John Giorno: LIFE IS A KILLER, the first solo show in Mexico City dedicated to the American artist, poet and activist, closes at kurimanzutto on Saturday 24 October 2026. The gallery’s next Mexico City show, Carlos Amorales: Anteparaíso, opens on Thursday 5 November and runs to 16 December. This guide sets out what each show contains, when you can still go, and how to look at them.
Key takeaways
- John Giorno: LIFE IS A KILLER runs at kurimanzutto Mexico City from 29 August to 24 October 2026, according to the gallery’s own exhibition page.
- The gallery calls it the first solo show in Mexico City dedicated to Giorno (1936–2019).
- Carlos Amorales: Anteparaíso follows at the same Mexico City space from 5 November to 16 December 2026.
- The gallery’s contact page lists Mexico City hours of Tuesday to Thursday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with free admission.
- That leaves three opening days before Giorno closes: Thursday 22, Friday 23 and Saturday 24 October.
- kurimanzutto also has a New York space, so read the city on any show page before you plan a visit.
Why does the Giorno show matter now?
Because it ends in days, and because it is a rare show. The gallery describes LIFE IS A KILLER as the first solo exhibition in Mexico City devoted to John Giorno, the American poet, artist and activist who lived from 1936 to 2019. It opened on 29 August and closes on 24 October 2026.
Giorno is best known to many people as a poet, yet the gallery’s text insists that he wanted to do more than write poems. It says he wanted to widen the ways poets could reach an audience, and it follows that idea through canvas, paper, wall painting, audio, film and live performance. The show is therefore a good introduction for someone who has met the name but not the work.
The title comes from a phrase that, according to the gallery, recurs across his paintings, recordings, performances and publications. The point the text makes is that a poem did not stop at the page for him. It took on new meaning each time it moved into another medium.
What is actually in the gallery room?
Start with the walls. The gallery says some of the wall paintings and canvases belong to the Poem Paintings, a series Giorno began in the late 1980s. They turn language into bold compositions in stark black and white or in vivid rainbow colour, and they draw on the graphic language of Pop Art. Phrases named by the gallery include LIFE IS A KILLER, SPACE FORGETS YOU and EVERYONE GETS LIGHTER. The text adds that the works respond directly to the building, so scale, colour and architecture change how a familiar sentence reads.
The exhibition also includes silkscreen prints from the late 1960s and early 1970s. They are based on newspaper headlines, magazine articles, personal advertisements and Giorno’s own writing, and two of them use his signature double-column format, which invites you to read aloud.
Then look at the middle of the room. A microphone hangs above a raised platform that serves as a stage for live performances. Around it stand four turntables developed with the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, playing vinyl records released by Giorno Poetry Systems. Visitors are invited to choose the records and play them, with up to four playing at once, so the poems overlap into a soundscape that changes with each visit.
In the project room, the gallery shows Tiravanija’s film untitled 2008 (john giorno reads). It was shot over several days at Giorno’s home at 222 Bowery in New York, runs ten hours, and follows him performing poems, memoirs and music from five decades of his career. You will not watch all of it in one visit, so treat it as something to dip into.
What surrounds the show besides the paintings?
The gallery announced a programme of readings, performances, workshops and public events developed with artists, poets and performers across Mexico City. One strand it names is a poetry translation workshop led by La Americana, an independent bookstore specialising in books from the continent. Poets, editors and writers read Giorno and his contemporaries and produce new Spanish translations, treating translation as a creative act. The gallery says these works would be performed in the space, broadcast live on Montez Press Radio and published in a zine by La Americana and kurimanzutto libros.
The page also mentions a live performance on 9 September by La Bruja de Texcoco, invited by Abraham Cruzvillegas through Giorno Poetry Systems. That date has passed, and we have not seen a published list of events for the last week, so check the exhibition page before you go if you hope to catch a reading.
The gallery bookstore presents an archive of photographs, publications, documents, recordings and ephemera. It draws on material about Dial-A-Poem, Giorno Poetry Systems, Buddhism, political activism and his collaborations.
Giorno Poetry Systems itself is a nonprofit founded in 1965 by Giorno. Its own site describes it as built on artists supporting other artists, and it was established as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 1974.
What opens at kurimanzutto on 5 November?
