kurimanzutto is pleased to announce Poor Tuning, a project specially planned by the artist Thomas Hirschhorn (1957, Bern) for kurimanzutto’s warehouse at Juan de la Barrera 116 (Mexico City).

Taking advantage of the spaciousness and neutrality of this nave, ten vehicles had been tuned and provided with diverse accessories and devices, with the characteristic mark of this artist: the use of resources and materials employed to speed up, repair, and store practical life, as a constructive and sculpting principle. In this installation, the velocity and power of the Machine (metaphorically alluded by extrabrilliant enamels, polished surfaces, and winged and blazing filigrees) become replaced by the representation of the haste and overflow from the cultural field in which we are circumscribed.

For us, urban citizens, this field is characterized by media saturation, political particularized prominence, and the fallacy of the world without frontiers. The car as the extrapolation of the individual, and his equipped body, but also as a module in a series, is ‘customized’ via the juxtaposition of adhesive tape, cardboard, magazines and newspaper cuttings, photocopied fragments of texts, books, calligraphies and crossing-outs on paper, stickers, and ornamental figurines.

Poor Tuning is a larger project that Hirschhorn will develop for the first time. Among the recent works related with this project are ‘Philosophical Cars’, and the ‘Concept Car’ shown at Volksgarten. The Politics of Belonging (Kunsthalle Graz, Austria, 2007), and ARCO08 Art Fair (Madrid) at Arndt & Partner Gallery.

In each one of his works, this artist revives a state of urgency for consigning the events in immediate and mundane forms, with no strategy of visual seduction whatsoever. Thomas Hirschhorn has stated: ‘I want to make work that is more real than reality, and I want to give a form that is more real than reality itself’1. And he does it through the multiplication of reality in its most material sense. By means of repetition, excess and framing, he structures the baroque load of images and information surrounding us.

Thomas Hirschhorn (Bern, Switzerland, 1957)

His main exhibitions are: Thomas Hirschhorn: Stand Alone, Museo Tamayo de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2008); Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, France (2007); Arndt & Partner, Berlin, Germany (2007); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, USA (2005); Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2004); Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York, USA (2002); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France (2001); The Art Institute of Chicago, USA (2000).

He has participated in various group shows such as: Volksgarten, Die Politik der Zugehörigkeit,

Kunsthaus, Graz, Austria (2007); Swiss Made+ 2, Präzision und Wahnsinn, Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg, Germany (2007); How to Live Together, 27 Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, Brasil (2006); Common Wealth, Tate Modern, London, UK (2003); Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (2002).