“For me, art is my home, because wherever I am, I find inspiration.” – Gregor Hildebrandt

“I have always believed that the magic of certain places is inseparable from their silence, their tranquility, and their mystery.” – Luis Barragán

Commissioned by advertising executives Pancho Gilardi and Martin Luque for a plot in a densely populated area of Mexico City, south of Chapultepec Park and near Luis Barragán’s own home, Casa Gilardi embodies the pioneering architect’s belief in silence, tranquility, and mystery. After a decade of professional inactivity, 74-year-old Barragán accepted the challenge in 1975, paving the way for Casa Gilardi, the last project that was built before his death.

Completed in 1978, a year after his survey at New York’s Museum of Modern Art ended and two years before he received the Pritzker Architecture Prize, Casa Gilardi clearly showcases Barragán’s architectural style, highlighting a skillful use of light, color, and form that continues to inspire and captivate today. Presented with the chance to showcase his first solo survey of art in Mexico City at this celebrated residence, German artist Gregor Hildebrandt viewed it as both an honor and a challenge, one he was quickly inspired to undertake.

Having a history of creating innovative installations of his work in museums and galleries worldwide, and after similarly transforming the garden and interior of the Mies van der Rohe Haus in Berlin with an exhibition of his art in 2021, the Berlin-based artist built a scaled-down model in his studio and began creating new work, while selecting specific pieces from his archive to bring Casa Gilardi into the 21st century.

Known internationally for transforming obsolete analog recording media—such as audio cassettes, VHS tapes, and vinyl records—into visual art forms like paintings, sculptures, and large-scale installations, the artist’s conceptual work explores themes of memory, nostalgia, and the physical manifestation of intangible sound and film.

Known locally from Galerie Perrotin’s 2019 solo presentation of his work at Zona Maco, and his acclaimed two-person exhibition with Alicja Kwade at the Museo de Arte de Zapopan (MAZ) in Guadalajara in 2023, Hildebrandt is now presenting around 40 works created between 2005 and 2025 in the engaging exhibition “Gilardi Lilien” (Gilardi Lilies) at the Gilardi House, which is still owned by the family that commissioned Barragán to design it.

The exhibition offers a curated overview of the artist’s work, featuring pieces that he selected or created related to the architect and the modernist house he designed. The majority of the works on view come from his signature series of Rip-off Paintings, which are abstract or geometric compositions created by transferring the magnetic coating from audio or videotape to canvas using adhesive. The technique was partly inspired by sgraffito pictures the artist made in kindergarten with crayons, where a colored ground drawing is covered in black and then scraped off to reveal the hidden image.

Standout Rip-off Paintings in the show include Little John (2021), a colorful abstraction made with VHS tape from a movie about Robin Hood, a legendary outlaw who stole from the rich to give to the poor. The canvas, part of the artist’s series of movie paintings, references the outlaw’s companion and, coincidentally, complements the vibrant colors of the house. A pair of contrasting black and white paintings, Ein Pferd steht auf im Teich (A Horse Standing in a Pond) (2022), highlights Barragán's love of riding and his famous Cuadra San Cristóbal equestrian complex, while Kairo (Cure) (2010), with its pyramids and palm trees, complements Mesoamerican archaeological sites as much as it relates to the Egyptian ones. And, another notable suite of 10 Rip-off Paintings, depicting a goat leaping for leaves on a tree, Der goldene Fries (The Golden Frieze) (2011) references an ancient Persian vessel uncovered by archaeologists, with repeated imagery that, when viewed sequentially, constructs the world’s oldest animation.
Three of Hildebrandt’s acclaimed record columns on marble plinths are on display, including two new cast bronze columns and The Big Blue (all 2025), made of stacked, compression-molded, blue-colored records. He created the blue sculpture to connect the ground floor of the three-story house to the second level, which includes a swimming pool in a skylit space with blue walls. However, the columns—like the pyramids—could also be linked to Mexico's iconic Mesoamerican structures, such as the thousand columns of Chichen Itza or the totems at the Tula archaeological site. Hildebrandt also added one of his celebrated cassette-shelf portraits (On this occasion Barragán), in which custom-printed inlays of the architect were placed in cassette cases and assembled into a larger, pop-art-style grid to form the complete image, as he had previously done with Mies van der Rohe.

Mixed into the rest of the carefully selected works are several minimalist paintings created with the colored leader tape from audio cassettes tapes, including some that refer to Hildebrandt’s memories of the geometric patterns from his father’s household dish towels and Schach und Rosen in Stein (Chess and roses in stone) (2021), an image of a still life with flowers in a vase on a chessboard, laser-engraved on granite, that had also been exhibited at the Mies van der Rohe Haus. Building on the theme of chess, a game the 52-year-old artist has loved since his youth, his 2023 editioned chess set is available for visitors to play, and a larger-than-life bronze sculpture of a chess piece, a knight, is on display, guarding the vibrant fortress-like house from inside.

Hildebrandt's final piece for the show is Gilardi Lilie (2025), one of his rare reflective works: a shimmering still life of a large lily in a small modernist white vase, with a mirror-like surface. While considering a title for the exhibition, the artist realized that the Italian surname Gilardi is derived from the given name Gilaro, a diminutive of Gilio, meaning “lily.” Once he chose “Gilardi Lilien” (with Lilien meaning lilies in German), he realized he had to turn that idea into the show invitation and an artwork within this Barragan-designed home, often called a “living art piece” because it is more than just a house—it’s an experience that engages multiple senses, just like Hildebrandt’s captivating art.

Text: Paul Laster