CISCO JIMENEZ

BUYING A STOVE, BUT OVULATING AT THE SAME TIME
September 23 - October 23, 1999
Artist’s Reception: Thursday, September 23, 6-8 p.m.            

Cisco Jiménez, born 1969, is a young Mexican artist capturing attention in the art world in the United States and Latin America. The eighteen recent works that Jiménez presents in his first solo exhibition at Associated American Artists (September 23 - October 23), encompass a wide variety of media. Included in this exhibition are paintings, objects, collaged drawings and retablos. The retablos are of particular significance as Jiménez conveyed in a 1997 interview with Newsweek magazine. These works are assemblages of disparate objects and materials that impart the aesthetic, psychological and social importance of the artist’s work.

Born in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Jiménez considers this city as one of several fertile breeding grounds for creative excavation. He perceives Cuernavaca as a city of incongruity and paradox. As Cuernavaca has become a "vacation haven", he sees himself having been born a "native" to a city devoid of natives. Yet as vacuous as the city may seem, its fecund assortment of abandoned and useless objects offer him limitless possibilities for his art. He sifts through the city, collects and integrates materials that hold intrinsic artistic and psychological value.

The title and theme of the exhibition, Buying a Stove, but Ovulating at the Same Time, bears multidimensional meaning. References to the female are manifest in a variety of ways. Most of them however, are symbolic fragments that a woman embodies or represents such as the meticulous or cartoonish drafting of fallopian tubes, ovaries, earlobes, breasts, and a hairy chunk of skin. Although she bears the propensity to create life and embodies beauty, Jiménez’ tongue-in-cheek approach signifies a more sinister and unappealing implication. These "female" images are often paired with household appliances such as sinks, stoves, chairs and refridgerators. The dicotomy of the organic and biological on one hand and the mechanical intentionally reveals unsettling disparities.

Expobutt, 1999 is an example of Jiménez’ retablos encompassing the gamut of diverse images and objects. Framed with carved wood, the work contains numerous smaller paintings rendering fallopian tubes, strange biomorphic forms which allude to phallus and vaginal openings as well two functional objects: an industrial sink and a loungechair. The work bears its title in a small framed composition on the right. Adhering to the small frame is some type of hardware that suggests breast nipples. The image is a photograph depicting three women - one a superimposed drawing of a headless woman endowed with enormous breasts and an engorged (impregnated) stomach. In the background of the photograph is a framed painting of a fleshy nude woman. Contrasting this woman is a real woman from the photograph walking towards the right, her direction further indicated by the large arrow drawn. The emblazoned text reads "Expo Nalga 99" (Expo Butt 99) written in the artist’s hand. Text is an important element in Jiménez’ work, and frequently the phrases he incorporates are scathing and odious. Together with the imagery, the text determines the emotional climate of the work. Expo-Butt is a fusion of morphology, man-made contraption and language.

Some of the works in the exhibition are more straightforward, but no less disconcerting. Ovulating Process, 1999 is a work made of only wood and an open plastic tube. The work is an eerie testament to the biological process. The movement implied through the wooden object that bears a painted red cavity (a mouth), eyes and deep creases in the brow facially convey a provocative sense of terror during its flight through the tube. One can’t help but recall Edvard Munch’s "The Scream" by means of the image’s sense of horror, surprise and motion. We are left uneasy as this strange wooden entity makes its journey toward life or destuction.

A particularly scathing composition, Portrait of my Ex-Girlfriend, 1999, makes explicit its physical and psychological references. Pieces of canvas are attached to each other with collaged areas. These collaged elements each depict an image that if looking at it quickly seem benign. Upon closer scrutiny, the large block of cross-sectioned skin is surrounded by three smaller images. On the lower left is an image that resembles a postage stamp. The text above reads, "Portrait of my ex-girlfriend", and below is written, "the colors used in this portrait are courtesy of Air France". Once again it is a curious mixture of language and imagery. The female figure depicted is nearly identically replicated on the right. She is a strange amalgamation of grotesque, veiny and skeletal features configured as a tree trunk. Further emphasizing the work’s symbolic intent, Jiménez pierces the canvas with many small black and multicolored pacifier toys that cover the surface of the drawing of skin as well as the larger skeletal figure on the right.

All the images in the exhibition suggest their significance to the exhibition’s theme, Buying a Stove, but Ovulating at the Same Time. As the viewer, we are recurringly entranced by the chaotic, humorous and disturbing visual messages that lay before us. This is precisely the intent of the artist who states,

...our disturbed psyche is caused by both internal and external factors. For women it occurs on a monthly basis, yet for men some type of shift occurs as well. The impending threat of turmoil, whether it takes form physiologically or emotionally is prominent, inevitable and ultimately frightening. When you are content, there is something that is always lurking around the corner to undermine it. The many diversions we create by means of fetishes arising from ordinary objects compel us. They shape our thoughts, our feelings and ultimately the quality of our existence.

Gallery contact: Lisa Hagani
email: aaa@agrp.com
 
     

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