DaWire

Anri Sala, Intallation View

As I walked into the interior patio that gives way to the gallery space, I came across an old barrel organ player. At times considered ancient technology, the instrument’s surfaces were scared by the passing of time, but its pipes could still harmonize tunes. On its sides, the barrel organ player had a series of keys. I proceeded to play the keys on the barrel organ. A gallery attendant -possibly disrupted by my melody- approached me to teach me how to play the instrument. He explained that the keys were the invitations of the art exhibition I came to see. The keys were left behind the night of the opening, when guests had the opportunity to play their invitations in the order they pleased. Suddenly, I recognized a familiar disrupted song. This is how I began the process of engaging with Anri Sala’s first solo show at the Kurimanzutto Gallery in Mexico City, by playing The Clash’s Should I Stay of Should I Go, which echoes throughout the gallery space and in other places in the city intervened by Sala as part of the exhibition.[...]

Risk and Tension. It seems that Alejandro Almanza likes to keep viewers on their toes. Working mostly with construction materials and domestic interiors, Almanza creates situations of stress through sculpture and installations; a house of cards that precariously threatens to fall or break. Danger seems to be a constant in his work, as well as the exploration of materials and our perceptions of them. How can a set of light bulbs hold a cinderblock? Through his work we realize that the most fragile materials, can also be the strongest ones. [...]

Tania Candiani, Protection Helmets, Confronted, 2004

Tania Candiani & Regina José Galindo, Battleground, Live performance and streaming, El Paso, Texas, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua

Tania Candiani reveals and confronts head-on in her work the pressures that women face in society, the insistence on being stick thing, crazy fad diets and a combination of junk-food ad wars and fitness fanaticism, and much like a warrior, uses everything that is most typically associated with conventional women’s ‘work’, from cooking utensils to needle and thread, to address it. In all this, the body is the main subject that allows her to call these issues into attention, that although considered somewhat trite, still concern women today.[...]

The saying goes that ‘the 30′s are the new 20′s’ and if we consider this in light of ARCO’s 30th anniversary this year, we find that the Madrid-based fair is as youthful as ever. After last year’s controversial edition (many galleries boycotted the fair due to its unbridled growth), ARCO seems to have regained its old-time mystique. Stricter parameters for the fair’s gallery program translated to more spacious stands, a more relaxed viewing experience and reportedly more sales.[...]