AMOA-Arthouse in Austin presents Jill Magid. Failed States an exhibition on view January 14–March 4, 2012.

Jill Magid, Fausto’s parking space (site for “Failed States”), 2011. Dimensions variable.

Courtesy of the artist and Yvon Lambert, Paris.On January 21, 2010, 24-year-old Fausto Cardenas fired six shots from a small caliber handgun into the air from the steps of the Texas State Capitol, blocks from the site of this exhibition. Fausto’s motivations still remain unknown. Coincidentally, Jill Magid was present as a witness. Failed States is the artist’s exploration of coincidence, poetics, government power and bureaucracy. Magid draws connections between Fausto’s futile and tragic act and Goethe’s nineteenth-century epic poem, Faust. Magid mines Faust for thematic connections and develops a means of performative exhibition, treating the gallery as a stage to be studied. The artist’s first presentation in Texas includes text-based pieces, sculpture containing evidence from the shooting, photographs and offsite pieces in the form of her armored Mercedes station wagon and a published work in the political magazine The Texas Observer.

AMOA-Arthouse
The Jones Center
700 Congress Avenue
Austin, TX 78701
512.453.5312
www.arthousetexas.org
www.amoa.org

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2. Arthouse Opens at the Jones Center
3. Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego Announces Jill Dawsey as Associate Curator