Fax

Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City

Fax invites artists, architects, designers, scientists, and filmmakers to think of the fax machine as a drawing tool. Nearly 100 works were sent to the initial showing of FAX at The Drawing Center forming the core of the exhibition. These include new pieces by an intergenerational group of artists as well as seminal examples of early fax art. The show also includes from a leading cognitive scientist, a theoretical physicist working on making time travel possible, and a renowned information designer, among others.

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Curated by João Ribas
Co-organized by iCI (Independent Curators International), New York and The Drawing Center, New York

For many years now artists have readily exploited the immediate, graphic, and interactive character of facsimiles, making the fax an important part of the history of media art, nestled between the legacy of Fluxus and the nascent practices of new media. How do artists see the potential of fax transmission today?

Now that the fax machine is a somewhat obsolete technology it can be repositioned as a tool for producing and conveying information that is intrinsically defined by the mode of transmission. Furthermore, the reproducible, generative, yet erratic production via the fax machine displaces traditional notions of “the hand” which are still commonly associated with the medium of drawing.

FAX invites artists, architects, designers, scientists, and filmmakers to think of the fax machine as a drawing tool. Nearly 100 works were sent to the initial showing of FAX at The Drawing Center forming the core of the exhibition. These include new pieces by an intergenerational group of artists such as Dan Graham, Seth Price, Wade Guyton, Liz Deschenes, Barbara Bloom, and Tauba Auerbach, as well as seminal examples of early fax art by Stan VanDerBeek, Marisa Gonsalez, Sonia Sheridan, Roy Ascott, Zoe Keramea, and Eduardo Kac.

The show also includes contributions from not only visual artists, but from a leading cognitive scientist, a theoretical physicist working on making time travel possible, and a renowned information designer, among others. Participants submitted faxes throughout the duration of the presentation, using a specially-designed cover sheet by Dexter Sinister. These submissions—arriving in the exhibition space via The Drawing Centerʼs working fax line—included drawings and texts, as well as errors of transmission and the inevitable junk faxes. All the transmitted pages were archived or displayed together with the active fax machine. Visitors were able to view selected fax projects pinned up to the walls and flip through archival binders to see over 400 pages of works.

For the FAX world tour, which will appear simultaneously at venues all over the world, each participating institution is encouraged to invite up to twenty additional artists to submit works, which will then be archived with The Drawing Centerʼs collection to create an evolving document of all participants. The curators at each institution are free to decide how the works get displayed on the walls and can rotate the installation throughout their presentations. The result— an ongoing cumulative project—is an exhibition concerned with ideas of reproduction, obsolescence, distribution, and mediation.

FAX tour instructions to artists: Participants are invited to transmit fax- based work of up to five pages, either as one work, a composite or “tile‚” or transmitted over time, via the museum's working fax line throughout the duration of the exhibition. A fax cover sheet will be provided. At the curator's discretion, some faxes may be pinned on the wall as well as those displayed in binders along with the fax machine.

About the guest curator, João Ribas:
João Ribas is curator at The Drawing Center in New York and a widely published art critic. Among his recent projects are several surveys, retrospectives, and group exhibitions, including: Frederick Kiesler: Co-Realities, The Drawing Center, New York, 2008, winner of an AICA Award; New Economy, Artists Space, 2007; and Expanded Cinema, an online platform for experimental film and durational work. He is currently adjunct faculty at the School of Visual Arts in New York and organizing a retrospective of the work of Ree Morton.

Image: Stan VanDerBeek, Panels for Walls of the World Experimental Test, 1969/2009 (installation shot)

Press contact:
Adrian González difusionmacg@gmail.com
Oscar Cigarroa macg.prensa@correo.inba.gob.mx
Tel. 5550 6260 ext. 108 and 109

Opening 25 February 2010

Museo Arte Carrillo Gil
Av. Revolucion, Mexico City
Hours: 10:00-18:00 Tue-Sun

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Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil

IN ARCHIVIO [13]

Emilio Chapela
dal 5/3/2015 al 5/5/2015