Guillermo Santamarinafunkadelics’ parliament (o de las insignias de[re]valuadas)OctoberOct 17th - DecemberDec 20th, 2017Gaga Mexico City
“The most fatal thing a man can do
is try to stand alone.”
― Carson McCullers:
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
The atomic rooster has sung and warned us about the catastrophe to come, its song is a beautiful and painful rumble; similar to a swan’s last song when saying goodbye forever, when we foretell an imminent end. Inspired by the apodictic tragedies, the essence of the Gothic (in the full extent of the word), and the rites of abjuration, Funkadelics’ Parliament (or the de[re]valued insignias) is the most recent exhibition by Guillermo Santamarina, where he reflects on fond and miserable characters, the search for an unattainable redemption and the eternal and fateful feast of misfits and freaks.
The artist has created a chaotic and dissolute staging, in which he freely mixes different references to literature, art and rock. The result of this tangle is a feeling of collective catharsis. Similar to a mass of a strange cult or similar to the concerts of Parliament or Funkadelic, in the seventies of the last century, where hundreds of souls congregated to indulge in the orgy of funk. And with the promise of a prospective redemption, in a singular space where the rejected met and recognized each other, dragged by catharsis, weed smoke and an obtuse cardboard spaceship.
Santamarina scrutinizes the affliction of existence for those deemed different and others before the oppression of reality. Ironically he rescues the most inhospitable moments of these characters and transforms them into acts of benevolence, a clear example is the character of J. Singer of the novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carston McCullers, who from his marginalized deaf-mute condition strives in attending to human solidarity and faith, even for an absolutely miserable period, by the hand of individuals in insurmountable conditions, and in the end, sadly resolute in his tragedy. For Santamarina, that dramatic node becomes an event that opens the possibility to a divergent understanding of this world today; about our discontinuous capacities of fraternity, and about the fortuitous devotion of the neighbor for his equal.
The hopeful union as a promising force of restoration and continuity is a fundamental part in this exhibition, not only from the certification of a model that informs the assists, the collaborations and the coauthorships of the exhibited works, but also in its subtext. The works speak of friendship and complicity as instrumental acts, of irremediable expansion of melancholy, of presumed salvation, of subversion and sublime emancipation. And also of catastrophe as a liberating possibility; and of the collective strength and conscience acting in the face of adversity, in these nefarious times, in these collapsed environments. Guillermo wants this exhibition to serve as a showcase to talk about the creative possibilities of the rebellion of the marginalized, of those outsiders, every day we are more and more. Of their fragility and their impermanence, which are also ours.
Laos Salazar, 2017