Buenos Aires artist collective Mondongo is a collaborative duo consisting of Juliana Lafitte and Manuel Mendanha. Their work doesn’t disappoint curiosity engendered by their mysterious name taken from a stew. Following the rickety elevator ride to the age-old Bendix Building’s top floor, a routine gallery visit leads to an otherworldly scene seeming all the more unforeseen beyond Track 16‘s empty foyer. Thick dark curtains open a captivating setting for some sort of occult ritual. Moody landscapes lavishly wallpaper the gallery, evoking the feeling of having stumbled into bosky scenery in an eerie dream. Amid the portentous music-permeated gloom, small canvases depicting fires appear as luminous red-orange lanterns against an arboreal background. The centerpiece is a huge mass of naked babies in the shape of a Gothic altarpiece. The influence of Lafitte’s exorcism-inducing evangelist parents is palpable. Most disturbing, A descent into the maelstrom (2018, detail above) depicts two ships sinking into an unforgettable vortex. Like a grim mishmash of fairytales gone wrong, this installation feels as though you’re not supposed to be there—unless to be sacrificed. Employing slick iconography and materials like Plasticine, Mondongo skirts kitsch by virtue of their talent for distilling the psychic import of notions and imagery haunting popular culture. Their installations and performances channel the spooky spectacle of Halloween mazes and interactive theatre into something more meaningful. Argentina’s fraught political legacy is an inevitable allusion—the babies, for instance, connote children that disappeared during the 1976-1982 junta—but their timeless existential issues resonate universally.

Track 16 Gallery
1206 Maple Avenue, #1005
Los Angeles, CA 90015
 Show runs through Mar. 31