On the occasion of Daniel Guzmán’s current solo exhibition the man who should be dead: notes on the dead house, the fire and the tale at kurimanzutto, New York, the gallery presents a live conversation between Guzmán and Mónica de la Torre.
Together, they will discuss contemporary subjects linked to their work and how art and cultural practices at large respond to them.
The conversation is the sixth chapter of the FUTURE DIALOGUES series hosted by kurimanzutto and Casa Dragones. Inspired by kurimanzutto’s intergenerational program defined by a rich history of artistic collaborations and Casa Dragones’s dynamic tradition of exploration and inquiry, FUTURE DIALOGUES focuses on the exchange of knowledge and ideas for the artists and creatives of tomorrow.
The series, launched in April 2023, has featured pioneering artists: Minerva Cuevas, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Carlos Amorales, Bárbara Sánchez-Kane and Roberto Gil de Montes.
1964, Mexico City
Voracious reader and incurable music lover, Daniel Guzmán digests, absorbs and recombines musical and literary references at his own discretion. His work is marked by an almost autobiographical sincerity. Comics and cartoons, song lyrics, Pre-Hispanic iconography and sensational press clippings – residues of the artist’s daily life in Mexico City and, more recently, in Guadalajara – combine and reconfigure as part of his vocabulary. Resulting from a constant, disciplined search, his drawings are guided by his hand’s intuition, which translates his references and imagination unto paper. Ink, pencil, acrylic or pastel alike serve to create images that seem to be in constant transformation, and which sometimes interlace with texts in a complex weave of connections and connotations. His sculptures, videos and installations are a reflection of a very personal and intimate territory, that emerges from such close examination of the culture and the urban landscape that surrounds him. With a strategic and contagious sense of humor, Guzmán shares the wide range of influences he has cultivated, and through which he reflects upon his experience of the world.
Guzmán earned his BFA in 1993 from the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas in Mexico City. In 2000, he was a resident at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York. He has been the recipient of various grants and awards from the Mexican Ministry of Culture, including: Sistema Nacional de Creadores (2005); FONCA: Jóvenes Creadores (1997); and the 1st Place from the II Concurso de Instalación Ex Teresa Arte Actual (1996).
Daniel Guzmán lives and works in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Mónica de la Torre
Mónica de la Torre is the author of six books of poetry, of which the most recent, Repetition Nineteen (Nightboat, 2020), centers on experimental translation. Other collections include The Happy End/All Welcome (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017)—a riff on a riff on Kafka's Amerika—and Public Domain (Roof Books, 2009). She has published several books in Mexico, including Taller de Taquimecanografía (Tumbona, 2011), written with the eponymous artists' collective she co-founded. She writes about art and has translated works primarily from the Spanish. Recent art writing focuses on Cecilia Vicuña’s Palabrarmas series, Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s Photostats, and Ulises Carrión’s bookworks. She also has co-edited several anthologies, most recently, Women in Concrete Poetry 1959–79 (Primary Information, 2020). She teaches at Brooklyn College.
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Februrary 24, 5 pm EDT
kurimanzutto, New York
516 West 20th Street New York, NY 10011