José León Cerrillo
𝘔𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘍𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘦𝘴 (𝘉𝘶𝘵𝘢𝘲𝘶𝘦), 2021
Galvanized steel
31.5 x 24.4 x 29.1 in.
Courtesy of artist and private collection.

José León Cerrillo
José León Cerrillo is a multidisciplinary artist who works across media—print, sculpture, installation, and performance—to interrogate the politics and contradictions of abstraction. Grounding his practice in language and geometric systems, Cerrillo reframes the iconography of modernism and constructivism to destabilize both architectural space and meaning. His objects often act as interventions that echo their surroundings while simultaneously disassembling the structures that contain them.

Male Fantasies is a galvanized steel chair constructed from welded strands of linked chain, forming the iconic shape of a butaque chair—both functional and sculptural in its presence. Originating in colonial Mexico, the butaque is a low, wide-seated lounge chair that merges Spanish, Indigenous, and African design traditions, historically associated with tropical domestic interiors and interpreted by modernist designers such as Clara Porset, William Spratling, Josef Albers, and Molly Gregory, among others. Cerrillo’s use of chain and the charged title evoke layered associations with masculinity, power, aesthetics, language, and the domestic sphere. By fusing libidinal energy with design modernism, the work becomes a site where psychic abstraction and social critique intersect.