Pepe Mar makes his New England debut at the Currier
When Pepe Mar toured the Currier Museum of Art’s galleries last summer, he was looking out for a spark. He found it inside a piece with two tiny cabinet-like doors from the museum’s collection, the 33rd work from Dream Houses, Louise Nevelson’s series of roughly 37 human-sized wooden sculptures.
“I was like, oh my God, this is what I want the exhibition to be,” Mar said in a recent Zoom interview. “The idea of this … container with windows, some sort of vault — it had so many different things that inspired me.”
The result is what the Currier’s website describes as “a phantasmagorical world.” “Pepe Mar: Dream House” opens on Thursday, Oct. 1, with an exclusive evening reception. It’s the first New England presentation for the Mexico-born, Miami-based artist, whose assemblage work blends thrift-store finds, queer culture, science fiction and textiles.
Various Currier collection pieces will share the galleries in aesthetic conversation with Mar’s work, like a gilded rococo Ormolu clock, a Piranesi table and iridescent Tiffany glass. There will also be furniture upholstered in Mar-designed fabric. Breaking with usual protocol, guests can plop down upon these works of art.
The exhibition runs through February, and Mar imagines it as a refuge — hence the invitation to sit on his beautiful chairs.
“You have this very strong winter,” he explained. “I thought this could be somewhere people can come and congregate, hang out, visit multiple times and discover different things.”
Currier curator Anastasia Kinigopoulo had the same idea. “I knew that this was going to be a winter show, a little oasis in a very snowy time of the year,” she said during the same Zoom discussion, adding, “Who doesn’t like to sit in a chair in a museum? It’s like a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
With a background in American decorative arts, Kinigopoulo welcomed the chance to combine a modern aesthetic with centuries-old objects, pointing to the Ormolu clock as a prime example.
“There’s angels, flourishes and gold,” she said. “Everything looks like it’s moving, even though it’s not.”
A Hans Hofmann painting with pooled blocks of color provided Mar with a spark for an exhibition in Kansas City, an influence reflected in the Currier show’s striking carpet.
“It’s like you pour all this orange into the space, so [it] becomes almost like a painting,” he said. “I’m about mixing … everything is an inspiration for me.”
The collection objects also trace Mar’s own evolution. Tired of working only on paper, he began buying vases and glassware in thrift stores, drawn to shapes he spent years cutting out of decorative-arts books. For “Dream House,” he got what he called “the ultimate scavenger hunt” with a trip into the Currier’s vault in search of those same objects.
A box collage that Mar spent two years making nods to Joseph Cornell, but louder.
“With Joseph Cornell, you look into a window,” he said. “This collage is coming at you.” The plexiglass boxes that encase much of his work began as protection for fragile paper collages. Now he color-matches each box to its artwork, making it part of the design.
The biggest news is a debut. Mindful of New Hampshire’s textile history, Mar turned to the Taller Mexicano de Gobelinos in Guadalajara, which he had visited years ago. With weavers there, he translated a 2006 work from the start of his collage practice into a style that’s provisioned French monarchy for hundreds of years.
The tapestry reached his Miami studio just days before the interview. No one else has seen it, and Kinigopoulo is delighted to unveil it at the Currier. She explained that the Gobelinos process produces hues impossible any other way, blending several colors into each weft thread. “It’s like painting with fiber,” she said.
The exhibition is bilingual, and it also launches a catalog featuring essays by Kinigopoulo and Italy-based decorative arts scholar Christian Larsen. The Currier typically does this only for big shows, to help them carry on.
“Exhibitions end,” Kinigopoulo said. “Books keep that memory and that scholarship alive.”
Mar hopes newcomers leave the way young visitors did after his 15-year survey in 2023 at the Tampa Museum of Art. Many who attended that exhibition messaged him afterward. “It’s about feeling something,” he said. “I want you to enjoy that moment … feel embellished by all of it. That’s the goal.”
“Pepe Mar: Dream House” Reception
Where: Currier Museum of Art, 150 Ash St., Manchester
When: Thursday, Oct. 1, 6 p.m.
Tickets: $25, $10 for members, currier.org
Opens to the public Oct. 2, continuing Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Feb. 21, 2027.
Featured photo: Pepe Mar. Photo by Martina Tuaty.