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LEOPOLDO GOÛT is an artist, writer, and filmmaker who works across mediums to articulate the ephemeral. In his work, the abstract and figurative clash with moments of chaos, memory, and humanity. Born in Mexico City, Goût grew up in a home often filled with poets, musicians, scientists, and more. Their stories and ideas sparked a fire in Leopoldo, who quickly joined the world of artists and philosophers. Goût now draws on both memory and folklore to create a layered physical process of intimate rituals. This informs his visual practice, a combination of painting, drawing, sculpture, digital art, soundscapes, performance, and more. All his projects, including myriad films and novels, influence each other in dynamic ways. Leopoldo's perspective is a confluence of the modern and ancient, a scrambling of identity and logic that is born in the margins but speaks to the a wide audience. Goût exists in the hazy borders between states of being, personal identities, and cultural norms. Leopoldo studied in London at Central Saint Martins School of Art through a full scholarship by the Mexican Center for the Arts and the British Council. He also won the Erasmus scholarship despite not being officially European.
At school, he began to approach his work as a kaleidoscope of references that inhabit and obscure semiotic constructs. “I want to emulate and echo that fleeting moment when you wake up from an intense vivid dream,” Goût says. “But immediately those images and senses start to dissipate. I believe my work lives in that space.” What may at first appear random is in reality a carefully crafted, wholly unique perspective on what it means to be conscious. Goût has shown work in galleries and museums across the world such as The West Collection of Pennsylvania, The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City, Galeria Museo of Bogota, Colombia, The Dikeou Collection, The Pritzker Collection, Tricia Collins Contemporary Art, Sandra Gering, Jack Tilton, PS1, and many others. Goût has also written and produced films, documentaries, and television shows for over a decade (Molly’s Game directed by Aaron Sorkin, Days of Grace directed by Everardo Gout). Goût's documentary film CARLOS debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival and will be theatrically distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. Goût wrote and produced The Chosen One with his brother Everardo, a television show that debuted on Netflix in 2023 on the top 10 list of over 60 countries.. Leopoldo Goût is also an accomplished novelist. His book Piñata with Nightfire (McMillan) won Top 10 Horror Novels of 2023. His series Genius: The Game won several awards including The Mathical Award. The CONACULTA grant for artists and various other recognitions in film, documentaries and art. Leopoldo is in the process of transforming his illustrated novel Monarca (Harper One) into an experiential adventure.
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Every autumn, a miracle happens. A monarch butterfly born in Canada flies more than 3,000 miles across North America. It does so over land it has never seen, in the reverse direction of the streams of humans traveling steadily north. It’s destination: the rainforest of Mexico. It is a journey filled with peril. Many will never make it, and those that do will never return. No butterfly among them has ever made the journey before, and none will again. In the hands of artist, writer, filmmaker Leopoldo Goût, the tale of the monarch butterfly’s migration from North America to the Mexican town of Contepec gets the immersive, you-are-there treatment. Each monarch butterfly was hand-painted by Goût, then brought into 3D space in collaboration with multimedia artist Matt Bruinooge.
An epic struggle for survival that is also a story of astonishing beauty and marvel is told in an immersive video installation. A groundbreaking work of I-can’t-believe-what-I’m-seeing poetry, SWARM is also a drama about a great migration that explores the value of community, environmentalism, and, ultimately, transformation. The first in a series of installations, SWARM will expand to include holographic projections, volumetric television, music, scent and other visual sensorial technologies, enveloping room-sized installations blurring the lines between vision and experience; the real and the virtual. Learn more
Elefante is a solo exhibition showcasing the multimedia works of renowned Mexican artist, author, and filmmaker Leopoldo Gout. With a bold embrace of maximalism, Elefante spans various mediums, including textiles, bronze sculptures, paintings, video, and sound. The exhibition delves into Gout’s long-standing fascination with contradictions, dreams, and the ephemeral. International in scope and deeply rooted in the artist’s decades-spanning career, Elefante offers a narrative of image-making as a journey of migration. There will be virtual tours and the exhibition will travel next year to Miami, London, and are in discussions with Paris, LA and NYC.
The exhibition is accompanied by a personal ambient soundtrack, Telar Adentro, composed by Oriana Gidi and Leopoldo Gout. This soundtrack will be available for pre-order on limited-edition vinyl records. Pre-order your exclusive "Telar Adentro" vinyl here.
In addition to the exhibition, a career-spanning retrospective book and an international documentary celebrate Gout’s dynamic return to the contemporary art world after more than a decade. You can read a captivating essay by Booker Prize-winning novelist Marlon James, featured in Leopoldo’s new exhibition catalogue, here.
The five-episode HBO Original limited series Get Millie Black created and executive produced by Booker Prize-winning author Marlon James, and executive produced by Leopoldo Gout, debuts Monday, November 25 (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET/PT) on HBO. The series will be available to stream on Max and will also air on Channel 4 next year. Ex-Scotland Yard detective Millie-Jean Black returns to Kingston to work missing persons cases, soon finding herself on a quest to save a sibling who won’t be saved, to find a child who can’t be found, to solve a case that will blow her world apart and prove almost as tough to crack as Millie Black.