🌎 ESPAÑOL // ENGLISH
Curated by John Connor (2017)
John Connor (United States, 1985–2032) is the leader of “The Resistance,” an opposition group against the empire of machines, as well as an independent curator. His research interests include Judgment Day, the aesthetics of ruins, and music for plants and flowers. Connor works from post-apocalyptic scenarios in order to generate dialogues between archaeological relics and rubble. With the possibility of time travel, his proposals include vestiges of present-day life transported from distant futures.
Curated by John Connor is the first installment in a series of interventions organized by Guadalajara 90210. The initiative “12 Modern Theories in the Neighborhood” consists of occupying a building under renovation with projects that respond and adapt to the space and to its dynamics of transformation throughout the construction process.
For the initial theory, Juan Caloca, Alejandro García Contreras, and Marco Rountree worked with the precariousness of construction sites and with the ways workers inhabit the space: among makeshift charcoal kitchens, Styrofoam beds, and fragile staircases. Whoever visits the building is aware that they are entering the leftovers of war, where one might die by falling into a trench while trying to cross a makeshift bridge of rotten wood. And if it rains, the risk is much greater. That is why one must entrust oneself to Our Lady of Concrete, at the altar located at the entrance of the exhibition.
On the ground floor, from the archaeological excavation area, one has a general perspective of the building’s marrow: the scaffolding supporting each floor is painted yellow and different shades of green, clashing with the earth-toned palette of the ruins. The blocks of color are consistent with the two-dimensional works found in the access corridor, images intervened with spray paint. Characteristic of Rountree’s recent work, these red, green, blue, and yellow solids are also present in a pair of chairs assembled from marble slabs and metalwork.
Then one must follow the music up to the first floor and look toward the ceiling, where a video of the Mexican army in formation is projected. A group of soldiers with heads made of Chiapas flowers march to the rhythm of Plantasia, an album of melodies intended to help plants grow. The video is a collaboration among the three artists and functions as a premonition of what the project is about: flora, machines, war, apocalypse.
From this floor, the sun rises and extends throughout the building. It is a golden circle traversing and connecting three levels through openings in the ceilings/floors, resisting sunset. It also accompanies the Mexican flag that seems to have bounced against the walls in order to reach the upper level and exit through an opening that was once a window, leaving behind the trail of a decomposed flagpole. Both are interventions by Caloca.
Throughout the remaining levels, a series of sculptural assemblages are presented, though they resemble archaeological artifacts recovered from our era. They are the ruins of the concrete age, vestiges brought from the future that allow us to understand the inhabitants of the twenty-first century: the Sword of Omens, a cast shaped like a box cutter, sculptures in the form of shoes, and busts with telephone-wire hair. It is possible to distinguish García Contreras’s pieces from the rubble and construction materials, although it is not entirely necessary.
Guadalajara 90210 is an initiative by Marco Rountree that began in February of that year and emerged through collaborations between artists and curators seeking unconventional spaces to self-manage and present projects. Its main headquarters is an apartment in the Lafayette neighborhood of Guadalajara, functioning as a space for temporary exhibitions and residencies. For “12 Modern Theories in the Neighborhood,” support was provided by architect Kristo Eklemes, who was in charge of the renovation of the building located at Fermín Riestra 1699, in the Moderna neighborhood.