Gabinete Gráfico presents its first project of the year, Fax, curated by João Ribas, in which a multigenerational group of artists, architects, designers, scientists, filmmakers, and writers were invited to rethink the fax machine as a thinking art tool. The exhibition, supported by The Drawing Center and ICI (Independent Curators International) in New York, arises to broaden the traditional concept of printmaking by integrating more experimental formats, far from traditional guidelines.

Although the technology to transmit images and text goes back to the nineteenth century —a machine by Scotsman Alexander Bain, patented in 1843—, it was
the introduction of the fax machine in the seventies what turned facsimiles into an ubiquitous communication method for the international business world. Artists exploited without difficulty, its graphic and immediate character, making of it an important part in art and telecomm history, locating it somewhere between mail art and emerging practices in new media.

Faxes from about 100 participants, which were sent to the initial Fax show at The Drawing Center, make the core of this exhibition. All materials transmitted are filed and / or displayed next to the apparatus. The result, —an ongoing, cumulative project— is a
show consisting of reproduction, obsolescence, distribution and mediation ideas. This is where production subject to replication, however erratic, via fax, displaces traditional craft notions, still commonly associated with drawing as a generative process.

In the spirit of sharing ideas and information in an informal networks experiment, convened by the organizers, on Saturday 25, July 2009, an exchange of faxes between participants from the cities of Istanbul, Paris, Cape Town, New York and Mexico City took place. During the three-hour meeting, the slowness of this medium compared to the frenetic pace of daily media, as incorporated into today's electronics, was imposed. Learning from this experience, the proposals of more than 20 artists who participated from Mexico City, with the host gallery, GAGA, remained as witness. This exhibition includes a portfolio with the complete records.

ENJOY THE SLIDESHOW OF THE EXHIBITION