Untitled; Jorge Dubón

Photo: Omar Bárcena, Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Jorge Dubón’s Untitled sculpture has long stood over the main esplanade of the Cuemanco canoeing track. Long neglected, one might forgivably perceive it as an architectural remnant at the northern end of a parking lot. Sometimes referred to as “Station 18,” that name refers to its status as part of the Ruta de la Amistad. The Friendship Sculptural Route was a series of public sculptural works created in the months leading up to the 1968 Olympic Games. Most of them are arranged around a few intersections with the Periférico highway between Coyoacán & Tlalpan.

• Jorge Dubón (1938-2004) was a sculptor, architect, and painter. Born in Chiapas, Dubón studied painting at La Esmeralda and later, architecture at the UNAM. He finished his studies in France and later participated in many exhibitions in France. He’s likely most widely known for his reliefs combined with
  architectural works and for monumental sculptural works.

Here, Dubón’s work is placed well off of the actual route, as were the three invitational works. (I.e.; those of Alexander Calder, Germán Cueto, and Mathias Goeritz who organized the entire exhibition.)

The work is in two bodies. One is a large open tubular column painted in static gray color. The other is an organic T-shaped tower, painted in yellow. Highly unusually, here Dubón worked entirely in cast concrete. He was well known for working in a purely subtractive way, never adding anything to a given form. This was sometimes compared to ancient Mesoamerican sculptural technique. But it may be explained by the guidelines Goeritz laid out for exhibition. Most of the works are in cast concrete.

At this writing the work is in the process of being restored.