MEXICO City is a megalopolis of 20 million
people, characterised by extremity. Side by side are entitlement and
disenfranchisement, wealth and poverty, class and classlessness. Every
conceivable human agenda is front and centre in the roiling atmosphere of
dense smog and even denser politics. It is no surprise that an
extraordinarily vibrant creative community of artists lives and breathes in
these tensions, and call Mexico City their home. Since 2000 Miguel Calderón
has emerged as a Mexican artist to be noticed and collected. His studies of
his people, characterised by a whimsical ability to laugh at the things he
sees and hears, situate Calderón in the constellation of nomadic
contemporary practice. A multi-tasker, the artist slides between
photography, sculptural installation, film and video. His Quantum Physics
installation at MASSMoCa in 2003, exhibitions at Andrea Rosen in New York,
and a recent film debut at Frieze Art Fair in London have placed him at the
head of the pack of artists from Mexico coming to international attention.
But I think deep down Miguel Calderón is a ‘homey’, in flagrante with Mexico
and its crazy quilt of contradiction. He is deeply embedded in a love/hate
relationship with the roiling urban environment which takes him into bizarre
corners of his culture. The use of humour in his work heightens the cultural
absurdities that he finds himself living amidst. Just as an artist can
attract a viewer through form and aesthetics, Calderón feels laughter and
humour are a good way ‘to suck you in, opening the possibility of deeper
matters.’
During a visit to the Kurimanzutto Gallery in Mexico City to see a Calderón
exhibition, it was refreshing to hear people exclaiming out loud, having a
good time, and then staying on to really get into his art. The exhibit
consisted of photographs and video installations. Steps of the Enemy (2006)
is a brilliant video work that, when examined and discussed with the artist,
reveals a great deal about him. The viewer enters a pitch black room where
all that is visible are three dots of light moving about. They are the eyes
and teeth of a panther. The audio consists of the growls and breathing of
the animal. It is startling to encounter this, suddenly removed from the
daylight expanse of the Kurimanzutto space. At moments the breathing is
passive, then suddenly the panther erupts into loud growls and you feel the
full strength of the animal which, if it were in its natural element, could
easily kill you. The intensity is sudden, passing physically into your body,
a veritable awakening of primordial sensations from a time when we were
being eaten for dinner, and our species was the prey.
Calderón’s inspiration for making Steps of the Enemy was a poster of a black
panther on his bedroom wall when he was a teenager. It was lit by a black
light that gave the image a three-dimensional effect of coming at him during
the night. There is a popular saying in Spanish, ‘gato enderrado’, which
translates ‘locked up cat’. It is used to address something weird or
suspicious that gives a person a bad hunch. The underlying idea of
pre-sentiment and folk magic in Calderón’s work suggests that something
could be watching you, stalking you unbeknownst to you. Steps of the Enemy
is a theme park ride into the recesses of tragicomedy that is Calderón’s
stock in trade. You have to nervously laugh at yourself for being taken on
the ride so easily.
New works include a series of images of mothers carrying their babies in
blankets. Calderón came across this common sight while walking around Mexico
City. He decided to video tapes the babies, stuck as they were in blankets
in stifling heat, barely able to breath and uncomplaining because they
couldn’t talk. He put a microphone up to the babies to record their
breathing, but usually he just managed to scare people who thought he was
trying to kidnap their children. Entitled Macabro Epilogo (2007), the work
suggests a condition the artist himself feels in Mexico City; a sense of
suffocation and frustration with the environment and cultural bias which
seem, on the face of it, to be completely absurd. Similarly, Igloo (2007) is
a video of an ice cream truck that drives by his house, with the word IGLOO
on its side. He has manipulated the word so it appears to be melting, but
changed the colour to red so it looks like something kept cold in the ice is
bleeding to death through the letters. It becomes a modern day stigmata,
evidence of a miracle, found in a magic-realist pop scenario.
Calderón’s films and videos are intended to reach a broader audience than
the art gallery crowd, but he still has one foot in the experimental genre
as a way of remaining free of commercial media. He was taught by George
Kuchar, and is oriented towards a personal way of filmmaking. His foray into
narrative is still somewhat new, and so still feels experimental to him.
After completing his current exhibition commitments, he will be finishing a
script and going into pre-production. Calderón wants to tell a story, but
perhaps it is just a damn good excuse to do what he loves doing: exploring
the many things he sees happening, falling apart and changing in Mexico
City.
CLAYTON CAMPBELL WRITES ABOUT ARTS AND CULTURE FROM LOS ANGELES