JO-HS was founded by Elisabeth Johs in Mexico City in 2021. Its activities combine exhibitions and artist residencies, and it has had a second location in New York since 2023. As of 2026, the Mexican program operates through temporary spaces and collaborations. Visitors should verify the location of each project, as the venues of previous exhibitions do not serve as permanent locations.
Gallery Profile
Elisabeth Johs opened JO-HS in November 2021 at 46 Gobernador José Guadalupe Covarrubias in San Miguel Chapultepec. Johs, who was born in Denmark, had studied at Central Saint Martins and the Sotheby’s Institute and worked at Massimo De Carlo and Gagosian before co-founding Trotter & Sholer in New York. In Mexico, she established the project in a building designed by architect Carlos Herrera, which housed the gallery, workspaces, and an artist residency. In June 2023, Architectural Digest reported twelve exhibitions and 19 residents during the first 18 months.
The residency ran until 2024 and accounts for part of the program’s initial development. Melissa Ríos (San José, Costa Rica, 1986), who is based in Mexico City, participated in the residency in 2022 and subsequently held solo exhibitions with JO-HS in Mexico and New York. British artist Emil Sands worked there during November and December 2023 before *Encounters*, an exhibition of nine paintings and works on paper curated by Georgina Pounds. Eleanor Nairne wrote the text accompanying the exhibition. *La Tempestad*, during its tour of Art Week 2024, focused on those scenes of men by the water and highlighted their connection to bodily and emotional memory.
The program gradually began to feature artists who maintained a more ongoing relationship with the gallery. Floria González (Monterrey, 1980) participated in Girasol in 2021 and later presented *Mixtape* at the New York location, in addition to two projects created in collaboration with Sandra Leal in Mexico City. Rodrigo Echeverría (Mexico City, 1988) presented ¡Qué Cholulada! in 2024, curated by Wendy Cabrera Rubio and Pablo Arredondo Vera, and the following year he had a solo exhibition in New York.
Echeverría’s relationship with JO-HS also shows that working outside of a dedicated facility had begun before the current model. In 2023, Casa Narciso del Valle, designed in collaboration with architect Marion Busto, was housed in a home in the Del Valle neighborhood and was open to visitors by appointment. Two years later, Laurent Moïsi wrote in Whitewall about the artist’s presentation with JO-HS at Untitled Art Miami Beach and noted how his paintings deconstruct and recombine references from various historical and religious traditions.
In 2023, JO-HS also opened in New York. The Mexican location later moved to Puebla 114, in Roma Norte, and the residency ceased operations in 2024. Throughout 2025, the space hosted exhibitions by Jo Dennis, Morten Slettemeås, and a joint project by Floria González and Sandra Leal.
In 2026, the gallery ceased to maintain a permanent location in Mexico City. The first exhibition of this phase, Nigredo – Albedo – Rubedo, was held in February at Lucerna 70B, in the Juárez neighborhood. In April, JO-HS changed locations once again to participate in CONDO Mexico City as a guest of Georgina Pounds Gallery, in Roma Norte, with a presentation dedicated to Perla Krauze. The gallery’s permanent headquarters remains in New York.
Why Go
The most recent exhibition featuring a Mexican artist was dedicated to Perla Krauze (Mexico City, 1953), an artist whose career began several decades before the founding of JO-HS. In 1995, she exhibited at the Carrillo Gil Art Museum; in 2010, the Museum of Modern Art presented the retrospective Traces and Paths, and in 2017, the Amparo Museum in Puebla organized Lithic Matter: Memory/Processes/Accumulations.
At the Amparo Museum, Krauze spent more than a year visiting quarries, workshops, fossil deposits, brickyards, and other sites in Puebla before producing the exhibition. Marble, onyx, stone, and other materials were displayed alongside imprints and waste products from those processes. One of the works created at that time, *Paisaje* (2017), made of lead, wood, water, and marble from Puebla, is currently part of the museum’s collection.
His work has also received critical attention outside of Mexico. In a review published in Artforum on a Krauze exhibition in London, critic Isobel Harbison noted that the artist avoided relying solely on the poetic associations of stones and found objects and instead managed to link them to the architecture of the site to address the passage of time. The review also pointed out specific installation issues with some pieces—an observation rarely found in the promotional texts that typically accompany her work. The relationship with the territory reappeared in *Nonsite: El Pedregal Revisited*, presented at MUCA Campus in 2022. The project drew on El Pedregal—where Krauze had lived during her childhood—and the transformations of a landscape formed by lava from Mount Xitle and later absorbed by Mexico City’s expansion.
What to Expect
There is currently no JO-HS exhibition open in Mexico City and, therefore, no permanent venue that could be described as a regular visitor experience. The address should be verified before each project.
The first exhibition of 2026 helps us understand how this model works. Nigredo – Albedo – Rubedo took place at Lucerna 70B in February and brought together 19 artists. Among them were artists who had been associated with JO-HS in previous years, such as Rodrigo Echeverría, Floria González, Jack Mernin, and Melissa Ríos, along with Perla Krauze, Alejandro García Contreras, Paty Ló, and other participants.
Two months later, the format changed. For CONDO Mexico City, JO-HS was hosted by Georgina Pounds Gallery and focused its participation on Krauze. The shift from a group show featuring 19 artists in a temporary space to a solo presentation within another gallery makes it clear that there is no fixed physical format that is repeated from one exhibition to the next. Jo-HS
What to Do Nearby
This section changes along with JO-HS. In its latest temporary exhibition, Nigredo – Albedo – Rubedo, the tour led to Lucerna 70B, in the Juárez neighborhood. For upcoming projects, it’s best to check the new address first.
From Lucerna, you can walk toward Bucareli and visit the Mexican Museum of Design(MUMEDI), located at Bucareli 35. Heading toward Roma Norte, you’ll find Casa Bosques Bookstore at Córdoba 25-A, a bookstore specializing in publications on art, photography, architecture, design, and independent publishing.
Dr. Pizza is located at Lucerna 70B. The concept combines pizza, wine, and cocktails and features a stone oven; the Juárez location is still listed on the restaurant’s website
