This exhibition constitutes the first part of a project that will conclude this January 2014 at Galerie Francesca Pia in Zurich and aims to analyze constellations and relationships that are beyond practices, disciplines and physical spaces taking as a departing point, five agents active since the 50´s until today. Building the sukka is not a historical exhibition nor an academic research but a first attempt in drafting a complex system of energies, influences and relationships between a series of artists that played many roles, inhabited different characters and whose histories were intertwined many times.
Bill Copley (b. New York City, 1919- 1996) was an artist, art dealer, collector, painter and editor. Throughout his life he was related and involved in many ways with surrealist and dadaist groups, the pop movement and several conceptual artists both in Europe and in the US. He held long and close friendships with characters such as Man Ray, Magritte, Marcel Duchamp and it was his foundation who donated Étant Donnés to the ICA in Philadelphia. Since the 60´s and until his death and due to his close friendship with James Metcalf, Copley visited Mexico on several occasions and produced the works that are exhibited today in Gaga, all part of the Pellicer Metcalf Collections. He exhibited until the end of his life his unique paintings, with his poignant sense of humor and recognizable style and took part in several exhibitions with Alexander Iolas, Michael Werner and Paul Kasmin. Selected group exhibitions include Documenta V and VII.
James Metcalf (b. New York City, 1925 – 2012) Both his parents where stained-glass artists. After enlisting in the army during WWII Metcalf studied in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and then at the William Morris Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. Later he moved to Majorca where he befriended the poet Robert Graves for whom he made wood engravings and illustrated his books Adam´s Rib and Homer’s Daughter. Later in Barcelona he met Copley and invited him to participate in what would be his first exhibition. He then took his practice to Paris where he settled in what was Copley’s studio, formerly Max Ernst’s, in the Impasse Ronsin neighboring the studios of Brancusi, Niki de Saint Phalle, Tinguely and the Lalannes. In Paris he also established a close friendship with a group of Mexican and Latin American intellectuals who lived in the French capital at the time. It was Metcalf who introduced Duchamp to Octavio Paz. In the 60´s he moved permanently to Santa Clara del Cobre, Mexico under the recommendation of Victor Fosado. Once in Santa Clara and together with Ana Pellicer he engaged in creating a school that forever changed in many aspects the way coppersmiths were taught and aimed to erase the divisions between artists and artisans, fine and popular arts etc. He exhibited his work with Alexander Iolas, Galerie du Dragon, Documenta II and Galerie J owned by Janine de Goldschmidt Restany.
Víctor Fosado Vázquez (b. Mexico City 1931-2002). Fosado is without any doubt one of the most complex characters in Mexico´s art history from the second half of the XX century. His father Victor Fosado Contreras together with Rene d´ Harnoncourt and Frederick Davis worked together from the 30´s to the 40´s in various ways trying to analyze and study the moments and places where folk and prehispanic art got mixed with the new ideas of the Modern. From that experience Victor Artes Populares was created in the 40’s, a store that later Víctor Jr. ran and is still exists under the direction of his sister Pilar. Apart from his research in folk art, the study and rescue of José Guadalupe Posada´s work and the multiple exhibitions he curated around the world, Fosado developed a unique practice as a goldsmith. For building the sukka we are presenting three works created in the 74, with Arnaldo Coen’s miniatures, as a small proof of his vast production, extraordinary talent and vision. He studied acting in Seki Sano´s workshop and was an actor in movies from directors Alejandro Jodorowsky, Paul Leduc and Alberto Isaac. He rescued and experimented with pre-Hispanic instruments and was part of several experimental music groups. He collaborated with Buñuel in movie selections and ran Las Musas a café and art center where a whole generation of artists and thinkers gathered.
Juan José Gurrola (b. Mexico City, 1935 – 2007) was mainly known as a theater director, playwright, translator and meteur en scene. He started his career in experimental theater in 1957 and directed and designed sets for more than 200 plays and operas from such diverse luminaries as John Ford, Ionesco, Picasso, Klossowski, E.E. Cummings and Nino Rota amongst others. Gurrola also developed a very prolific career as an artist, mainly as a painter, performer and in non-objectual art (a term used in Mexico in the 60´s to describe alternative practices). He collaborated with figures such as James Metcalf, Victor Fosado and David Hockney. He was a lecturer on various subjects, wrote articles and essays, and acted on different films and plays.
