Christian Viveros-Fauné
For personal and professional reasons, Alberto Montaño-Mason quit making art sometime around 2001. Nearly a decade of travel and study later, Montaño-Mason took to his studio like a man possessed. Residing presently in Mexico City—his earlier art studios were located in Paris and New York
jaime moreno villarreal
The Link between the images of a mummy and a cocoon, symbols of death and birth, is the main theme in this exhibition by Alberto Montaño.
Donald Kuspit
In a sense, Alberto Montaño Mason’s Niño, 1993 epitomizes his new paintings, both in terms of loss and his abstract-semiotic method of rendering and mastering it. The canvas is unevenly divided: a field of gray, relativelu uniorm, aboce a larger, mottled (with gray) field of yellow.
On the upper field, there is the imprint-trace of a slipper; on the lower field, the word of the title has been printed by an innocent hand, as though that of the Niño himself.
elizabeth ferrer
Alberto Montaño's paintings and sculptures resist simple categorization. Committing himself neither solely to abstract nor to figurative modes, his ambiguous forms challenge the viewer to determine whether they are meant to function as signifiers or as formal devices. Additionally, despite his obvious interest in the painted surface, he also incorporates three-dimensional objects into his canvases, thereby creating hybrids between painting and sculpture. Finally, while some of Montaño's themes, as well as his often exuberant use of color, reveal an indebtedness to his cultural heritage, he does not easily fit into the group of other artists of his generation who have become known for the centrality of specifically Mexican themes in their work.
Charles Merewether
Alberto Montaño Mason has brought back to the representational ambition of contemporary Mexican painting the concept of a ground and field of signs. Paintings such as Bad Boy (1988) or San Alberto Mártir (1989) both suggest an occult language whose meaning is a process of slow release, delivered with the passing of time. In Bad Boy the dark forms rise out of a monochromatic ground like ancient monoliths, plinths that signify a language of form or language that is condensed into a form of abstraction. San Alberto Mártir on the other hand, is closer to Montaño’s sculptural work and suggestive of a world of totem figures and forms. A framed leg-shaped form hovers over a field of color to suggest an offering to gods or a spirit world.
teresa del conde
The most striking feature of Alberto Montaño's recent paintings is the use of abstract constructions which evoke elements that transcend the shapes and colors and their distribution on the canvas surface. In earlier works the figure appeared always decoded, complementing the color areas, the pastings, the lines and dots that have now acquired a principal function. He is still using collage, brown paper strategically worked into folds and creases that actually form a fine drawing on the surface which is invaded by the lines and painted shapes as extensions of the main elements that rule the composition.