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30/4/2004

Daniel Guzman

Lombard Freid Projects, New York

OR LIKE A VINYL RECORD, TWO SIDES OF THE SAME THING.

SIDE A: Thieves Like Us @ Lombard-Freid Fine Arts, May 1–June 5, 2004
SIDE B: NY GROOVE @ TRANS>area, May 1–June 30, 2004

SIDE A: THIEVES LIKE US

A few blocks from my house, near the populous Mexico City neighborhood of Tacuba, is Cuitlahuac subway station. This station is surrounded by stalls that offer an array of articles to the subway users and passers by. Most of these bargains are illegal or pirate versions of beauty products, clothes, books, recorded music, stereos and video equipment.

The practice of audio and video piracy has spread out in a prodigious way amongst people of low income, who survive on these types of informal urban economies.

The illegality in this activity gives ROCK music lovers the chance to find really interesting material on CD or DVD in amongst these street stalls. For instance, it is the pirates who actually make CD reissues of old and out of print vinyl LPs that the legal market has ceased to release, and likewise they produce their own anthologies and bootleg live recordings of bands and solo acts, old and new, and offer their product way below half of its expected price.

This mercantile and economic chaos has given my work the possibility of appropriation and reinterpretation of the ROCK music commodity. Following the ways of these pirates, I have allowed myself to change the images and content of their very products, to fit them to the aesthetic concerns of my drawings, sculptures and videos.

SIDE B: NY GROOVE

Going out for a walk downtown, or better still, dancing around my city, performing a choreography in the midst of chaos, practicing some happy steps, with lightness and a rocker feel, letting the body react to the music, not without a tinge of nostalgia, making my way through the people, the stalls and street sellers, immersed in the urban noise during this rehearsal for the body and soul.

And while we dance here and now, I remember a time when rock music was generous, maybe a bit more naive, but surely more amusing than the impersonal corporate monster it has become. So many bands, ghosts on stage, and possibilities now lost in the musical mainstream, one more spot on the urban floor..whatever …that is what my little old selective memory makes me believe as I remember those sessions listening to the BEATLES, GRAND FUNK RAILROAD, DEEP PURPLE, LED ZEPELLIN, KISS, and other great bands at a friend’s house, while growing up in a working class neighborhood of Mexico City. Colonia Doctores: that is where these visions, music and urban popular culture that I now carry around, stuck to me with their beliefs and affections, so that now they might spout again in the middle of this dog dance, and take shape from within my memory and love for the noise of those electric guitars, drums and bass guitars as they synchronize here and now, in my city, with my friends, out on the streets.

Opening Reception for both exhibitions,
Wednesday, May 5, 2004, 6–8pm

Lombard-Fried Fine Arts
531 west 26th street
new york ny 10001
ph: 1+ 212 967 8040

TRANS>area
511 West 25th Street, No. 502, NY 10001
New York

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