Melanie Smith
Subtitle: farsa y artificio = farce and artifice
By: curaduría, Tanya Barson, Alejandra Labastida ; textos, José Luis Barrios, Alejandra Labastida, Cuauhtémoc Medina
Contributors: Smith, Melanie, 1965-; Museu d'Art Contemporani (Barcelona, Spain); Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo; Museo Amparo (Puebla, Mexico)
Edition: Primera edición.
Series: MUAC -- 078; Folio MUAC -- 078.
Publisher: MUAC, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, UNAM; Museo Amparo
Published: 2019
Place of publication: Ciudad de México; Puebla, Pue. México
Language: spa; eng
Number of pages: 143
ISBN-13: 9786073019538; 9788417975081
Subjects: Exhibitions; Criticism and interpretation; Installations (Art)
Other titles: Farsa y artificio; Farce and artifice; Melanie Smith.; Melanie Smith. English.
Description: Since the 1980s, Melanie Smith (United Kingdom, 1965) has addressed a number of interrelated themes encompassing the effects and the detritus of industrialization, the economy and the aesthetics of abstraction, urbanization, colonialism and, more recently, nature and entropy, through a blurring and blending of the logics of the worlds of the image, cinema, and performance. The exhibition was developed by the Museu dœArt Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and takes in all the media used by the artist, from her first sculptures, assemblages, relief works and paintings up to her works in video, photography and installation. The version shown at the MUAC and Museo Amparo focuses on the driving forces behind her more recent works, which have seen her experimenting with her own gaze as an artist or producer of images in terms of time-space. In her most recent creations, Smith works with distance rooted in a physical perspective, taking journeys to the Amazon jungle or the Atacama desert in Fordlandia and María Elena, as well as the anti-voyage of Skype. She also addresses this theme from a formal, technological perspective using security cameras or other mechanisms to distance her from the position of authorial control. The works shown in this exhibition appear in two cities simultaneously: Puebla and Mexico City. The project is not conceived as two parallel shows, but one single one. To achieve this sense of simultaneity, a system of crossed gazes and references between the works is employed, with peepholes that enable viewers to see live what is happening in the other venue. In this way, a dialogue is established between the two museums and between different moments in the artistic career of Melanie Smith.
Notes: "Published on occasion of the exhibition Melanie Smith: Farse and Artifice, first exhibited in the MACBA, Museu d'Art Contemporani (May 18 to October 7, 2018), and in the MUAC, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, UNAM, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México (May 25 to October 6, 2019), and the Museo Amparo, Puebla (May 25 to October 7, 2019)."--Facing Title Page.

Includes bibliographical references.

Texts in Spanish and English.
Table of contents: title: Los síntomas de la turbulencia, o si te asomas por el vórtice veras la ciudad espiral = The symptoms of turbulence, or if you peer into the vortex you'll see the spiral city / Alejandra Labastida; title: Melanie Smith: farsa y artificio. Cuando el humor perfora lo imaginario = Melanie Smith: farce and artifice. When humor pierces the imaginary / José Luis Barrios; title: Producir la falla. Una conversación con Melanie Smith = Producing the flaw. A conversation with Melanie Smith / Cuauhtémoc Medina; title: Semblanza = Biographical Sketch; title: Catálogo = Catalogue.