Yuxtaposiciones

Willie Varela

Exposición: Jul 8 – Sep 12, 2004


En Yuxtaposiciones , Willie Varela se centra en las estrategias publicitarias empleadas por los medios de comunicación. Seleccionando imágenes de ciudades como Las Vegas, NV y Los Ángeles, CA, expone la naturaleza cotidiana de figuras icónicas en espacios públicos a través de fotografías individuales, dípticas y trípticas. Una proyección de video, un video de un solo canal y una pieza de sonido omnipresente completan la instalación. El proyecto sugiere que la cultura del consumidor, y aquellos que compran en ella, ha convertido imágenes que alguna vez fueron sagradas en productos para comprar, vender y consumir.

Las tácticas agresivas de la publicidad se reflejan en los trabajos fotográficos de Varela. Hipnóticas en su tecnicolor intenso, parecido a la televisión, las imágenes marchan a través de dos paredes de la galería. Las fotografías de un crucifijo se yuxtaponen con vallas publicitarias de Brad Pitt y Jennifer Lopez. La crítica estalla en una fotografía irónica del gigantesco puño verde de Hulk cayendo sobre el toldo de un cine, amenazando con aplastar el gigantesco artificio que es Hollywood.

En la pared opuesta, un video en bucle, Made in San Antonio, proyecta clips de programas de noticias de televisión, videos transmitidos por Internet, escenas pornográficas y documentaciones voyeristas de espacios públicos. Una banda sonora separada muestra empalmes aleatorios de películas y comerciales populares.

En medio de este caótico ensamblaje de medios de consumo, la presencia de varias imágenes más lentas ofrece un poder redentor. The Waters, una película que muestra el reflujo y el flujo del agua natural, se sitúa en el eje central del espacio. Este video, junto con fotografías igualmente contemplativas (un hombre solo parado en la calle, un cementerio vacío contra un cielo prístino), actúa como un significante de la condición humana en su estado más natural y vulnerable.

Las yuxtaposiciones adoptan tácticas de los medios de comunicación de masas para exponer la estrategia de marketing de la industria del deseo de fabricación donde no existe intrínsecamente. Promociona bienes y servicios como satisfactorios, pero, paradójicamente, cuanto más consumimos, más vacíos nos sentimos.

Artista

Willie Varela

El Paso, Texas, USA

Since the 1970s Willie Varela has worked with photography, film, and video, using source material found in popular culture to recontextualize personal histories. The resulting works convey a sense of emptiness by exposing the overabundance of media images and the potential of consumerism to misdirect human desires.
Recently Varela has turned toward investigations of the moving image and its profound effect on the public. In Detritus, the Remix (1989/2002) viewers are forced to reckon with their intimate relationship to television. The installation requires them to look through a pair of peepholes in order to see Varela’s 1989 film Detritus. The struggle to gain access to the images—which depict death, fire-eaters, wrestlers, violent sections of cartoons, and gruesome scenes from Hollywood movies—symbolizes the consumer’s struggle to escape loneliness, as well as the futile search for fulfillment in goods and services. In this work, as in others, Varela implicates both the consumer and the media industry in perpetuating a system of empty promises.
Willie Varela was born in 1950 in El Paso, TX, where he currently lives and works. He earned a MA in Interdisciplinary Studies in 1996 from The University of Texas at El Paso, where he presently serves as Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre Arts and Film. Solo exhibitions include a mid-career retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (1994) and Crossing Over which originated as a collaborative project between the El Paso Museum of Art, TX and the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at El Paso and traveled to Artpace and Blue Star Contemporary Art Center, San Antonio, TX (2003). Group exhibitions include The Perfect World: Contemporary Texas Artists, San Antonio Museum of Art, TX (1991); Whitney Biennial, New York, NY (1993, 1995); and Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Film, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (1998).

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Curador

Ute Meta Bauer

Vienna, Austria

Ute Meta Bauer was appointed Professor of Theory, Practice, and Mediation of Contemporary Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 1996 and since 2003 is also vice rector for international relations at the academy. In addition to her faculty position, Bauer is the founding Director of the Office For Contemporary Art Norway in Oslo, and was recently appointed Artistic Director for the 3rd Berlin Biennial For Contemporary Art which will open February 2004.   Recently, Bauer was part of the curatorial team for Documenta11 (2002).
Focusing on art, architecture and sound linked to feminist and socio-political discourses, Bauer’s curatorial work includes the exhibition First Story – Women Building/New Narratives for the 21st Century (2001) for the European Cultural Capital.  That same year she also curated the exhibition Architectures of Discourse for the Fundació Antoni Tapiès in Barcelona.  From 1994 to 1996 Bauer was guest curator for NowHere at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (1996), and was Artistic Director at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart e.V. from 1990 to 1994, she has also been responsible for numerous exhibitions, lectures and international conferences such as Radical Chic (1993) and A New Spirit in Curating“ (1992).
Since 1985, Bauer has also worked as free-lance curator and editor of publications in the field of contemporary art and mediation of art, among them Education, Information, Entertainment: New Approaches in Higher Artistic Education (Vienna 2001) and periodicals like META 1 – 4 (Stuttgart 1992-94) and case (Barcelona 2001, Porto 2002).

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