Vultures & Fireflies

2025
Hell You Call a Dream

Alejandro Galván’s catalogue brings together a dense constellation of paintings and poetic texts that confront the entangled structures of corruption, violence, and systemic injustice in contemporary Mexico. Rather than functioning as mere documentation, the catalogue operates as an expanded narrative space in which image and language co-produce a critical archive of lived political realities. For Marres, House for Contemporary Culture in Maastricht.

  • Vultures & Fireflies: thorny lettering climbs lime and grey catalogue pages of poetic texts, 'Lessons in Loving Like Plants'
  • Vultures & Fireflies: dense text faces a painting of fire, a grey bony beast and a river boat, image and language together
  • Vultures & Fireflies: poetic texts face a dark page, green thorny lettering and pale blades under 'The Whistling of the Sun'
  • Vultures & Fireflies: two catalogue paintings, devil masks crowd a crucified figure, a shaggy white beast strides past fire
  • Vultures & Fireflies: catalogue cover painting, a figure in green skirts a whirlpool, lightning cracks over a burning truck
  • Vultures & Fireflies: red catalogue contents, yellow and white thorny letters claw the page, listing 'Hell You Call a Dream'
  • Vultures & Fireflies: poetic texts face a painting where a giant coyote towers over snowy peaks, bikers and pixelated blocks
  • Vultures & Fireflies: pink thorny lettering claws grey and blue catalogue pages, 'Vultures, Process and Installation Views'
  • Vultures & Fireflies: a painting mid-process expands over the spread, a figure in pink, a tablet propped with reference legs
  • Vultures & Fireflies: two sepia portraits on rough-edged paper gaze out from cream catalogue pages, a critical archive
  • Vultures & Fireflies: three black-and-white photos of shacks, pylons and a flooded road on purple pages, a critical archive
  • Vultures & Fireflies: emerald catalogue spread, pink thorny lettering sprawls under 'The Joke 2' and 'La broma 2'
  • Vultures & Fireflies: black-and-white photos, a figure atop a pole over city lights, a studded jacket, beside dense text
  • Vultures & Fireflies: green catalogue pages, thorny purple and lime lettering spikes 'Bestiary of Eastern Mexico City'
  • Vultures & Fireflies: a pencil drawing of a figure and a wolf-like creature floats on a pink page, image facing language
  • Vultures & Fireflies: painted figures wait at a terminal, one on a blue stool, half still pencil, beside dense text
  • Vultures & Fireflies: two dense paintings, a horned mask and blue wings rise over a crucifixion, a shaggy beast roams a city
  • Vultures & Fireflies: yellow spread, thorny red and pink lettering spells 'Dream' and 'Hell' under 'Hell You Call a Dream'
  • Vultures & Fireflies: poetic texts face a painting where a procession in embroidered dress wades a canyon river
  • Vultures & Fireflies: a grey pencil drawing of dancers between buildings and a pink flyer stack beside dense text
  • Vultures & Fireflies: a grey drawn waterfall tumbles past a pipe, pink thorny letters on navy, 'The Route the Corpses Take'
  • Vultures & Fireflies: a painted bus burns behind a figure in green, dense columns of poetic texts on the facing page
  • Vultures & Fireflies: text-heavy catalogue spread, 'SEMBLANZAS' and 'IMAGE CREDITS', pink lines close the critical archive
  • Vultures & Fireflies: a painting floods the catalogue spread, a tattooed figure drifts on a green river past a white horse
  • Vultures & Fireflies: spiky lettering spells 'Distant Land' on pink, 'That Distant Land Right Here' opens the poetic texts
  • Vultures & Fireflies: a graphite eagle grips a snake, lettering arches 'CHINGA TU MADRE PATRIA', poetic texts opposite
  • Vultures & Fireflies: image and language meet, a graphite couple stands on rails above 'A Strange World' beside 'LESSON 1'
  • Vultures & Fireflies: a painted figure cradles two children beneath a television on pink, poetic texts on the facing page
  • Vultures & Fireflies: image and language merge, an ink wolf inscribed with words rises over a dense city of dogs and figures