MUSEO FRANZ MAYER

The Franz Mayer Museum announces the opening of "Surreal: Rodney Smith," the first exhibition of the renowned photographer's work in Mexico. Opening October 29, 2025, and running through March 2026, this groundbreaking exhibition explores the profound connections between Smith's distinctive visual language and the surrealist movement that found fertile ground in Mexico nearly a century ago.

Curated by Anne Morin, the exhibition features approximately 50 black and white prints that reveal the deep resonance between Smith's photographic vision and Mexico's role as what poet Octavio Paz famously called "the magical mirror of surrealism." The show opens during Mexico's Day of the Dead celebrations and will continue through Zona Marco art fair in February, positioning it at the intersection of Mexico's rich cultural calendar.

"Mexico has always been a destination for the surrealists," explains curator Anne Morin. "André Breton and Antonin Artaud both traveled here in the 1930s, finding a society where magical traditions aligned with surrealist ideals. They encountered ancient beliefs where the living and dead coexist in a continuous cycle of life and death – the same mystical realm surrealists sought to access through automatic writing (unconscious expression) and dream imagery. Smith's photographs similarly capture moments where the unconscious speaks through scenes that feel both familiar and mysteriously otherworldly."

This carefully orchestrated environment of "crossing mirrors, transparencies, gravity, anthropomorphism and strangeness" creates what the curator describes as "a minimal, delicate, elegant show where silence is a noise that can be a little bit disturbing for the visitor." The exhibition reveals how Smith's work captures the same sense of double reality that drew the surrealists to Mexico – a place where the boundary between the magical and the everyday has always been permeable.

Smith's photographs are presented in an unconventional manner. The black and white images are displayed in frames that echo chess pieces, while the photographs themselves are mounted in an atypical way – a subtle disruption that creates what Morin calls "that little gap between real and the unreal."

"Surreal: Rodney Smith" represents a significant cultural moment, bringing together Mexico's surrealist legacy with a contemporary photographic vision. This exhibition will shift visitors' perceptions as subtly and powerfully as Smith's photographs.