Eduardo Abaroa, a 31-year-old Mexican artist working in Mexico City, had his first one-person exhibition over the summer entitled "Recent Models and Freaks" at the Jack Tilton Gallery in New York City. Among works exhibited at the gallery were sculptures, a video installation, and drawings.

"Bull-Frog Cloud" stands out in the exhibition through its poetic compositional meshing of artificial flowers and enameled plastic frog. Both have ready-made qualities and at a glance this piece looks like a bouquet, but when viewed in detail the frog skeleton is surprisingly revealed as a support for the numerous twigs of flowers. The work is basically white flowers growing from a dead frog. It is not just simply displayed on a pedestal, however. The skeleton of the frog is folded in half and its upper part is connected to the flowers, while the rest of the skeleton and flowers hang over the edge of the pedestal. The way it is displayed alludes to a certain degree of site-specificity, rather than a three dimensional object or a mere sculpture. The plastic skeleton, moreover, is flexible because it contains wire inside. Its form can be transformed easily by bending the skeleton in many different ways. So the trope of viewer response in the work is a heavy one.

The work has a certain Pop sensibility because of the commercial products that constitute it. This increases "Bull-Frog Cloud’s" impact without destroying its character as just a simple choice of materials. For the materials and its multiple meanings simultaneously articulate a visual complexity and critical reflection.

"Bull-Frog Cloud" has profound meaning beyond its superficial look. It seems to be connected to death and renewal. Its title infers that the bullfrog's skeleton represents a dead and decayed corporality from which things like a soul can bloom, represented by the white flowers. It can also be read as the process of transformation or reincarnation from frog to flowers. Abaroa’s presents the notion of rebirth and it is absorbed well in a modern kitsch aesthetic through the use of industrial products. The use of quotidian materials enforces its poetic strength. Yishai Jusidman has stated that Eduardo Abaroa "is the magician of an amalgam of emotions that are not easily compatible." Abaroa’s sorcery resides in the impact of the bizarre conflation of the splendor of flowers and its formal and conceptual interaction with the frog.

White flowers can be associated with death or virginity, which is a peripheral citation of Freud’s death drive and the libido or between Thanatos and Eros. A frog is usually interpreted in close conjunction with water, particularly with rain. The early church fathers referred to a frog's existence in mud and their loud croaking and saw them as symbols of the devil or of heretics promoting false doctrine. Ironically, Abaroa didn't focus on a bull-frog but on the skeleton of a dead bull-frog.

Like an aerial acrobat that stands on a string keeping his balance, the work of Eduardo Abaroa stands on the borderline between two poles in many different aspects. On a formal level, "Bull-Frog Cloud" disguises and transforms itself through its protean quality: from sculpture to wall piece to installation; and its meaning changes according to the way it’s displayed. In terms of its narrative, the idea of ancient funerary and spiritual references collide with twentieth-century consumerism. It could also refer to a south-north relationship in that Abaroa is Mexican and the exhibition is in the U.S. Although I am not prone not to ascribe such notions onto Abaroa’s work, he continuously teases and plays with dualism that makes this conceptual and geopolitical reading a possibility.

As part of the "new wave" of Mexican artists who have abandoned painting for other media, Abaroa is an artist to watch in the future. And like his "Bull Frog Cloud," he will not only continue to artistically mesmerize, but transform the skeleton of an imploded art word into something alive, critical and poetic.