Review
The exhibition, by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, is the opposite of the don't-touch art that fills most of this city. Every piece requires some kind of participation. In one room, you stand before a projector that throws your shadow 20 feet high on a wall. As you get bigger, a radio signal is directed toward you and you become a living antenna, causing crackly AM radio sounds to issue from speakers. The frequency you are channeling is projected on your shadow in red letters. It's the perfect metaphor for what it feels like here in the Biennale frenzy, with way too much information in the air as if you ran a computer cable directly into your brain, went to Google and typed in contemporary art. --Randy Kennedy, Artsbeat, New York Times
In town (Venice, Italy) at the gorgeous Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel, Mexico's first pavilion features six electronic works by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. They engage a visitor's body to enact technological events. In the loveliest, you grip a metal handle and see your heartbeat translated into pulsing light from a solitary hanging bulb. That light-pulse then joins 99 others suspended from the ceiling, recalling unknown people who have since left the room. When it dawns on you that the addition of your "light-beat" means that a bulb at the other end has necessarily been extinguished, the sculpture blossoms as a poignant memento mori. --Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times
La 52a Bienal de Venecia será recordada como la del retorno al orden y la tradición. Sin embargo, hay piezas que, como destellos en medio de las previsibles obras de los clásicos contemporáneos, desafÃan al arte establecido en busca de nuevos lenguajes y nuevas experiencias sensoriales. Es el caso de Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, en el Pabellón de México, y de Bill Viola en la iglesia de San Gallo, quienes encabezan las propuestas experimentales e innovadoras. El pabellón de México apuesta por Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Son seis instalaciones de gran formato, que le reconfirman como uno de los mayores talentos de la creación digital contemporánea. En Almacén de corazonadas 100 bombillas parpadean al compás del latido del corazón de los últimos 100 visitantes. Función de ondas es una escultura cinética interactiva que homenajea a las sillas diseñadas por Charles y Ray Eames en 1948, que cuando detectan un visitante forman una ola que se propaga por la sala. La entrada de varias personas causa turbulencias e interferencias entre las olas, ya que la obra está programada según las leyes de las dinámicas de los fluidos. --Roberta Bosco, El PaÃs, Madrid
About the Author
José Luis Barrios is currently a reasearcher at UNAM University in Mexico City.
Manuel DeLanda is the author of several philosophy books, among them War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991), A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (1997), Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (2002) and A New Philosophy of Society (2006).
Barbara London founded The Museum of Modern Art's video exhibition program and has guided it over a long pioneering career.
Priamo Lozada was a curator specialized in electronic media, from 2000 to 2007 he was curator at the Laboratorio Arte Alameda in Mexico City.
Art critic, curator and historian, Cuauhtémoc Medina is Associate Curator of Latin American Art at Tate Gallery London.
Barbara Perea is an independent curator who lives and works in Mexico City.
Victor Stoichita has been a professor of Art History at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) since 1991 and is the author of many books including Short History of the Shadow and Goya: The Last Carnival.