Ana Pellicer (b. Mexico City, 1946) Studied Art in the Arts Students League and the New School for Social Research in New York and currently lives and works in Santa Clara del Cobre, Michoacán. Pellicer founded, together with Metcalf, and based on the writings of Adolfo Best Maugard, William Morris and their experience as contemporary artists, the Adolfo Best Maugard School of Arts and Crafts. Since then she has developed a complex practice as a sculptor, goldsmith and teacher. In 1986 Pellicer started the project for the jewels for the Statue of Liberty, the earing being a part of this exhibition. Ana has published books on actress Pina Pellicer and together with Roy Skodnick she is preparing the first monograph on James Metcalf. She is now engaged in reforestation , ecology and art projects and her work is part of the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City.
building the sukka
how to build a sukka? first we make three or four walls and then we make the roof out of plants. all different materials could be used for the walls. probably it is very helpful, to have in mind the great rabbi de Vries, who mentioned in some general explanation of the architecture of the synagogue, that the building is a sacred building, but it is not a sacred building. it’s function is just as a meeting place. saying this, he seemed to want to destroy in the reader any possible association with the form and idea of church buildings. one immediately understands what he is saying by this logically impossible contradiction. I had his sentence often in mind, when I was interrogated about what the galerie meerrettich is. or as was often formulated “what it really is”. the people of these questions obviously expressed a kind of identity problem, or an inability to understand language as a tool to express something clear and simple albeit contradictory or ambivalent. I said, “it is as simple as that, meerrettich is a gallery, but at the same time meerrettich for sure is not a gallery.” but responding in this very clear and simple way, I would find myself in an even worse situation. my answer was not taken with fun or pleasure and the typical reaction was another question: “so what are you, are you a gallerist or are you an artist?” I said, “well, when I am in the gallery, I am a gallerist, or at least I try to be, but when I am at home working, I am an artist”. To which my investigator would not be ashamed to ask “I wanted to know what you really are?” this dialogue happened for sure not just once. and even if the questions in themselves were not wrong, there was something wrong about them all together, and I kept wondering, what is the mechanism of the unpleasant feeling it creates. is it an obsession with identity, or of clean definitions, or simply a demand for purity? In between the lines, these interrogations seemed to express, “you can do everything, you can be everything, I am very open to everything, but I have to know what you exactly are” – the famous sentence ”you have to say it”. after these uncanny experiences with the new supposedly liberal culture of investigation, I would say, if the plans for building a succa are too complicated or too ununderstandable for you, just leave it that way. you don’t have to build one and you don’t have to understand and most important leave the people who are building one alone and let them just do it.
so, if you want to build a sukka, think of it as the most simple form of a meeting space and the walls can be of any material – they should just be strong enough to remain stable, when the wind comes. it might be better, if you make four walls if there is a door in one of them. with just three walls a door is not necessary. that should be enough for the walls. the construction of the ceiling is more complicated. not every material is good for it. it has to be made of plants. different to the walls, it should never have been used already for some other use, or made of a commodity or an object of use. we can use leftover material from trees, straw or similar material, wooden leftovers from boxes should be avoided, if the box has been used for other functions. it should not be edible material either and the wood should not be too much like boards, because they would remind us too much on the ceilings of houses. the halacha demands that the ceiling should be partly open, that you can see at least some of the stars during the night, but at the same time it demands that there be more shadow than sunlight in the sukka during the day. you should not use the material of the sukka for any other function during the sukkot week.
Josef Strau
GAGA wishes to thank Ana Pellicer, Ariane Pellicer, César Cervantes, Patricia Sloane, Paulina y Malinali Fosado Julien Cuisset, Mauricio Marcín, Luis Felipe Fabre, Jaime Soler Frost, Flor Edwarda Gurrola, Rosa Vivanco.