Andrew Birk is a fan of Mexico City. He's been obsessively recording images with his phone for years. The pictures from his Instagram account offer particular views and fragments of the city in which seek to emphasize certain affinities with some solutions of contemporary art and stand out a persistence of painting. The latter is logical when you consider that this is the central practice of his production. Callejero is a large scale project that seeks, from the painting, represent an image of the city consisting of different fragments, as the ones recorded in photographs. However, Birk's work transcends the simple domain of representation, in the manner of a stage. While largely focused on research about this medium, Callejero goes beyond the two-dimensional and has a wide sensory load. The paintings and other objects articulate a complex situation, assisted by different stimuli (audio, lighting). Through the solution of his works...and all other objects he gets to include the dense, rough, polluted and even sometimes hostile materiality of the city in the scene.
Birk works this out with a number of materials and objects that have been found in the city or are easily available in the market (industrial products that are in any paint store or ironmongery and that are used practically all over the city for example). Proofs of this are the vinyl paints, aerosols and products like Bondo, used to restore and resurface car damages. Birk relates the process of application of this product specifically with his practice. After being polished, this material provides a finish that sometimes diffuses white color, characteristic of Bondo, among different shades of colors of automotive paint. This material, moreover, is also used in some of the two-dimensional works; its application remembers the appearance of thousands of flattened concrete constructions from the city that, over the time, have been systematically covered by countless layers of paint (vinyl coated, spray as graffiti, etc.). Some small format pieces also have this dense materiality. One of these, which has several photocopies, excerpts of tape and a cord around them has a solution that could easily be found on a utility pole.
This image of the city is framed by the walls of the gallery that have been painted entirely in black and white on a site specific grid, without advance planning. This design recalls the many walls in this city made of volcanic stone and, over the years, have been painted in black, using the white on the concrete to clearly demarcate the boundaries between rock and rock. In this mural dimensión painting Birk tries not accurately represent these walls. In this sense, Callejero does not aspire to realism. In another small format painting, the artist appropriates an animated character from cultural industry to transform it into a strange creature that seems to be upset, witnessing a deranged, exalted, passionate about the city. If the presence of stimuli, extreme materiality of some pieces, fragments of broken bottles and the presence of broken and screwed objects may denote and cause hostility; this finds its counterpart in the intrinsic degree of discomfort that characterizes daily life in the city.
Daniel Garza Usabiaga (Curator / Artistic Director of Zona MACO)
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Andrew Birk constantly establishes ties between the traditional two-dimensional surface and writing, creating sounds, venture into fashion, photography, digital media and then return to painting, taking advantage this noise that today dissolves media parameters. Birk's work has been exhibited internationally, including solo and group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey (Mexico), Museum of Contemporary Art of Oaxaca (Mexico), Preteen Gallery (Mexico City), FIFI Projects (Mexico City), Christopher Crescent (Brussels) and Anonymous Gallery (New York and Mexico City). Birk has exposed with Galeri Torri at Los Angeles Contemporary and inaugurated a solo show in at Johannes Vogt (NY) in September. His work has been published in magazines such as ArtReview, Gallerist NY, I-D and Vice. Andrew is co-director of NoSpace, project led by artists from the San Rafael neighborhood in Mexico City.
Entrada actualizada el el 03 feb de 2016
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