Éramos felices y no lo sabíamos

Gabriel Kuri works by reflecting on objects that measure human relations with one another, with their environment, and with the markets of exchange. The four wall hangings that comprise his work Gobelino políptico franja magenta (aeropuerto) turn the lens to the waste products of human interactions through the reproduction of till receipts. Manufactured using a traditional weaving style from Guadalajara by a team of weavers, Kuri’s hangings raise questions about consumerism, immediacy and temporality by means of the reinvention of mundane objects that become representative symbols of the interactions that define the culture of consumption.

In the early 2000s, Laureana Toledo was working on a number of photographic works that questioned the concept of inhabiting a space. Her projects generated questions around how spaces are occupied when we disregard architecture and functionality.

This work is a time-lapse of the Presidente Miguel Alemán housing complex located in the south of Mexico City, built between 1947-1949. The architect was Mario Pani, who was strongly influenced by the functionalist model of Le Corbusier. In the artist’s own words the piece is: ‘A static shot showing a frame into which life enters. People begin to occupy the space and to make it human. Questions arise beyond that of the perfect photo, for example, “where do I hang out the clothes”. When it comes to making a time-lapse, the image of the building and the shadows it creates as the sun goes down are very pretty. But this perfect frame is muddied: living means throwing things away, the things you leave behind you, mess, the space never looks like it does in architectural photography. I was interested in breaking that perfection.’

Iñaki Bonillas is an artist who always works with images, yet he is not a photographer. Rather, the artist is an avid collector of images, which he continually reinterprets, reprints, cuts and reappropriates as part of his process. The image that lies at the origin of this work is L’Étoile de mer (The Sea Star) from the surrealist film by Man Ray.

The solarization was accidentally created by the artist Lee Miller in Man Ray’s laboratory. The effect is usually the result of accidentally exposing a plate or film to the light during the developing process. Ray perfected and added effects to the solarization process. Much later, Bonillas joins the list of collaborators on the work (Ray and Miller) and takes as a starting point a still from this film, in which Ray places a crystal in the camera lens, causing the image to no longer be merely cinematographic but more pictorial, thanks to the distortion. On the basis of this still, Bonillas creates a reproduction using some of the solarization techniques employed by Man Ray. Subsequently, the artist invited a draughtsman to reproduce the still images as many as 16 times. By the end of the process the mark that is left resembles – a little – a sea star.

Abraham Cruzvillegas uses the word ‘self-building’ – the process of collaborative construction of improvised homes using recycled or recovered materials – as one of the reference points for his artistic practice. His work has expanded on the term, by employing found objects to produce artworks that transform these basic elements and reflect on the nature of cooperation, exchange, and survival. Haussmannian Leftovers: Richard Lenoir is a mural sculpture comprised of wooden fruit and vegetable crates from the farmers’ market held on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir in Paris. By painting their bottoms black and arranging them in a grid pattern, Cruzvillegas simultaneously alludes to the urban street layout (of Paris as much as Mexico City) and to the language of minimalism.

The Moby Dick performance is an action which sees the artist attempt to tame the car in a similar manner to Melville’s white whale. The struggle makes reference to the mythologies of man against nature, of the prodigal son and similar narratives of the hero in the context of a contemporary urban hunt. In parallel, the musicians play the legendary drum solo by John Bonham as an accompaniment and aural text. The artist seems to find a historical continuity between his singular vision of contemporary mythology and the search for a cosmic identity to transform it into a manifestation of human culture.

This installation is a purpose-built garden for the space it inhabits. The garden placed on a mobile platform comprises living ornamental plants. The work presents itself as something almost impossible, given the demands of any plant or garden: water and sunlight. Portable Garden moves between artifice and the absurd. This indoor garden is subordinated to human whims, just like the natural world is.

The documentation of the work sets out how the artist acquired permission from a company to borrow the truck-trailer, without concealing the purposes it would be used for. Nor did the driver have any problem when he was asked to block all three lateral lanes of the Periférico ring road in the south of Mexico City for a period of five minutes, causing a major traffic jam and countless insults.

