mimo is pleased to announce Lustrations, a two person exhibition of works by Justin Nalley and Ernesto Rivera. The exhibition developed through the artists’ shared interest in obscuring and erasing as processes of creation. They employ opacity as a state to cleanse narratives, emphasize failures, and obsess over the unknown.

Both Nally and Rivera focus on deductive philosophies; phases where marks and materials are accumulated intuitively and without immediacy, gradually brewing and enriching themselves with substance. The “gatherings” result in intimate arrangements that reflect their potentiality to collapse or disappear. Through varying procedures and manipulations, the works display a wide range of perceptual phenomena, presenting themselves as anti-erasures; elements that were conceived by material or theoretical subtraction.

Lustrations refers to the Ancient Greek ritual of purification through removal; ceremonies where often marginal sacrifices were offered in order to cleanse places, individuals or events. At the same time, the term conveys political significance as a transitional tool for purging mandataries involved with revoked regimes. The exhibition considers both definitions, focusing on the rituals and ways of purging within purpose and failure. With an emphasis on undescriptive gestures, Lustrations aims to encapsulate the often opaque process of being, and more importantly, becoming.