Triángulo místico

Mystic Triangle is constructed from rulers and collaged fragments of lotería cards, a common reference for artists engaged with Neo-Mexicanism. Dating back to the colonial period, when the Spanish brought printed games to the New World, lotería is a popular game with a board and deck of cards featuring symbolic figures or objects. Rulers were also a recurrent motif in Patiño’s oeuvre, most notably in his series Marcos de referencia (Frames of Reference), to which Mystic Triangle belongs. These mixed-media works often combined objects of personal significance to Patiño—family photographs, articles of childhood clothing, or even X-ray films of his own body—with Neo-Mexicanist elements, all separated from the space of everyday life by the ruler frame. Patiño took full advantage of the wordplay implied by the word “regla,” which translates from Spanish to both “rule” and “ruler.” In a seminal performance of the 1980s, Hay que romper las reglas (One Must Break the Rules/Rulers), Patiño raised a bottle of Coca-Cola in salute to the Virgin and asked the audience to join him in breaking a ruler (i.e. “breaking the rules”).