TMR as HUB: Páramo: Gabinete H-E: Destroy All Your Humanity
Hosted Exhibition | July 16-Sept. 3, 2016
This is a past exhibition.
TMR as HUB’s second project features Guadalajara-based gallery Páramo. Their project encompasses the first US presentation of artist collective Gabinete Homo-Extraterrestre.
About the Hosted Exhibition.
TMR is pleased to present the second iteration of TMR as HUB featuring Guadalajara-based gallery Páramo. For their project at TMR, titled Destroy All Your Humanity, Páramo will organize the first US exhibition of artist collective Gabinete Homo-Extraterrestre (Gabinete H-E). The collective is composed of Mexican artists José Luis Sánchez Rull (b. 1964), Esteban Aldrete (b. 1984), Cristian Franco (b. 1980), Bayrol Jiménez (b. 1984), Edgar Cobián (b. 1978), Emanuel Tovar (b. 1974), Enrique Nuño (b. 1975), and Daniel Guzmán (b. 1964).
The collective was formed in 2014. For their first project, titled La Llamada del Dios Extraño (The Call From The Strange God) and presented at Páramo in Guadalajara, each artist contributed videos, sculptures, drawings, mixed media works, music, and performances to a show conceived as a gathering of distinct and varying creative propositions. Their second project at the Museo de los Pintores Oaxaqueños, in 2015, served as a platform for the collective to explore the revisionism of primitive gnostic thought and its parallel references to phenomena like UFO's, ghosts, and religious sects from the end of the century. The intention in this collaboration was to free, in a simple manner, the personality of each artist into the dark sea of collective-sect aesthetics that would function as a framework for the exhibition. The presentation encompassed the display of a visually compelling and prolific body of work characterized by their active and ongoing dialogue concerning spirituality, religion, art, and music.
For their project in Los Angeles, the artists will produce a new body of work and a performance that evolves from objects and ideas that resulted from their first two collaborations. The exhibition, imagined as a kind of symbolic un-burial of some of the remains of their past projects, will aim to unearth concepts that inhabit the cosmic conscience of the collective: the duality of the human soul (good vs. evil); the "transcendental visions" of the human animal; and the paranormal archaeology of contemporary culture. Various concepts that were given form in previous performances have experienced transfigurations. Power-imbued objects have returned to life for this occasion, and transmuted into quasi-religious relics that reveal a renewed dialogue within myths that the collective has created.
Using these re-invented elements, the artists have also produced a new photographic series derived from private rituals and scenarios enacted in preparation for the exhibition, as well as a host of instruments, appropriated Chacmool sculptures, mixed media works and mechanized objects. Together, the performers and their body of work will ultimately transform TMR into an active space in el Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de los Angeles.
About the Collective.
Gabinete Homo-Extraterrestre is a Mexican art collective founded in 2014 by Daniel Guzmán (b. 1964, Mexico City), comprised by Daniel Guzmán (b. 1964, Mexico City), Cristian Franco (b. 1980, Tecate, Mexico), Bayrol Jiménez (b. 1984, Oaxaca, Mexico), Enrique Nuño (b. 1975, Guadalajara, Mexico), and Emanuel Tovar (b. 1974, Guadalajara, Mexico). Their collaboration has resulted in a diverse body of work that includes video, performance, photography, sculpture, and mixed media works. Using an abject visual language and satire, the artists explore such diverse subjects as phenomenology, gnostic thought, rock and roll, the figure of the outsider, religion, and ritual. Their practice has a self-mythologizing aspect, with objects emerging from performative actions and older projects evolving into newer ones. Gabinete Homo-Extraterrestre often undertakes dynamic and almost ceremonial performances both in public and for the camera. They create unique sculptures and props that are used in these performances, yielding objects imbued with a totemic, otherworldly quality.
About the Gallery
Founded in 2012 in Guadalajara, Mexico, Páramo is a contemporary art gallery that represents and advances the work and practices of artists from around the globe. Committed to the rich history of artistic practices from Jalisco, Páramo also introduces a global roster of artists to local audiences through exhibitions, programs, and initiatives that connect Mexico and Latin America to the world at large.
Press
July 12, 2016 | ArtRx LA | Hyperallergic
July 19, 2016 | The Mistake Room presents “Destroy All Your Humanity” | Fabrik Media
July 21, 2016 | Datebook: A show about the border, art inspired by L.A., an exhibition with its own marijuana strain | LA Times
August 4, 2016 | Summer group shows and Mark Gash | KCRW
Sept. 1, 2016 | Aggressively Mischievous: Gabinete H-E Descends on The Mistake Room in Los Angeles | ArtNews
Sept. 9, 2016 | Mexican Art Collective Turns LA Gallery into Cult Headquarters | The Creators Project
Credits
Gabinete H-E: Destroy All Your Humanity is organized by Páramo at TMR.
All projects of TMR as HUB are independently produced and presented at TMR by our collaborating partners.
Photo Credit: Cary Whittier. Copyright 2016. Páramo, Guadalajara, and The Mistake Room Inc.