Carlos Amorales: Anteparaíso opens on 5 November at the same Mexico City space and runs to 16 December 2026. The gallery calls it the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with kurimanzutto and the third at its Mexico City gallery. The title comes from a 1982 poetry collection by the Chilean poet Raúl Zurita, and the gallery reads it as a place or condition that precedes paradise.
According to the gallery text, the show introduces imaginary beings whose encounters unfold in drawings and animation, and it explores the hopes and fears around artificial intelligence. The opening installation takes its cue from H. G. Wells’s novel The War of the Worlds. It is made of frottages, which are rubbings, showing human-plant hybrids at agricultural labour and extraterrestrial creatures who exploit them. The gallery says Amorales uses artificial intelligence to generate graphic patterns, cuts them into templates and rubs over them with beeswax crayons, so digital images become handmade drawings.
A second body of work, ThisPersonDoesNotExist, is a cyclorama of hand-drawn faces that the gallery says reverse the logic of the panopticon, so that the viewer becomes the one being watched. In the project room, an animated triptych called Paraíso carries a score by Daniela Huerta. We have not seen an opening-night time for 5 November, so confirm it with the gallery.
| Show | Space | Dates | Status on 22 October |
|---|---|---|---|
| John Giorno: LIFE IS A KILLER | kurimanzutto, Mexico City | 29 Aug to 24 Oct 2026 | Open, closes Saturday |
| Carlos Amorales: Anteparaíso | kurimanzutto, Mexico City | 5 Nov to 16 Dec 2026 | Opens in two weeks |
How should you plan a visit this week?
The gallery’s contact page, which we opened on 22 October, lists Mexico City hours of Tuesday to Thursday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. It states free admission. The address is Gobernador Rafael Rebollar 94. Because the show closes on a Saturday, your last chance is the 24th, and that day the gallery closes at 4 p.m.
Plan about an hour. Give twenty minutes to the wall paintings, some time at the turntables, and whatever is left to the film in the project room. If you are new to gallery visits, our short guide on how to visit a gallery show covers what to ask and how to look.
The gallery sits among others in the same neighbourhood, so you can combine it with a walk. Our San Miguel Chapultepec gallery walk lists the nearby spaces, and our kurimanzutto venue page has the basics. For a wider view of the season, see Mexico City’s gallery season 2026 and what to see in the city’s museums this autumn.
What can a collector take from a show about language?
Giorno’s work asks what happens when words become objects: the same sentence reads differently at a different size, in a different colour, or spoken aloud. That question is not limited to one gallery. Among the artists we represent, Ricardo Luévanos works with a related idea in his Anotaciones series, which the artist page describes as treating each work as something inscribed rather than declared.
Anotaciones (Some Days) is made of fabric, gesso and acrylic paint, and its description says it measures 150 × 110 cm. It is listed on the site at MX$ 56,050 and is available at the time of writing. Its companion, Anotaciones (Between My Ribs), carries the same price. You can read more on the artist page, and we wrote about the series in our piece on Ricardo Luévanos.
Not every entry point is that large. The lowest price in the live catalogue today is MX$ 2,336, for a print: Over the Bridge by Daniel Stara. Browse all works to compare, and see what’s on in Mexico City for other openings, closings and fairs.
Verified 22 October 2026 against kurimanzutto’s exhibition pages and contact page, the Giorno Poetry Systems site and the live works catalogue.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does John Giorno: LIFE IS A KILLER close?
It closes on Saturday 24 October 2026 at kurimanzutto in Mexico City, according to the gallery’s exhibition page. It opened on 29 August.
What are kurimanzutto’s hours and is entry free?
The gallery’s contact page lists Mexico City hours of Tuesday to Thursday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with free admission. Check the page before you go in case hours change.
What opens next at kurimanzutto Mexico City?
Carlos Amorales: Anteparaíso opens on 5 November and runs to 16 December 2026, according to the gallery’s exhibition page.
Is the John Giorno show in Mexico City or New York?
Mexico City. The gallery’s page for the show names its Mexico City space. kurimanzutto also has a New York space with its own programme, so read the city line on each show page.
Can I buy art after seeing a gallery show?
Prices at other galleries vary and are often given on request. At Art of NOMA every available work shows its price in Mexican pesos on the page.
