Modern Art Oxford presents Abraham Cruzvillegas Autoconstrucción: The Optimistic Failure of a Simultaneous Promise on view 27 September–20 November 2011.
The artist is best known for his long-standing project Autoconstruccion, which takes inspiration from the eclectic and improvisatory architecture of his childhood home in the area of Pedregales de Coyoacán, Mexico City. Autoconstrucción operates as a metaphor for individual identity and the identity of a place existing in an unfinished state. Cruzvillegas’ project is informed by ideas of ‘survival economics’—how scarcity can lead to recycling and solidarity in opposition to consumption and individualism.
Over the last year, Cruzvillegas has explored aspects of Oxford and its history, including its associations with science, literature, magic, ethnography, imperialism and politics to propose works that combine aspects of the local with his highly personal and poetic visual language.
Cruzvillegas has created a series of new works for Modern Art Oxford that respond to two distinct contexts—the city of Oxford and the artist’s own personal background: The Optimistic Failure, a large-scale suspended sculpture in the form of a ‘mobile’, adorned with representations of Amazonian tsantsas (shrunken heads) made from animal dung, grass and soil collected from Port Meadow, Oxford; and The Simultaneous Promise, a mobile sculpture constructed from a tricycle and sound system that plays recordings of the artist whistling songs from his childhood and songs by current Oxford bands. These commissions are presented alongside two other new works: Blind Self Portrait as a Post-Thatcherite Deaf Lemon Head. For ‘K.M.’, in which found paper items are layered in thick monochrome paint and pinned to the Gallery walls in a geometric pattern; and Untitled Scratching Relief with Builders Groove 3, a drawing inspired by the routes taken by Cruzvillegas during his visits to Oxford incised directly onto the walls of the Gallery.
Modern Art Oxford
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Image: Abraham Cruzvillegas, “La Familia,” 2009.
Coconuts, artificial hair, steel wire and glue.
Image courtesy of kurimanzutto