The Plot Thickens

The Plot Thickens...
The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO) presents the exhibition The Plot
Thickens…, a selection of videos and video-installations that are a reflection on the role of
the relationship to the artist and his work in the perception of art.
The connection between the appreciation of contemporary art gets complicated when what
is being viewed is in itself looking back upon itself. The exhibition underscores that critical
instant in which the schemas and thought processes are left behind to construct, through
poetic gesture, new forms of seeing and desiring the world.
The show The Plot Thickens… includes works by Miguel Ángel Ríos from Argentina; the
Americans Diana Thater , Doug Aitken and Jennifer Allora, Carlos Amorales from Mexico and
Guillermo Calzadilla from Cuba.
EXCLUSIVE MEMBERS OPENING: Thursday, 27 May 2010, 8:30 p.m. Talk with Eduardo
Ramírez Pedrajo, professor and art critic and Jorge Contreras, MARCO curator.
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC: Beginning Friday, 28 May 2010, during regular visitor hours.
CURATOR AND MUSEOGRAPHER: Jorge Contreras.
GALLERY: 5 | Ground Floor.
ON VIEW: May 28 to August 29, 2010.
TECHNIQUES: Video-installations and videos.
NUMBER OF WORKS: 5.
CONTACT FOR THE MEDIA: Gerencia de Comunicación e Imagen / Tel: (81) 8262-4500, ext. 546, 547 and 548 /
Fax: (81) 8262-4509 / comunicacion@marco.org.mx / prensa@marco.org.mx / www.marco.org.mx
MUSEO DE ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO DE MONTERREY | THE PLOT THICKENS… | PRESS RELEASE | MAY, 2010
PRESENTATION
The intertwining thread in The Plot Thickens… apart from its deliberate wishes stimulates
the freedom to experiment in art. The videos and the video-installations in the show pay
attention to the brief gesture that makes it possible to be aware of the understanding that
one has of one’s self and of reality, which in turn is more complex and evident for the
spectator to move beyond.
The images of spinning tops, the view from behind the cameras that film the density of the
Panamanian forests, six turtle giving testament to the economic development in China, a
pack of imaginary fleeing wolves and unreality played by a child enable one to observe and
hear a private, unique, dialogue which renovates old paradigms of looking, thinking and
understanding.
The Argentine Miguel Ángel Ríos associates in Return, 2003-2004, the spinning movements,
the unpredictable trajectories and the interactions between the tops in his videos with
human life, surrounding them within a lyrical setting.
For their part, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla explore in Amphibious (LoginLogout), 2005, the way in which communities intervene with the socio-political conditions of
the world through the voyage of six turtles that are on a floating tree trunk on the Pearl
River in China. The environmental degradation derived from the rapid incursion of China
into the global economy become obvious.
Continuous. Contiguous, 2004-2005, by Diana Thater, is a video-installation that presents in
four projections on different walls, aspects of the landscape of the forest in Panama,
exploring the feeling of implicit freedom within the realm of nature. She transforms the
exhibition gallery into a space that oscillates between sculpture and architecture, the virtual
and the real.
Carlos Amorales from Mexico combines in Manimal, 2005, two- and three-dimensional
techniques of animation to produce a story that deals with the construction of the discourse
of fear present in contemporary societies by following the migration of a pack of wolves.
Finally, Doug Aitken constructs in I Am in You, 2000, an environment that provokes a
reflection on the forms and structures of the experience. In the video one hears the voice of
a child repeating the phrase “You can’t stop (you can’t stop yourself)” while at the same
time there is a cycle of images passing by rapidly at different rhythms.
MUSEO DE ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO DE MONTERREY | THE PLOT THICKENS… | PRESS RELEASE | MAY, 2010
DOUG AITKEN
The American Doug Aitken was born in 1968 in Redondo Beach, California. From 1986 to
1987 he studied at Marymount College in Palos Verdes, California and from 1987 to 1991, he
continued his studies at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He
currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
JENNIFER ALLORA and GUILLERMO CALZADILLA
Jennifer Allora was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1974. She graduated in 1996 with
a degree in art from the University of Richmond, Virginia, and obtained her master’s in
science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003.
Guillermo Calzadilla was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1971. He received a degree in fine arts
from the Escuela de Artes Plásticas in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1996, and a master’s from
Bard College, New York, in 2001.
Since 1995, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla have done collaborations. Both were
candidates for the Hugo Boss Award from the Guggenheim Museum in 2006 and they
received a DAAD grant in 2008. They currently live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
CARLOS AMORALES
He was born in Mexico City, in 1970. Between 1992 and 1995, he attended the Girret Rietveld
Academy and in 1996, he continued his studies at the Rijkasakademie in Amsterdam and in
Mexico City.
MIGUEL ÁNGEL RÍOS
Miguel Ángel Ríos was born in Catamar, Argentina, in 1943. He studied at the Academia
Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires (1965). He was a professor at the Universidad
Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina, from 1966 to 1969 and at the Escuela de Bellas Artes at the
Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires from 1970 to 1972. In 1998, he received a grant from
the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He currently lives and works in Mexico
City and New York.
DIANA THATER
Diana Thater was born in San Francisco, California, in 1962. She studied art history at New
York University in 1984 and, later on, studied for her master’s at the Art Center College of
Design in Pasadena, California. She lives and works in Los Angeles.
MUSEO DE ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO DE MONTERREY | THE PLOT THICKENS… | PRESS RELEASE | MAY, 2010