Martin Durazo
Pain Management 100
Ana Guajardo
Tianguis
July 6 – September 24, 2010
18th Street Arts Center
1639 18th Street
Santa Monica, CA 90404
18th Street’s 2010 Visual Art Fellowship Winners, Martin Durazo and Ana Guajardo, open their exhibitions Pain Management 100 and Tianguis July 6, 2010 through September 24, 2010.
Their exhibitions actively respond to 18th Street’s 2010 inquiry into the creative economy by transforming the galleries into hubs of experimentation, critical forums of dialogue for diverse communities within Los Angeles.
Martin Durazo’s exhibition, Pain Management 100, is a “hands on” laboratory that explores and exposes the connection between the illegal drug trade economy and the “legal” pharmaceutical drug business. Durazo’s installation consists of audio clips, video projections, posters, collage, music and other works meant to arouse the sensation of the underground drug culture. His installation is designed to challenge society’s desensitized attitude towards the legal and illegal drug trades by inspiring dialogue on a local, national and global level. The public’s responses to Durazo’s installations will become a part of the project, as interviews are recorded and edited into a documentary and incorporated into the exhibit.
Ana Guajardo’s exhibition Tianguis (the Nahuatl word for open air markets dating from the Mesoamerican period) integrates an exhibition, a live ‘tianguis’, community dialogues and workshops. Tianguis examines a contemporary community of vendor-artists in Los Angeles that participate in and innovate the urban, public market culture. This is a collaborative project utilizing the participation of a specific community of artists and entrepreneurs that are relationally connected through Latino cultural events and venues in East Los Angeles. Tianguis aims to illuminate the complex networks of art, commodity, politics and culture that are activated in the temporal and spatial constructs of these markets. Artists participating in this project include: Araceli Silva, Becky Cortez, Daisy Tonantzin, Dewey Tafoya, Elisa Garcia, Elena Esparza, Felicia Montes, Lili Flor, Lisa Rocha, Nena Soulfly, Orchid Violeta, Rudy Rude, and Reyes Rodriguez.
Martin Durazo and Ana Guajardo are two of the eight Artist Fellowship Winners for 18th Street’s 2010 theme, Status Report: the Creative Economy. The Artist Fellowship Winners were chosen to create projects that explore the creative economy theme through exhibitions and works in progress. The artists’ projects are structured to stress processes that stimulate a maximum amount of public engagement and shared critical inquiry that are manifested in the 18th Street galleries.
According to 18th Street’s Artistic Director, Clayton Campbell, “The economy was selected as a theme prior to the worldwide banking contraction, and therefore becomes even more relevant as artists proactively develop new strategies to address a host of issues. In the past decade theorists such as Richard Florida have championed the rise of a creative class. As the notion of a creative class is promoted, recent research demonstrates membership in the creative class is concentrated in specific locations characterized by environment, class and ethnicity. The 18th Street Artist Fellows are examining this dislocation of resources and entitlement, and responding to a market system that privileges some while discarding many others. After a turbulent year in which markets have radically changed, we have to ask who are the players and mediators in a creative economy, who is included and who is excluded, how are artists responding and what are the new models they are developing to support the production and the dissemination of their work and ideas? As a cultural producer, I have to ask how should our cultural institutions, both non-profit and for profit, be responsive to artists and what manner of direct support can we provide which supports their new models of distribution and production.”
18th Street Arts Center is a long time alternative arts organization based in Santa Monica, California, whose mission is to provoke public dialogue through contemporary art making. For more information, contact Program Coordinator Ronald Lopez at rlopez [at] 18thstreet.org, or go to www.18thstreet.org.
Contact: Ronald Lopez or Amber Jones
310-453-3711 103 or 108
rlopez [at] 18thstreet.org & ajones [at] 18thstreet.org
