Object to be Desired

ALMANAQUE fotográfica and The Empty Circle are pleased to present Object to be Desired, a
duo exhibition of artists Claudia Doring Baez and Stuart Sandford. Through a new series of
paintings by Doring Baez and an ongoing series of polaroid collages by Sandford, Object to be
Desired, named after Man Ray’s readymade piece, Object to be Destroyed, explores the act of
art making as a way to capture, explore and reassemble the artist’s object of desire. Although
working in different mediums with classical nude forms, both artists reconstruct their subjects
through the filter of their own evolving biography. This process imbues their art with a visceral
intimacy only exceeded by possessing the object itself. Object to be Desired will be on view at
ALMANAQUE fotográfica in Mexico City from May 12th to June 4th, 2021.
In a new series of expressive oil paintings, Claudia Doring Baez adorns bold color onto the
black and white muses of Dada and Surrealist pioneer, Man Ray. Meticulously posed and
oftentimes restrained, the women Man Ray photographed were transformed into decaying
classical sculptures, such as the Venus De Milo, or the barren landscape of an early Surrealist
painting. Doring Baez deconstructs these iconic images with the intent to understand the male
need to objectify and subjugate women in art. The results are rich paintings of once passive
subjects, now transformed into vibrant, active participants. Doring Baez steps into Man Ray’s
shoes not only to assert her female perspective of the power dynamic, but also to imagine an
alternate past.
“My body is a 60-year-old body. My Lee [Miller] and Meret [Oppenheimer] moment has
passed, but I had it. I could’ve exposed myself that very same way, but I chose not to - I
wasn’t going to be anyone’s object. Still the mystery of what it means to be a woman
lingers. The objectifying of a woman’s body as I have done in these paintings is a
search for who I was, what I was, what I will no longer be.”
Stuart Sandford, LVI, Polaroid Collage, 2020 Claudia Doring Baez, Man Ray- Lee
Miller 1930, Oil on canvas, 2021

Stuart Sandford’s Polaroid Collages are one step less removed from this same exploration of
self. The source material is his own, but the time past has allowed Sandford to contextualize his
experiences and reimagine them within the greater narrative of his artistic journey. Using
polaroids of his dionysian friends and lovers, Sandford often assembles them together with
images of the surrounding flora where these intimate, often erotic moments occured. The results
of his craft are the delicate and beautiful objects you might find in a treasured journal or hidden
under a bedroom floorboard. We return to these little sculptural gems over and over to soothe
our longing for who we were, remembered through our past travels and relationships. Or
perhaps, when Sandford marries two of his lovers together, it is a reimagining of who we were,
what we wished to be and what we dreamed our lovers would be for us.
“The works exhibited bring together the two main facets of my practice, the photographic
and the sculptural. The 35mm works on display, examples of my most recent 35mm
work, are sensual, desirous of the forms captured within, be that of a beautiful young
man on my bed or a beautiful statue of a young man (that of Antinous) in the Vatican in
Rome. The Polaroid Collages are instant sculptures, reformed physical objects of desire/
connection, taking inspiration from both classical and contemporary art history and, in a
world of ephemeral images scrolling across our (phone)screens, both series exist as
beautiful, tangible, and delicate real world objects.”

About The Artists
Born in Mexico City and based in New York, Claudia Doring Baez’s paintings are animated by
a reverence for art history and literature — she selects, re-creates, and adopts details from
images to create a contemporary, expressionistic vocabulary. Solo Exhibitions and Fairs include:
Denise Bibro Fine Art, Aqua Miami, Zona Maco, Scope Basel. Group Exhibitions at Zurcher
Gallery, Lehman College, La MaMa Galleria, Ethan Cohen Gallery, and publications such as Art
News Magazine. Doring Baez is represented by Denise Bibro Fine Art in NYC and Galeria
Emma Molina in Mexico. Her work is in the DeWoody and Ringier collections.
Stuart Sandford was born in Sheffield, England but has lived and worked in the USA for the
last 10 years, 5 of those in Los Angeles. He has exhibited his work widely in galleries and
museums internationally, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and Centre de la
Photographie, Genève. His work has been featured in numerous publications and it appears in
many private collections around the world including the Sir Elton John Photography Collection.
In November 2020, during the few weeks of the reopening after the historic lockdown,
ALMANAQUE presented his first show in México: Lush.

About The Galleries
ALMANAQUE fotográfica, a project dedicated to contemporary photography and its crosses
with other media, was founded in 2016 by Arturo Delgado, with a curatorial program of
international contemporary artists, whose work explores the image and its intersections with
other disciplines, new formats, techniques and photographic styles based on the digital, with a
space in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City.
ALMANAQUE fotográfica has presented more than 30 awarded international artists in a dozen
exhibitions collaborating with curators, festivals and international institutions.
ALMANAQUE has participated in Zona Maco Foto 2016-2018, Material Art Fair 2017-2020,
Photo Basel Suiza 2017, PhotoFairs San Francisco 2018, ARCO Madrid, arteBA Buenos Aires,
Scope Miami 2019, Scope NYC 2020 and Photo London 2018- 2019.
The Empty Circle is a place for creation. We encourage emerging artists to explore new ways
of working and presenting their work outside traditional exhibition practices. Our staff are not
only visual art curators and artists, but also writers, directors, musicians, and dancers. It is
important to us to not only present these different mediums of art, but also foster a dialogue
between disciplines and generations of artists. Based in Brooklyn, New York, The Empty Circle
also strives to give local and international emerging artists their first public exhibition opportunity
in NYC.

Press Contacts
Arturo Delgado, Founder. ALMANAQUE, +525554134196 arturo@almanaquefotografica.com
Matt Nasser, Curator. The Empty Circle, +1 917-587-6992, matt@emptycirclespace.com