Mauricio Guillén

28 July - 16 September 2012

© Mauricio Guillén Avenida Progreso, 2012 Filmstill, MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst

MAURICIO GUILLÉN
Avenida Progreso
28 July – 16 September 2012

The work of the Mexican-born artist Mauricio Guillén (b. 1971) encompasses film, photography, text works and objects. Guillén combines personal experience with the conceptual strategies he uses to explore how images and language influence our understanding of culture and history.

The chief focus of the exhibition at the MMK Zollamt will be Guillén’s most recent 16-mm black-and-white film "Avenida Progreso", for which he returned to Mexico City, where he spent his childhood and teenage years. The film story leads the viewer through the districts of Polanco, Irrigación and Oceanía to the end of the Avenida Progreso. A professor of philosophy and aesthetics is the main protagonist in this anachronistic journey along streets of which many bear the names of such European philosophers and literary figures as Goethe, Byron, Marx, Tolstoi and Aristoteles.
In this film, Guillén investigates social and cultural differences within a society that is undergoing a process of change but nevertheless still reflects the impact of the cultural import brought about by colonization.

Questions about the emergence and distribution of knowledge and education in society are of key importance to the artist’s work. The film will be supplemented by photographs and text works.


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