Hugo is an artist, architect, fellow gallery owner at Decorazon (in Dallas) and most importantly, a friend.
There is something eerie and viscerally arresting about Hugo Garcia Urrutia's installation piece: The Mexican Tsunami. Standing at 16 by 12 feet, a wall of over a thousand yellow sandbags heaves up off the floor and looms over the viewer, curling, at the top, like a wave that is about to fall. The effect is both direct and suggestive: the means of holding back the rising water are transformed into the crushing wave itself.
For Hugo Garcia Urrutia, born in Ciudad Juarez, the work of The Mexican Tusunami goes beyond aesthetics and politics. In 2010 his brother was a victim of the rising tide of violence sweeping across Mexico. For Garcia Urrutia, this project has been a way to "bring awareness of a now immune, desensitized, and in some cases defeated community, that is numbed by an ongoing wave of violence." Garcia Urrutia compares the current situation in Mexico to a tsunami, not least because it is a phenomena of "catastrophic" proportions.
His ongoing works for this project are an attempt to pierce through the numbness of a world that has become acclimatized to daily news of violence and disaster.
Garcia Urrutia's background in architecture is evident in the integration of strong and dynamic structural form. The Mexican Tsunami presents itself as a challenge to the viewer, its looming presence refuses to allow us to just walk by.
The installation will be at Art Santa Fe 2011 from July 7-10.
No comments:
Post a Comment