The Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil presents Ventanilla Única (Single Window), the most recent exhibition by Mexican artist Yoshua Okón, which will be inaugurated this October 7. Ventanilla Única presents five artworks created during the past three years that have never been exhibited in Mexico. They articulate the aesthetic and conceptual principles that Okón, co-founder of La Panadería project (1994-2001), has accumulated throughout his 15-year artistic career.
The exhibit consists of video and photography installations that invite reflection on the ethical complexities that spectators have as they confront the artworks. Ventanilla Única reveals the implicit negotiations that occur between the pieces and the observer: spectators identify with the characters that appear in the images and videos and – through this evocative connection – the social being is obliged to confront self-criticism.
According to Okón, “There is where the work attains its mirror effect: as we create some distance, we learn something we had already known.” From their Greek origins, satire and sarcasms have been characterized with a high degree of critical irreverence. By resorting to these devices, Okón creates fictitious atmospheres that inhabit an everyday life that is disrupted by these interferences to create a sharp and suggestive portrait of modern societies. Thus, the idiosyncrasy that characterizes these societies is reformulated and revealed as the product of disruption.
The title of the exhibition, Ventanilla Única, is a direct reference to the windows through which transactions and exchanges of a diverse nature are conducted. To a certain extent, Okón wishes to reveal a part of what exists at these “obscured” windows, as well as to bring to the surface the elements that intervene in the agreements reached there.
For more information on Yoshua Okón’s work, visit: www.yoshuaokon.com
Artist Biography
Yoshua Okón was born in 1970, in Mexico City, where he lives and works. He teaches Alternative Media at the FONCA in Mexico City. In 2002, he received an MFA degree from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) with the backing of a Fulbright scholarship. In 1994, he founds La Panadería, a space managed by artists from Mexico City. His most prominent individual exhibitions include the following: Canned Laughter, Viafarini DOCVA, Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan, Italy; Subtitle, Städtische Kunsthalle, Munich, Germany; Bocanegra, Francesca Kaufmann Gallery, Milan, Italy; The Project, New York City; Gaza Stripper, Herzeliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Herzeliya, Israel; Cockfight, Francesca Kaufmann Gallery, Milan, Italy; Oríllese a la Orilla, Art & Public, Geneva, Switzerland, and Lo Mejor de lo Mejor, La Panadería, Mexico City, among others. Okón’s most notable collective exhibitions include Amateurs, CCA Wattis, San Francisco, California, USA; Laughing in a Foreign Language, Hayward Gallery, London, U.K.; Era de la Discrepancia. Arte y Cultura Visual México 1968-1997, MUCA, Mexico City; Adaptive Behavior, New Museum, New York City; Terror Chic, Spruth/Magers, Munich; The Virgin Show, Wrong Gallery, New York City; Mexico City: An Exhibition About the Exchange Rates Between Bodies and Values, P.S.1.-Museum of Modern Art, Long Island City, New York, USA, and Kunstwerke, Berlin, Germany, among others. Okón has also participated in the Mecosur Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the Istanbul Biennial, Turkey, The ICP Triennial of Photography and Video, New York City, The California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California, USA, and the Turin Triennial in Turin, Italy.
ENJOY THE SLIDESHOW OF THE EXHIBITION
Special Thanks to Trasatlántica PHotoEspaña.
