Theodore Darst‘s recent Earth.Art. and Inversions videos are being curated by Nate Hitchcock of open source exhibition site Apache Projects. He’s a member of the Eternal Internet Brotherhood, that communed and produced work from its recent location in the surrealist gardens of Mexico’s Las Posas from Sunday, April 9 to Saturday, April 15.
The annual communion of artists, writers and curators, begun last year on the mythical Greek island of Anafi, unifies the “creative offline and metaphysical online” and this year channels the Aztecs in its holistic approach to artistic disciplines and concepts. Where Darst’s animated 3D models in Earth.Art. were introduced into natural landscapes, Inversions takes that footage and reconfigures it into new models, to be projected onto surfaces in the surrealist gardens of Las Pozas. **
Manuel Álvarez Bravo is one of the missing myths in the history of photography, often analyzed from the condescending occidental point of view he merits and deserves new analyses…
And Jeu de Paume’s new exhibition is willing to take a fresh new look into his photography, that of the Mexican culture in the 20th century, that of its society and the profound transformations this country has experienced in over 8 decades… from the revolution of the 1910s to the 90s, from the emergence of the postrevolutionary & cosmopolitan culture to the digital age.
With deep local & popular Mexican roots but always with a modern eye his works are individual and autonomous pieces of poetry. Very influenced by cinema his photographic series could be understood as a research work, always willing to conceive photography as an art filled with questions around the image vs language relationship.
An exhibition which is willing to give a new image to the artist by presenting a selection of his most well-known images & also some new material (Polaroids & experimental films) from the 60s. A look into some unknown aspects of his photography which funnily enough are extremely pertinent and contemporary nowadays.
Structured around 8 themes we’ll get an in-depth look through 152 prints and five 8mm and super-8 film montages as well as many documents from the personal archives of the photographer which will allow the viewer to understand the facets of his professional life.
The Chaplin latino… whose verbosity always exasperated the foremen and dictators of the latin world. It was a day like today Mario Moreno “Cantinflas” was born in the Mexican capital of DF. Celebrated as a touchstone of Mexican national identity the droopy-pants character is now an omnipresent image across the Mexican capital.
Cantinflas is the essence of Mexico (or has been for a long time). His “peladito” character puts voice and image to all those Mexicans who tried to survive in the streets with some craftiness and a lot of humor (“there must be something wrong with work, or rich people would already be all over it” he used to say).
He was the best example of the American (in this case Mexican) dream. From a very humble and large family (12 brothers) from the even poorer Tepito neighborhood, Mario used to work at the circus being young without telling his parents. He also tried luck with boxing and bull-fighting before becoming the international figure (with a respectable fortune) he became in the 40s & 50s.
Fortino Mario Alfonso Moreno Reyes
So in his birth centenary you can imagine what’s like in Mexico these days…. with a just published biography and many other books about to be released…. rumors about a 3D version of his Oscar-winning “Around the world in 80 days“, another movie about his life, animated series….
He’s back from the death… and you know how Mexicans love that. Cantinflas himself, left himself a message for his own graveyard… “It looks like he’s gone, but not really”.
Most of his movies can be found on-line (youtube) and accessible via this facebook page.
Carlos Alvarez Montero photographs the people of Jacona (Michoacán), Mexico. In this town veterans like Jimmy “EL PINTO” lopez were pioneers in going to LA, there they became gang members. When coming back to Mexico they adapted those values gained of the “other side” to their homeland.
Carlos Álvarez was born and raised in Mexico City and now lives and works in New York and Mexico City. His work focuses on the relationship between appearance and the creation of identity. He believes that you must judge a book by its cover since it’s there that you can find hints of what’s in the mind of a person. His work has been published in Time Magazine, Newsweek, The Fader, Vice, Picnic Magazine, and Neo2.
