Claire FontainePloughing the seaJanuaryJan 20th - MarchMar 19th, 2011Gaga Mexico City

For her second exhibition at Gaga Arte Contemporáneo, Claire Fontaine has lowered the ceiling of the gallery transforming it into a support to burn an excerpt of Lidia Falcon’s book Letters to a Spanish Idiot. The text describes the vicious circle of unpaid and unrecognized labour: domestic work is a perpetual movement, a repetition with imperceptible differences, a continuous reproduction of material life, that very same material life that is regenerated just to be exploited and exploited just because it will be regenerated.

The expression Ploughing the sea is the title of the exhibition and refers to the work of Sisyphus that we all do day after day in order to participate in a system visibly corrupt and devoured by crisis.

The sculpture entitled Missing, composed of the barrels from several shotguns, evokes violence as a problem and as a solution. The now concealable sawn-off shotguns are not exhibited, leaving the viewer with the doubt that they could possibly be in use somewhere else.

Untitled (Black dildo washer) is a domestic dishwasher filled with black latex dildos. The dildo, being the symbol of the deepest promiscuity between the object and human flesh, becomes here an industrial washable tool to be reused by others within an anonymous chain of consumption of satisfaction.

Money Trap is a perforated safe where the hole cut in the door – like the one made to trap monkeys – allows an open hand to enter but blocks a fist holding an object from getting out.

Claire Fontaine, Mexico City, January 2011