Francis Alÿs is an inescapable reference point for Mexican art, having lived and worked in Mexico for over 30 years. After studying architecture, he moved to Mexico City to support local non-governmental organizations providing support to citizens in the wake of the devastating 1985 earthquake. Disconcerted by the inexplicable idiosyncrasies that he observed about life in the city’s historic centre, he began to carry out absurd actions such as gazing at the sky until people around him began to imitate him, or pushing a large block of ice through the streets until it melted completely. These actions offered a means for Alÿs to explore the streets and neighbourhoods and to reflect on certain sociocultural markers that are prevalent in the metropolis.

This series of clippings deals with the collision and alteration of diverse iconographic elements, partly derived from aviation, with a great formal diversity and strong sense of humour. The works are characterized by a strange tension between the form (bright and playful) and the content (often dark and traumatic events, from tsunamis to airplane crashes).

‘I produced this piece while I was on a residency in New York. I went into a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown at a time when they weren’t serving food. They were shelling peas. I asked them if they could give me a couple of glasses of water and then with my camera, my tripod and the two glasses of water I began to turn the Lazy Susan on the table. So while they were shelling their mountain of peas (which I’d have loved to film, but I was too embarrassed) I turned the Lazy Susan. One action corresponded to another.

I filmed for about an hour and then I edited the video together with Rafa Ortega and added the song ‘I’ll Never Fall in Love Again’ by Burt Bacharach to it, so the video became this eternal loop with a pop song in the background. It’s funny, because the song is the kind of pop song about falling in and out of love, which is a theme that my work always touches on. It’s a piece that speaks, that has something really crazy about, really wild.’

Jerónimo López Ramírez, better known as Dr. Lakra, creates irreverent and provocative images that transgress the established norms and takes the viewer to the limit between attraction and repulsion. His work is noted for his painted or drawn interventions on posters, erotic magazines and postcards, and expands to include tattoos, mural painting, collage and sculpture. Through these different media, Lakra explores his interest in anthropology and ethnography, which he uses to document his fascination with taboos, fetishes, myths and rituals from different cultures.

With his photographs, Gabriel Orozco offers a reflection on objects and materials, both organic and inorganic, found or manipulated by the artist. Orozco began to take photographs as a form of visual note-taking and a medium for documenting the ephemeral arrangements of objects encountered in the course of his walks through cities around the world. ‘For me, photography is more than a window; it is more like a space that attempts to capture situations. It serves to take notes. I use the camera like a drawing.’ The artist transforms the ordinary by simply giving a title to an apparently banal image, thereby altering the perception of everydayness offered by the objects he comes across in a haphazard manner.

Spiral City is a film that offers a response to Robert Smithson’s iconic work Spiral Jetty. While in Smithson’s film the camera follows the movement of the artist around the length of the spiral while it is under construction, Spiral City plays with its counterpoint in the grid pattern of Mexico City, working with the ascending movement of the camera that flies in ever-larger spirals. The film is a testimony to a city that is subject to deterioration, with structures built one on top of the other and collapse, as well as being a disturbing cartography of the future. This project is also composed of photographs and paintings that when juxtaposed articulate a document about an apparently unlimited urban expansion, where the abstract contemplation of the mass is inseparable from its social experience.

The artist recounts in a recent interview: ‘I recorded it at home, well, at my parents’ house. They never knew. I don’t even remember what happened. It was erased from my memory. It lasts 40-something minutes and I fall over… The climax is when I fall over and fall asleep… Then you can see that I get up. I switch off the light, not the camera. I woke up on a chair in a bedroom. The camera carried on recording until the tape ran out.’ This video work, she explains, is really a sculpture, in which her body stands in for the material volume. She sought to change the weight of her body by altering her conscious state. In this way, her movements change, as she becomes unable to stand up, she sways, falls over, gives way. She continues: ‘How do you do something like this? Well, by getting intoxicated. You transform yourself, it was a situation that couldn’t be faked.’

While she drank half a bottle of tequila, the artist wrote different phrases on sheets of paper, like: ‘I drink to remember, I’m not drunk. I drink to forget, I’m not drunk.’ The adjectives used have masculine endings in the Spanish. A drunk woman is judged differently to a drunk man, so the artist wanted to atone for this moral judgment.