Xylañynu. Taller de los Viernes

About

Making use of a game - sometimes resembling a charade of gregarious sparring - these artists share examples of their recent creative processes. The present-day dynamic of this exhibition stems from an antecedent of shared reflection and experimentation: the Taller de los viernes, a spontaneous and undoubtedly playful scenario that allowed its members to explore the nature of creativity outside the established academic structures of the time.

Over the course of five years, Gabriel Orozco opened up his house in Tlalpan as a space for exploration, criticism, and production. The taller planted the seeds of an intellectual exchange whose effects can still be felt in the work of the artists in this exhibition. Differing in purpose and structure from an established collective, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Dr. Lakra, Gabriel Kuri and Damián Ortega describe the experience as merely a series of moments they spent together. The Taller de los viernes had no manifesto, no claim on a specific place in the cultural panorama, and no aspirations towards organizing exhibitions or creating finished works. Rather, it was a conduit for transmitting and receiving information, for forming and deforming the "artistic endeavor."

Revisiting this moment reveals Santamarina's beginnings as a curator, when he began inviting several of these artists to participate in events that, a little later on, would be seen as moments that interrupted old models of investigation with fresh aesthetic pronouncements.