Yeti, the joyful hoax

Wall painting in the room The Joyful Yeti

It was the works of Luis Lázaro Matos, bought by Mia Rigo, the founder of The Magic Collection Retreats, that first sowed the seeds of the Magic Megève project. Most of the works acquired were wall paintings and installations that could only be placed in huge spaces. The question then arose: where to put these pieces? The answer, conceived during the first lockdown in 2020, was to work with other artist friends to create structural elements of the chalet, giving birth to the Magic Megève property. Luis Lázaro Matos flew to Megève and drew, freehand, wall paintings to fill every space of the Annex.

Yeti, the joyful Hoax, 2021 is a wall painting installation conceived specifically for the Magic Megève spaces. 

This site specific installation brings together Matos’ interest in the representation of the non-human and the imaginary in conjunction with the artists’ insistence on representing ideas around liquidity in his installations. 

The mural takes the shape of a landscape painting of a waterfall where a poem has to be visually climbed in order to be fully read. Hung by a harness and a rope a mistérious portrait of a male figure is installed. Is this a portrait of Yeti? Is he climbing this waterfall? The mural works as a frontier to the other four bedrooms where Luis conjured four different installations. Like a theatrical curtain, one has to cross the doors, secret passages through the water, to access these spaces. 

The waterfall hides four different fantastical universes where water is a common element. In these rooms we see the representation of a swimming pool, a lake, a river (the thames), and the surface of the ocean made through the curves of a prawn mustache. Through the glass windows we perceive the shiny yellow light coming from the bathrooms, contrasting the blue. The bathrooms seem to be caves keeping inside more hidden treasures. “Yeti, the joyful hoax” ends up serving as a passage inviting the viewer to say “abracadabra”, finding whatever it is that is hidden inside.