Places. The Metropolis and the Contemporary. Televisa Foundation Art Archive

Museo de Arte de Zapopan
Zapopan, Jalisco, México
Curaduría: José Luis Barrios
October 2003

“Why is it that a suitcase, a tire, a trash can, an illuminated sign are pieces of art? In the contemporary vision of art, the piece of art is not understood as a finished creation, but as a process and an appropriation the artist does of its immediate surroundings”.

With this affirmation of the curator, and through establishing a close collective work between the curator and exhibition designer, an audacious exhibit was prepared. It transformed radically the exhibit space to present a selection of 30 pieces of the art archive of Televisa Foundation, with a museography evoked the experience of the urban space, the way in which we perceive it, the manner in which we walk it, the way in which we live it and the experience we have with the space and time through a tour of day and night and from home to the street.

The experiment was with the feeling and the experience we have in our cities, characterized by its visual and auditory saturation, surrounded by buildings, factories, stores, billboards, illuminated signs, avenues, bridges, garbage and industrial waste. Showing this means of perception is a part of contemporary art.

“The artist watches what we barely see: the everyday things stand out; he doesn’t want to represent reality, but to present things; he makes us realize the world we live in, its shapes, its materials, its meaning, its environments, its experience through time and its inhabitants. It’s about highlighting the place that these objects without importance have in our experience in the metropolis”.

JLB