Transitios

Máximo González, Miguel Monroy, Ricardo Cuevas

Exhibition: Jan 10 – Apr 21, 2013


 

Transitios: Mexico City’s populous, bustling atmosphere and its relationship to the world is defined by microcosmic moments of exchange encompassing miscommunication, economy, currency, geography, and culture. Transitios is an exploration of artistic ideas traversing the city’s borders.

Transitios was curated by Leslie Moody Castro and Artpace Deputy Director Mary Heathcott.

Ricardo Cuevas

Change Is Possible, 2005

Photographic reproduction

Four printers from Plaza de Santo Domingo in downtown Mexico City were asked to transcribe a phrase in English that had been previously recorded from a movie. Since the phrase is obviously not in their native language of Spanish, it had to be transcribed phonetically, suffering variations and severe alterations in the process.

Máximo González

The Chair-Tree Fable by Iván Buenader

Winter in the forest had been very hard. The chair had suffered from the frost, the hot sun, and the despotic wind. Suddenly, she realized she had dried up and split. One of her legs had fallen in the road, the other was lying among some fungi, and her back had been torn off and was hanging on a tree branch. Though dried up, her right rear leg was still the strongest and was still standing though it was raised as if it was dancing.

The chair realized it was going to be very difficult to convince anyone that she was indeed a chair. She would begin using her strongest part, the nicest one, her long, winding, feminine rear leg. The chair called a young man that was passing by and asked him to help her get started. The young man carefully took her out of the ground and, moving between balance and joy, she went around collecting her other pieces. She carried them on her shoulders and arrived to a carpenter’s workshop where they helped her put herself together. She was satisfied with her proportions and figure, but she felt that she needed to tone up some parts, by waxing and applying make-up. So, she put all her parts on her shoulders again and hopped over to a little house on the mountain where she asked a man to make her look pretty. The man told her, “It’s not only a matter of making you look nice; you must be educated, you cannot be around there sprawling with your legs apart.” The chair understood and accepted on one condition: that her right hind leg remain untouched. Obeying the chair’s wish, the man helped the chair get into shape. With exercise and study he helped her improve notably. Very grateful, she decided to stay with him and to live in his house.

On a night of drunkenness, the man wanted to chop off her aforementioned right hind leg. “Don’t do it!” she shouted when she felt him grab her with the handsaw in his hand. “Why not?” the man argued. “That leg that stretches out of you is so long and horrible?” “Don’t think of it that way,” she said. “That leg is the one that allowed me to come jumping to you, it is the one that seduced the young man that helped me out of the ground when I was torn apart. That leg is the one that will always remind me that, although I feel I am a chair, deep inside I am a tree.”

Miguel Monroy

Debt Generation 2/3, 2011

Credit card statements, photographs of credit cards, and receipt for frames

Framing of the 13 documents costs $4,200 pesos. In order to pay for the frames, I asked for a loan in the form of a credit card from a banking institution. The following month, I paid this debt from this credit card with a different credit card solicited from a different banking institution. The month following that I did the same with yet a different credit card. I continued to repeat the transaction six different times. At the end of the seventh month, the debt circulated back to the first and original credit card.

Within the frames are the billing statements of each card, paid with the others, photocopies of the original credit cards, and the receipt of the price of the very same frames. The debt will continue to circulate through the different banking institutions until the entire piece sells for the same amount of money that the frames cost, and the debt will be paid with this money.

Artist

Máximo González

Mexico City, Mexico

Born in Argentina, and currently living and working Mexico City, González is best known for his murals and collages created from decommissioned currency. He received a Teaching Degree in Visual Arts from the Institute of Art Josefina Contte in Corrientes, Argentina and from 1992 to 1995 worked with Arte-Ahora to create murals and monuments in public spaces across Entre Ríos, Corrientes, and Formosa, Argentina. In Córdoba he established Apeyron, a center for art experimentation and research, and furthered his studies at Universidad del Sur in Buenos Aires with Mónica Girón and the art critic Julio Sánchez. Gónzalez moved to Mexico City in 2003. He has participated in more than 30 solo exhibitions of his work, including Tartar: my arm is a sling, Valle Ortí Gallery, Valencia; Something like an answer to something, Artane gallery, Istanbul; Dream at DFMC office, Chicago; Greenhouse effect at Art&Idea, Mexico City; and Thesis of the unexplainableat Cambá-Cuá Park Cultural Center, Corrientes; and his work has been included in more than 80 group exhibitions internationally. Most notably, he showed “Where have all the flowers gone?” as part of the Poetics of the handmade exhibition at MOCA Los Angeles in 2007. Along with partner Ivan Buenader, he is the co-founder of the Changarrito Project, which began as a reaction to the absence of emerging Mexican artists at ARCOmadrid 2005 in Spain. Together they have amassed a permanent collection of more than 500 works from this effort, a selection of which are on view inTransitios.

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Artist

Miguel Monroy

Mexico City, Mexico

Monroy’s practice involves sculpture, installation, video, and photography to observe the absurdity of organized systems. A Young Creators fellow of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA) program in 2003, 2007 and 2011, he is the recipient of a grant from La Colección/Fundación Jumex for his Transporte transportado artist book, which means of highlights military transport. His work has been included in solo and group exhibitions worldwide, includingCanon at Museo Experimental El Eco in Mexico City in 2012; In other words at NGBK + Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin Germany in 2012; El horizonte del topo at Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels Belgium in 2010; Aftermath at Taka Ishii Gallery in Kyoto Japan in 2010; One foot apart at Leme Gallery in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 2009; Hecho en casa at the Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City in 2009; and in Declaraciones at El Museo de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain in 2005 among others.

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Artist

Ricardo Cuevas

New York, New York, USA

Using text, books, and photography, Cuevas explores cultural identity and the potential for misunderstanding and fragmentation. He has participated in several international group exhibitions including 10 Mexican Photographers: A Select End-of-the-Century Generation (Lehigh University Art Gallery, Pennsylvania), Never Odd or Even (Marres Center for Contemporary Art, Revolver Archive F, Aktuell Kunst, Germany), Master Humprey’s Clock (Stanley Brouwn pavilion, de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, Netherlands), Das phantastische Geheimnis des exotishen Universums(Galerie Ostermeier, Berlin), and Third Guangzhou Triennial in China. In 2005 he presented Beyond Love and Democracy, a solo exhibition at Gallery 44 (Toronto). In 2007, Cuevas was awarded a residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York, NY.

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