A new exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego entitled Mexico: Expected/Unexpected features a roster of brand-name artists who are popularly collected and often included in international exhibitions. The included artworks are drawn from the collection of Isabel and Agustin Coppel.

Agustin Coppel is the grandson of the founder of Tiendas Coppel and Tiendas Coppel-Canadá, two of the largest department store chains in Mexico. As one views the artworks at the La Jolla venue of the museum, it may seem that you are looking at many artworks acquired more for their brand-names rather than for their individual uniqueness.

The exhibition was curated by Monica Amor with project advisor Carlos Basualdo for Maison Rouge, Paris, and is now on tour at its only U.S. stop. The works on view at the museum are half of the exhibition because the other half is currently on display at the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach.

Works by renowned artists such as Francis Alÿs, John Baldessari, Gordon Matta Clark, Ana Mendieta, Gabriel Orozco, and Thomas Struth are included in the Coppel Collection. Unfortunately, not all of these renowned artists’ works are on display in La Jolla; and of those that are, many do not seem special.

An exception is a large format photograph by German photographer Thomas Struth. The C-print titled “Paradise 2” (1999) captures the image of the floor area beneath the canopy of tropical rainforest. Huge in size, the photograph’s image is stifling due to the motionless jungle. The effect creates the uneasy feeling of an all too real diorama.

An artwork that is interesting only because of how it is installed is Untitled Untitled (Sitting donkey, Trento), 2004, by Maurizio Cattelan. It is a taxidermied donkey posed like a seated kangaroo. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it is installed near the museum’s grand windows that overlook La Jolla’s Children’s Pool, which is famed for its seals. Installed elsewhere it would be just tepidly sad. The artwork seated in front of the ocean view off La Jolla creates a hideous but poignant absurdity, but it is the incidental background view that makes it so.

Also included in the exhibition are works by less known artists from Mexico and beyond. A work of interest is “Suspended Landscape” (1997) by Rivane Neuenschwander from Brazil. The artwork consists of a maze of thin hemp-like strings hanging from the ceiling that each terminate with a bulb of garlic floating approximately six inches off the floor. As a viewer walks through the maze, the tiny air currents produced by one’s steps are enough to disturb the floating garlic bulbs, which should not be the case as the weight of a garlic bulb should be great enough to stay plumb under such circumstances. It is an quizzical surprise that is perplexing enough to make the obvious seeming artwork engaging.

Another engaging artist is Muruch Santiz Gomez. Her series of work on display is photo/text based but draws on her mother tongue, Tzotzil, and its quaint adages to pair with the images. One work in the series is “Chayote” (1995), which shows the black and white image of a basket holding several of the barbed types of the squash. The Tzotzil language caption beneath the image translates into “Do not eat twin chayote or any other twin fruits, because your baby may be born a twin.”

Another image from Santiz’s series features a woman in a blue blouse using a needle and thread. The saying beneath the image translates as, “It is bad if you sew clothes while wearing them because this may cause you to become a nomad.” While the images are unremarkable, the Tzotzil maxims are fun to read and create intrigue.

The context for organizing the exhibition is supposed to be unexpected because one is to assume that collectors from Mexico with substantial resources would not be collecting artworks from an international pool of artists. This seems farfetched. In an era of jet airplanes, the internet, and Skype teleconferencing, the rich Joneses of the world will always want to keep up with the other rich Joneses of the world.

The exhibition Mexico: Expected/Unexpected and most of the artworks on display at the museum’s La Jolla venue are expected, and many of the artworks are quite unremarkable.