Mauricio Guillén
19 Jan - 08 Mar 2008
MAURICIO GUILLÉN
Martes
When Diogenes the Cynic was asked where he was from, he responded: "I am a citizen of the world." This oft-cited notion from the dawn of Western philosophy has fashioned our understanding of cosmopolitanism ever since. The idea of a global city and the development of "cosmopolitics" have had profound implications for contemporary art practice, wherein, nevertheless, we can also find local issues reflected in global concerns.
Cosmopolitanism attacks the presumed "naturalness" of borders, encouraging a detachment from all manner of constraining identities and entities (such as the political Right or fundamentalisms); cosmopolitanism is skeptical of absolutes, of insularity, it recoils from the impositions of purity. The cosmopolitan is ever curious; she or he seeks out what lies beyond borders, and what runs into the unknown. He or she is on a journey of discovery in her or his own world and in the worlds of others, compiling impressions along the way and attempting to incorporate this diversity of the world into her or his world-vision and understanding. At the root of the cosmopolitan's longing and unease one finds a resistance to being limited by circumstance: the "incidental" place of one's birth, or of one's residence, should not dictate one's entire existence. We are, always, more than that.
Mauricio Guillén (Mexico City, 1971) –who has spent the past sixteen years outside of Mexico – continues with Martes (Tuesday) his investigation into the sensory and political traces of a wide range of places and contexts. For its part, this body of work makes palpable the longing of the cosmopolitan, as well as a subtle melancholy nourished by nostalgia for home, not as a physical location, but rather as a metaphysical entity. Forever Tuesday could be considered a poetic example of such concerns. One of the gallery's halls, normally filled with daylight, has been darkened completely in order to facilitate the recreation and perpetuation of a single moment: a London Tuesday on which the grayish atmosphere so characteristic of the city is punctured by a momentary burst of sunlight. This yearning for the lost presence of the sun runs throughout other works such as the series Bilocación (Bilocation), in which the rain of one place washes away the desire to be in another.
Among the works on display is Ubicación e influencia (Ubication and influence), which features a compass that misidentifies North and which, thanks to the presence of a magnet, can be induced to point in any direction. The video Alientos (Breaths) shows a panorama of a city whose locality and points of reference are diluted by a soundtrack that includes a multiplicity of voices speaking a number of different languages. How do we know where we are when we can't rely on any points of reference to locate ourselves?
In theory, cosmopolitanism tells us that we are not only the product of our conditions, circumstances, and constant migrations; but confronted with a gamut of possible identities, which one is our own? It seems like a compass searching North and finding South.
Martes
When Diogenes the Cynic was asked where he was from, he responded: "I am a citizen of the world." This oft-cited notion from the dawn of Western philosophy has fashioned our understanding of cosmopolitanism ever since. The idea of a global city and the development of "cosmopolitics" have had profound implications for contemporary art practice, wherein, nevertheless, we can also find local issues reflected in global concerns.
Cosmopolitanism attacks the presumed "naturalness" of borders, encouraging a detachment from all manner of constraining identities and entities (such as the political Right or fundamentalisms); cosmopolitanism is skeptical of absolutes, of insularity, it recoils from the impositions of purity. The cosmopolitan is ever curious; she or he seeks out what lies beyond borders, and what runs into the unknown. He or she is on a journey of discovery in her or his own world and in the worlds of others, compiling impressions along the way and attempting to incorporate this diversity of the world into her or his world-vision and understanding. At the root of the cosmopolitan's longing and unease one finds a resistance to being limited by circumstance: the "incidental" place of one's birth, or of one's residence, should not dictate one's entire existence. We are, always, more than that.
Mauricio Guillén (Mexico City, 1971) –who has spent the past sixteen years outside of Mexico – continues with Martes (Tuesday) his investigation into the sensory and political traces of a wide range of places and contexts. For its part, this body of work makes palpable the longing of the cosmopolitan, as well as a subtle melancholy nourished by nostalgia for home, not as a physical location, but rather as a metaphysical entity. Forever Tuesday could be considered a poetic example of such concerns. One of the gallery's halls, normally filled with daylight, has been darkened completely in order to facilitate the recreation and perpetuation of a single moment: a London Tuesday on which the grayish atmosphere so characteristic of the city is punctured by a momentary burst of sunlight. This yearning for the lost presence of the sun runs throughout other works such as the series Bilocación (Bilocation), in which the rain of one place washes away the desire to be in another.
Among the works on display is Ubicación e influencia (Ubication and influence), which features a compass that misidentifies North and which, thanks to the presence of a magnet, can be induced to point in any direction. The video Alientos (Breaths) shows a panorama of a city whose locality and points of reference are diluted by a soundtrack that includes a multiplicity of voices speaking a number of different languages. How do we know where we are when we can't rely on any points of reference to locate ourselves?
In theory, cosmopolitanism tells us that we are not only the product of our conditions, circumstances, and constant migrations; but confronted with a gamut of possible identities, which one is our own? It seems like a compass searching North and finding South.