Image credits: Adrián Villalobos
Casa del Lago
Mexico City 
2012


Artists:
Roisin Byrne
Simon Fujiwara
Mario Garía Torres 
Verónica Gerber Bicecci 
John Menick 
Stephen Prina 
Walid Raad 
Tyler Rowland 
Pablo Sigg 









Duplicitous Storytellers


“No quería componer otro Quijote —lo cual es fácil— sino el Quijote.
Inútil agregar que no encaró nunca una transcripción mecánica del original; no se proponía copiarlo.”

Jorge Luis Borges, Pierre Menard, Autor del Quijote



Duplicitous Storytellers explores re-writing as a conceptual strategy. A repositioning of the notion of the author—the product of long-standing research on the construction of genre and figures, as well as historical and artistic movements—resounds in a dialogue among exhibition pieces.

The desire to inhabit an alternate space—be it physical, temporal or in the

the creative psyche of the Other—acts as a catalyst within the work of invited artists and is simultaneously used as a constant provocation to explore the construction and transmission of different narratives. In a first approximation, each work’s research processes suggest an invitation to reflect on art’s configuration as an economic, political and historical system. To the same degree, this desire consolidates mechanisms brought to bear on the previous corpus of artworks that have influenced those currently on display; at the same time, they make manifest artistic practice’s permeability.

Far from any desire to reinterpret specific moments or create possible past or future scenarios, Duplicitous Storytellers is interested in work that—in addition to its condition as a channel for fictionalization—is presented as an innovative proposal within contemporary art’s archival practices.