Join us at Watershed Art & Ecology on Saturday, May 16, 4-8pm
or on Saturday, May 23, 4-8pm
for a selection of artworks in a highly unusual atmosphere
In the first pages of his memoirs, Giorgio de Chirico recalls his earliest artistic compulsion: to copy images. He describes, in detail, the almost theological demand that images place on us—to be replicated—conscripting the artist as another instrument of multiplication, animation, and propagation. This was, in his words, the first claim of the demon of art.
The artists in this show are, in one way or another, precisely such replicators, agents captured by a daimonic program to ingest and vomit the present, whether through images, objects, or sound. From the implacable hand of Cecilia Beaven, registering the minutiae of her life and dreams; to de Chaunac’s attention to spiritual markers in the reconfiguration of destiny; Faridani’s inventory of nuclear fears—on acid; García’s sonic invocations of a terrifying Cotard Syndrome that seems to capture our digital zeitgeist; Gaynor’s obsession with the logic and aesthetics of capitalist power; Lindgren’s unwavering replication of the monsters and hybrids of popular culture; Taymani’s gravitational pull towards found objects that resonate with his sculptural pursuits; and Vazquez’s ethereal depictions of world-ending moments—the practices gathered here offer a glimpse into the visceral potentials of art-making as a form of brutal, almost annihilating attention to the nightmares we inhabit.
Within our atmosphere of suffocating confusion, let us offer you some more.
Curated by Alberto Ortega Trejo
Exhibition environment by PDA (Public Display of Architecture)
Participating artists:
Cecilia Beaven, Mexico, 1986
Alexis de Chaunac, USA, 1991
Guillermo Canek Garcia, Mexico, 1987
Ilona Gaynor, United Kingdom, 1986
Maryam Faridani, Iran, 1993
Julián Lindgren, El Salvador, 2011
José Taymani, Mexico, 1998
Isaac Vazquez, USA, 1998