CURATORS: Virginia Roy and Cuauhtémoc Medina

The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey presents Prussian Blue by the Mexican artist Yishai Jusidman, in which desolation is materialized through the titular color: Prussian blue. Invented in Berlin around 1704, it became the emblematic dye of the Prussian army and was one of the first synthetic pigments incorporated into European painting. The color also became associated with German history, specifically with the extermination camps where millions of Jews were murdered during World War II. On the walls of the gas chambers, traces of this somber hue persist, resulting from an accidental fusion of the toxic acid (Zyklon B) with the iron in the walls. With great subtlety, Jusidman has studied photographic images of concentration spaces and gas chambers to paint them precisely using this pigment.

Prussian Blue navigates the prohibitions that have hindered the articulation of Holocaust memory through painting. Jusidman’s works refer, without subjective distortion, to photographs of gas chambers, and his palette is limited to three materials directly related to the genocide:

• Prussian blue paint: The blue stains produced by Zyklon B in the gas chambers are chemically identical to the pigment painters know as “Prussian Blue.”

• Diatomaceous earth: Zyklon B canisters contained prussic acid infused into granules of this porous siliceous material, which Jusidman used as an inert, translucent filler in a medium that produces a vaporous effect.

• Flesh tones: Colors that subtly nuance the paintings and faintly evoke those who were victimized within the represented spaces.*