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MORIS El fuego nos quemará a todos, ja ja ja ja, 2011
Oil on canvas 90 x 70 inches
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Honor Fraser is pleased to present COLECTIVA, a group exhibition curated by Yoshua Okón and Esthella Provas.
An opening reception will be held Saturday, May 21, from 6 to 8pm and the exhibition will run through July 9.
COLECTIVA is an exhibition of different works made by a heterogeneous group of artists who all work within specific contexts. There is no consideration for a theme nor an intention to weave any connections amongst the works. Instead, the focus is on the artists who have developed very singular approaches to their art-making practices. These approaches, in some ways, are the result of challenges encountered when dealing with specific circumstances, methodologies slowly developed as part of processes, which resulted in the creation of new and personal languages. What brings this group together is that they are all immersed in deep dialogues with incredibly specific elements, circumstances and locations, whether in the rotation of the whole planet, as in Monica Espinoza's Night Falls, or the loneliness of a cell, as in Antonio Vega Macotela's work from his Time Divisa series.
Edgardo Aragón makes very poetic videos performed by his younger brothers and cousins. Family Effects is a series of videos in which children learn through recreation, rituals and games, of the family's past affiliations with organized crime and politics.
Paola Cabrera's video animation is a collaboration with a group of five-year-old children who describe a robbery at an arms store.
Gilberto Esparza's current work analyzes technology and its effects on the urban environment. Technology permeates everyday life as it creates new social, economic and political frontiers, designs things to become obsolete, perpetuates the creation of new needs and the deliberate consumption of energy and resources, and transforms the urban landscape.
Monica Espinoza's project, Night Falls, is comprised of the audio recording of the artist's calls around the globe to say good night to randomly chosen homes in their respective languages and time zones, as well as an image of the map of the earth tracing her phone calls.
Adriana Lara's slide series consists of photos taken at the planetarium in Mexico City. Her practice de-emphasizes object making in favor of a conceptual reimagining of artistic production and the exhibition space. Lara playfully turns her attention to artistic models in order to set up problems or situations that inspire reflection and contemplation in the viewer.
Moris's canvas floor installation was designed specifically for COLECTIVA. The silkscreened text will become visible as it collects dirt form the soles of the shoes of visitors to the gallery.
Daniela Ortiz's work appropriates a series of drawings made by the FBI in 1968 for a Black Panther Coloring Book that was distributed in primarily white, middle-class neighborhoods. The book, which featured black men and children killing pigs dressed as police officers, was made by the FBI to discredit the Black Panther organization. Ortiz recreates the actions of the FBI by printing and distributing copies of the Black Panther's coloring book within the middle-class neighborhood of Culver City. The original text has been replaced by text in Arabic explaining the true origins of the book.
Ivan Puig's video installation Opinion Leader is a study of the mass media, specifically televised news and its role in the creation of public opinion. It is an investigation of the employment of image as a tool for validating discourse. In the installation, broadcast news made up of various sequences changes its discourse, imparting news that is diametrically opposed, using over and over the same images to illustrate it. While all the images are produced in real time, behind the scenes are a series of mock-ups designed to deceive the spectator.
Antonio Vega Macotela's Time Divisa is a project that explores the possibility of replacing money with a time sharing system. Vega Macotela orchestrated individual time exchanges with 365 inmates at the Santa Martha Acatila prison in Mexico City. The work to be exhibited resulted from an exchange with an inmate who requested that Vega Macotela search for his son. In return, the inmate mapped his section of the prison and documented his movement throughout as requested by the artist.
CURATORS
Yoshua Okón was born in Mexico City in 1970 where he lives and works. His work is like a series of near-sociological experiments executed for the camera and blends staged situations, documentation and improvisation and questions habitual perceptions of reality and truth, selfhood and morality. In 2002 he received an MFA from UCLA with a Fulbright scholarship. In 1994, he founded La Panadería, an artist-run space in Mexico City. His solo-exhibitions include: HH, Baró, Sau Paulo, Brazil, Yoshua Okón: 2007-2010, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, Ventanilla Única, Museo Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, Canned Laughter, Viafarini, Milan, SUBTITLED, Städtische Kunsthalle, Munich, Bocanegra, The Project, NY, Gaza Stripper, Herzeliya Museum, Israel, Cockfight, Galleria Francesca Kaufmann, Milan, Oríllese a la Orilla, Art & Public, Geneva. His group exhibitions include: Amateurs, CCA Wattis, San Francisco, Laughing in a Foreign Language, Hayward Gallery, London, The Age of Discrepancy, MUCA, Mexico City, Adaptive Behavior, New Museum, NY, Terror Chic, Spruth/Magers, Munich, The Virgin Show, Wrong Gallery, NY, Mexico City: an exhibition about the exchange rates between bodies and values, PS1, MoMA, NY, and Kunstwerke, Berlin. He has also participated in: Mercosur Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil, Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, ICP Triennial, NY, California Biennial, OCMA, Newport Beach and Torino Triennale, Turin.
Esthella Provas has played a number of key roles in the contemporary art world for the past twenty years, including her current position as president and principal art advisor of Esthella Provas & Associates. She served as director/co-owner along with Eugenio Lopez of Chac Mool, a contemporary art gallery active for twelve years in Los Angeles. Provas also played a pivotal role in establishing The Jumex Foundation for Lopez, one of the largest, most comprehensive, art collections and privately owned museums in the world and continues to assist Lopez in procuring work for The Jumex Collection as a chief advisor. Among her philanthropic projects she has served on the boards of the American Cancer Society and Project Angel Food, and founded Angel Art, an auction benefitting Project Angel Food and held annually at CAA's corporate offices. Provas is also a co-founder of the Latin American International Art Council for MOCA. She currently acts as a Development Consultant for LACMA's Latin American Initiatives, is on the Modern and Contemporary Art Council, and is a member of their Directors Circle. In addition to her involvement in the institutional world, Provas is the Chair of LAXART's Public Art Initiatives producers council and is on the board of directors of LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division).
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