‘In Gods we Trust,’ is the provocative title of Minerva Cuevas’ new exhibition at Chelsea’s Kurimanzutto Gallery, a show featuring sculptures of pre-Hispanic deities and vintage magazine ads promoting powerful multi-national oil companies. Here, a priest of Tlazolteotl, an Aztec deity associated with lust and excess, sits on the pages of financial newspapers, an oil-like substance applied to his mouth and dripped on his arms. The interrelation of power and oil (a substance also used by pre-Hispanic cultures) also appears in the artist’s huge and damning wall mural featuring nature-inspired corporate logos of companies that have helped bring about climate crisis. (On view in Chelsea through April 15th).
