I didn’t exactly suffer from sleepless nights, but I did begin to think, “What if the Ouija boards and the other two sculptural pieces, “Object 2” and “Object 3” 2004, which looked like industrial voodoo torture devices, were the very objects Mayorga had in mind to invite the uninvited into my exhibition space?” The objects were deceptively cute and gallery friendly which may have been part of Mayorga’s scheme. Classic horror movie antagonists such as the girl from “The Exorcist” or Damien from “The Omen” begin as the very image of innocence in daily life, and by the end of the film, turn out to be the devil incarnate. This relationship between the familiar and the supernatural is exactly what provokes fear in what Freud refers to as the uncanny or the unheimlich (un-home-like).

Mayorga states that his more recent work reaches for “a more social and political structure”, and insists that each time he feels farther from examining “the personal” in relation to his obsession with the horror genre. He states: “Right now, I have concentrated more on the symbols behind the ‘spectacle of blood’,” and asks, “Why do I like this ‘show’, and in what ways does it give me pleasure, and above all, what form does Horror have?”

To examine these questions, Mayorga is working on a project which, ironically, involves transforming himself into a monster. He describes, “The action is simple: I arrive dressed in a suit with a shovel in hand. I dig a hole in the site’s floor. I put the shovel in the hole. I cover the hole with my hands bent down on my hands and feet. I leave the site.” When he arrives at the site he is dressed very chic and acts very elegantly, but by the end of the action he morphs into a beast, savagely engaging in the absurd task of burying a shovel. In this violent action devoid of violence, Mayorga describes the mechanics of horror without overtly celebrating the pathology therein.

In another recent series, “The Fall of Good Taste” 2006, Mayorga reflects upon the work of Edgar Allan Poe, and the decadence of patriarchal values. Mayorga explains: “The house is a symbol for the family’s well being, and what he sees in the lake is the bankruptcy of the Usher family literally falling towards the abyss.” This is, for the artist, prophetic of Western civilization. “The Fall of Good Taste” is a series of maquettes of houses assembled from decorative home fixtures and burnt motor oil, which serve as a poignant critique of the relationship between the micro (the home) and the macro (global politics).

“By the way,” Mayorga adds, “these houses are also mobiles that can also be activated by paranormal phenomena.” Even the most cynical of individuals among us, in respect to the supernatural, still has the lingering doubt in the back of his mind of “What if…?” For me, it is precisely this non-erasable doubt that Mayorga and his work manage so effectively. The fact that the artist is currently in the process of deconstructing the language of terror is a commendable evolution, but this really does not completely eradicate the doubts that are manifest in the  unknowable and the un-provable inherent in his work.