FERNANDA SNOWDON & RAMONA ROCHA
LUZ OSCURA

KÖNIG MEXICO CITY 
4 APRIL – 29 MAY 2025

KÖNIG MEXICO CITY is pleased to present LUZ OSCURA, an exhibition by Fernanda Snowdon and Ramona Rocha. Since Plato›s Allegory of the Cave, people have framed darkness as an illusion to overcome, a state of ignorance to escape. But through this association, we forget that shadow is also evidence of light; without it, radiance itself would go unnoticed. In LUZ OSCURA, two Mexican artists, Fernanda Snowdon and Ramona Rocha, examine the instability of light, shifting it away from notions of clarity and understanding and toward something more elusive and fleeting. The absence or lack of light becomes a plateau for the accumulation of intense and melancholic emotion.

Ramona Rocha, EL RITUAL, 2025

Rocha’s paintings capture the fading of memory, presenting darkness as a veil that conceals and time as a slow and approaching shadow. Her work confronts the viewer with ambiguity, shrouding familiar encounters and memories in darkness. Consistent uncertainty dominates her work. The evocation of nostalgic moments, intimate yet distant, becomes increasingly elusive, as Rocha blurs the line between the conspicuous and the obscure.

Fernanda Snowdon, DONDE LOS PASOS NO ESCUCHAN SUS HUELLAS, 2023

Fernanda Snowdon’s work, in contrast, embraces the role of darkness as a dramatic stage where shadows amplify emotion. Her scenes are saturated with a deep melancholy, compositions that carry a sense of foreboding and quiet unease, creating a corridor into a wistful world where the interplay of shadow and light creates an ongoing tension between revelation and concealment. It is within her works that the lack of distinction in Mexican culture between life and death, light and darkness, is felt most strongly.
 
Collectively, Snowdon and Rocha offer an evocative exploration of darkness that exceeds simple fear or obscurity. Through the absence of light in their compositions, both artists accommodate spaces where darkness and light are in constant interplay, revealing and concealing in equal measure. The little light available is heightened upon a darker canvas, a collaboration that shapes both emotional and existential experience. LUZ OSCURA is a collective contemplation on the emotional weight of darkness, where gloom and shadows guide the viewer through realms of uncertainty, memory, and revelation. and denial, even by oneself over time.