This exhibition is the first major retrospective on the artistic career of Marcelo Expósito (Puertollano, 1966). It brings together his first editorial and videographic works, carried out during the first half of the eighties; his research on the visual imaginaries of Francoism, developed in the nineties; his exploration of the grammars of social movements, of the two thousand, as well as several unpublished projects, carried out on the occasion of this exhibition.
Made in co-production with the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC) of the UNAM (Mexico City), the Luis Seoane Foundation of A Coruña and the Casa de Iberoamérica de Cádiz, this exhibition is the first retrospective carried out so far on the group of the artistic trajectory of Marcelo Expósito (Puertollano, 1966).
The exhibition covers four decades of creative and activist practice during which Exposito has generated a very heterogeneous work, in which the theoretical conception of formal materialization is inseparable, making use of not only aesthetic, but also critical, philosophical, literary, dramaturgical references. , historiographic and political, translated into production models that incorporate a pedagogical dimension.
From his first editorial and videographic works, carried out in the first half of the eighties, to his research on the visual imaginaries of Francoism, in the nineties; from the exhaustive investigation that the artist developed around the social movements of the 2000s to his most recent pieces, some of them unpublished, such as Sweet dreams of a better life. Historiographic lies, ethical betrayals and political disasters committed by the spectacle of a neoliberal and monarchical democratic regime against a historical memory that refuses to sleep in the peace of the gutters (2021), or others that are presented for the first time in a museum context, such as the sound proposal The germinal pandemic. A global elegy for quarantine. Part 1: The Missing Bodies (2020) and documentary compilations New Babylon revisited. Rebuilding the democratic public sphere (2021) and The price of progress. Counter-histories and critiques of modernization (2021), the project is articulated from three different devices, which function in the manner of a conceptual triptych. The first is the exhibition itself, where 54 works spanning from 1982 to the present are presented. The second device is a publication, expressly conceived, that compiles nine theoretical essays by Luis Ignacio García, Brian Holmes, Ana Longoni, Isabell Lorey, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Gerald Raunig, Valentín Roma, Jean-Christophe Royoux and the artist himself, together with numerous documentary materials and explanatory texts on the various projects exhibited. Finally, a digital retrospective of Exposito’s film work, organized by FICUNAM (UNAM International Film Festival) in collaboration with the UNAM Film Library in March 2021 and accessible during the duration of this exhibition at https: // www.filmoteca.unam.mx/retrospectiva-marcelo-exposito/; brings together 25 films organized into nine thematic blocks, with presentations by Ileana Diéguez, Anna Manubens, Ane Rodríguez and Alfredo Ruiz, among others.
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