Installation (Installation)

Untitled (San Francisco) was made in Idaho in 1984 and was facetiously dedicated to Henry Hopkins, the then director of the San Francisco Museum of Art who added “modern” to its name. Assembled from the remnants and found objects from a hotel room, including a collage, shelf and small lamp, this playful piece—a satirical shrine of sorts—echoes the decidedly un-modern spirit of San Francisco’s bohemian culture. Kienholz’s works, with their critical and anti-establishment content, are often linked to the 1960s Funk Art movement in the Bay Area.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Mesoamericana (Economic activities) is part of a larger project titled Mesoamerica: The Hurricane Effect, which includes a video as well as series of hand drawn maps -based on historical cartography- that examine the effects of foreign power in Mexico today. Mesoamerica was home to a rich civilization that emerged around 10,000 years BC and out of which grew the rich Maya, Aztec and Zapotec cultures, among many others. These cultures were destroyed by the Spanish, who arrived in the 15th and 16th centuries.

NFT (NFT)

In the agricultural areas of Mexico, Indigenous people use the mylar magnetic tape unspooled from VHS cassettes as an alternative to the scarecrow—the reflective tape flutters in the wind and does an excellent job scaring birds away from crops. This kind of creative reuse of materials (overproduced and devalued) that flow through the global trade of consumer goods, is especially rich in Mexico and other parts of Latin America. In 2020, during a period of isolation due to Covid-19, Edgardo Aragón unspooled a VHS tape and installed it in his father’s crop of corn for six months.

Installation (Installation)

The installation Breathspace by Eduardo Navarro encompasses all the content presented at the artist’s first solo exhibition, of the same name, at Gasworks, UK. In lockdown, Navarro started drawing every day and this practice “relocated the studio to inside his head”. This meditative activity was inspired by quantum physics, according to which information in the universe cannot be created nor ever destroyed.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Efectos de familia (Family Effects, 2007–9) is a series of 13 videos that dramatize an array of abusive events derived from Edgardo Aragón’s family’s history—specifically its involvement with organized crime. Each episode is an action performed by some combination of his two young cousins, nephew, and younger brother. In one, a boy is shot to death inside a pickup truck.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Untitled (Wheelchair Drawing) is a ten-foot photo transfer of the image of a wheelchair with burning embers in its seat. In 2006, it was included in the exhibition, Alchemy of Comedy…Stupid at Artpace in San Antonio where Arceneaux explored the links between the medieval practice of alchemy and contemporary comedy. However, his particular image of the wheelchair is tragic, since it refers specifically to the comedian Richard Pryor, who became temporarily wheelchair-bound after being severely burned from drug use, and died prematurely of a heart attack in 2005.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The point of departure for Xar – Sueño de obsidiana by Edgar Calel is a poem that the artist wrote in Maya Kaqchikel. Made in collaboration with Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Pereira dos Santos, the film was shot while in lockdown in Brazil, where Calel found himself during the first outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The film shows Calel ambling around the empty Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion designed by Oscar Niemeyer to host the São Paulo Biennial in 1954.