Since its opening two years ago, Casa Wabi’s Mexico City venue has become the definitive launchpad for Mexico City Art Week, drawing a crowd with its highly attended Monday morning art brunch. Founded by internationally renowned Mexican artist Bosco Sodi, Casa Wabi launched with its now-iconic Tadao Ando-designed location in Oaxaca. Conceived as a space where art, creation, community and natural processes could organically intersect, the foundation offers residencies, exhibition space and educational programs.
The name “Casa Wabi” embodies the principles of Wabi-Sabi, a philosophy that embraces imperfection and transience, recognizing the natural cycles and their inherent order. This ethos is reflected not only in the architecture but in the atmosphere that defines both locations.
This seamless integration of human presence, action and environment is also at the core of Sodi’s artistic practice, which is deeply rooted in material exploration and a fundamental connection to nature. His work embraces perpetual cycles of creation, transformation and destruction, mirroring the natural world’s rhythms. “It’s also so neutral, so simple in a good way of simpleness, and so unique in the way that accepts the accident, the non-control, the passing of time. I work with organic materials and processes, accepting the accident and making it totally unique,” Sodi explains as we walk through the ground-level space, where some of his recent works are on view.
The new building in Sabino was designed by Alberto Kalach, the Mexican architect who, like Ando, is known for his focus on the organic integration of indoor and outdoor spaces. Part of the building was originally his storage, Sodi tells Observer—a space he envisioned transforming into a two-body complex where Casa Wabi’s mission to support and showcase emerging talent could coexist with his own art and practice.
One side of the three-story building houses Casa Wabi’s office, a dedicated space for young artists without gallery representation and an area for sculpture exhibitions. The other side functions as what can be described as Sodi’s private foundation, featuring a rotating presentation of his works curated by Casa Wabi’s artistic director, Dakin Hart. “I had so much work in boxes. For me, it’s very sad not able to look at them, because they are my kids,” Sodi says. “It’s somehow my own art foundation, but it’s also impossible to separate Casa Wabi from me.”
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While representatives from his galleries on both sides of the Atlantic—Kasmin and Axel Vervoordt—were present at the event, Sodi confirms that none of the works on view are for sale. Instead, they remain part of his personal collection and estate, destined for his children.
“I love to see different perspectives of my work that I will not imagine,” Sodi says, explaining his decision to entrust an external curator with selecting and presenting his work. Interestingly, his pieces always seem to be deeply rooted in the space where they are shown, appearing as though they have naturally emerged from their surroundings. “I love the negative space that the work creates in different spaces and the decontextualization of the work in several places. I love to see my work more as an object. I don’t see them as paintings.”
On view on the ground floor, a vast green abstract field of protrusions and burls evokes fertile terrain, suggesting the lush growth of plants and vegetation. Sodi sources natural pigments from around the world, approaching painting in its most alchemic essence. Using raw materials such as pigment, sawdust, wood pulp and natural fibers, he shapes, molds and activates an organic process of accumulation and transformation, building thick, impasto-like textures directly onto the canvas. Describing his approach as a “controlled chaos,” Sodi applies paint spontaneously and intuitively with his hands, dissolving any conceptual barriers between himself and the work. Chance and materiality take precedence, shaping the final composition in a way that feels inevitable yet wholly unpredictable.
For him, art-making is not simply a practice but a necessity—a form of therapy. Having struggled with dyslexia and attention difficulties since childhood, he has always turned to creation as a means of channeling his heightened sensory awareness. His approach to both art and the world at large becomes clearer when he reveals that he studied under the Montessori method, which emphasizes self-directed learning, hands-on experimentation and collaborative play, encouraging a child’s—and by extension, a human’s—natural ability to absorb information effortlessly from their surroundings.
“I need the accident because if it becomes very predictable, it gets very boring and it doesn’t work as a therapy,” Sodi says. This philosophy is at the heart of his practice—his work resists premeditation and design, surrendering instead to the materials and natural processes that dictate the final form. The artist enters a kind of trance-like state, becoming a vessel that channels energies and forces already present in the universe, amplifying rather than controlling them. “I never know the final outcome; it’s not mental; it’s more about the movement and moving with the processes, adapting as things change. Then I don’t remember anything after it is done.”
His most iconic clay spheres were born from a moment of spontaneous experimentation with his children. “I made a big cube like that in clay, and they told me I couldn’t make that, as was going to break because it was too solid,” Sodi recalls, pointing to one of the sculptures. “I got tons of clay in Casa Wabi studio, and I began experimenting. They were breaking, so I covered them with plastic, but they were still breaking. I then covered them for one month, and it worked. I love the learning of the process and the surprises it brings you. Then, one day, I said, ‘I’m going to try to learn to make a sphere.’”
Today, Sodi makes his spheres by hand in his Oaxaca studio, using locally sourced clay—earth imbued with the energy of an ancient land. He shapes the material into balls and leaves them to dry in the sun for several months, allowing the natural cycles to dictate the timeline, embracing their hidden order. The spheres are then fired in a traditional kiln, often built on a beach, a process that gives them their distinct, textured surfaces. Created in collaboration with nature, the final works embrace the unpredictability of their making. Their irregular shapes, cracks, chips and subtle variations in color embody the cyclical nature of life itself, contained within one of the most fundamental symbols of wholeness and unity.
Sodi’s practice is fueled by an insatiable drive for experimentation—testing materials, engaging with new processes and pushing the physical and chemical limits of his elements to reveal their alchemical potential. His work transforms raw matter into symbolic and expressive forms, but more significantly, it moves within a conceptual framework that rejects the anthropocentric role of the artist as homo faber. Instead, Sodi collaborates with nature, allowing its inherent processes to guide his creations. His approach suggests a deeply rooted, almost spiritual connection to the natural world. “Actually, it’s nature that lets me collaborate with her,” he clarifies.
Casa Wabi is, in many ways, an extension of this philosophy. More than just a foundation, Sodi envisions it as a total environment—one where art, people and nature come together to create something larger and more meaningful. “For me, it’s a social sculpture that brings people together. Bringing brilliant minds in the arts, architecture and humanities felt to me very interesting and very powerful.”
Looking ahead, Sodi is optimistic about the trajectory of Mexico’s art community. “I think that there are now a lot of young artists that are coming up, but they also have new galleries to accompany and support them. Everything is getting in this sense more democratic, with more opportunities.” He hopes that as Mexico City’s art scene expands, it will move beyond the “tribe system” that once defined it—when only a handful of galleries, curators and museums held sway—toward a more interconnected, vibrant creative ecosystem. “We have learned to survive with all types of restrictions, like having no public support. We have amazing architects, and we have amazing artists. Mexico is now in a very good moment.”
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