"Thus Passes the Glory of the World" Exhibition
Newman Popiashvili Gallery
This event has ended.
Newman Popiashvili Gallery presents Artemio and Ruben Gutierrez in their two-person show in New York. The Latin title of the show "Thus passes the glory of the world" is a quote used in a papal coronation, served as a reminder of the transitory nature of life and earthly honors. Both Artemio and Ruben Gutierrez approach evil, corruption, power and entertainment in today’s Mexican society with the strategy of humor and parody. Using appropriation they have developed a group of works that comment on the overdose of mass media and desensitization to the brutality of the everyday violence in Mexico.
For the exhibition the artists created a mural of a post apocalyptic landscape that is comprised of different film stills. The video included in the show is titled From A to B, which the artists refer to as the Citizen Kane of video art. The video, 120 minutes long, is composed of small bits taken from different films. The result is 120 loops of very short scenes that feels like a hypnotic bombardment of retinal and sonic repetitions. Four prints of stills from apocalyptic movies are also included in the show. The images of the guns in Artemio’s work evoke the familiar icons of urban brutality, specifically the guns used in much of the drug related violence happening throughout Mexico and the United States. The imagery is employed in Artemio's work in a repetitive and ironically decorative manner, undermines the individual symbolism of the objects and creates a number of social critiques in the placement and design of the guns.
By presenting resin sculptures of AK47s decorated with traditional Huichol bead work, Mexico City-based artist Artemio is continuing the thread of imagery that he started last year when he produced a site-specific installation of custom ceramic tiles with AK47 as a mandala in the lobby of the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles. This project was done with LAND - Los Angeles Nomadic Division - concurrent with the artist solo exhibition ChakrAK-47 at LA>
Ruben Gutierrez is a Monterrey based artist. He is a founder of ObjectNotFound.org an independent non-profit Contemporary Art Space in Monterrey, Mexico. He has exhibited at Galeria Yautepec, Enrique Guerrero and La Panaderia among others. Artemio currently lives and works in Mexico City.
Artemio aka The Mexican Contemporary Art Rolls Royce. Is a multimedia artist whose practice spans video, sculpture, installation and painting. Through the appropriation and reinterpretation of diverse elements and icons, he juxtapose a wide range of concepts, politics, power structures and irony are his main topics. Over the last two years alone, he has had individual exhibitions in Bogota, Lima, Mexico City, Guadalajara, New York, and London, and his work has been featured in group exhibitions in Moscow, Sydney, Havana, Miami, and Seoul.Media
Schedule
from March 04, 2011 to April 02, 2011
Opening Reception on 2011-03-04 from 18:00 to 20:00