February 2013
Guillermo Trejo / New Works
“At The Other Side of Lake Erie”
February 1 – 24, 2013
Vernissage Friday Feb 1st / 7-10pm
Statement
From September to November of 2012, I had the opportunity to do an art residency at Zygote Press in Cleveland, Ohio and work for an art organization called Young Audiences. As part of my residency, I taught at different inner city schools around Cleveland and produced the work for this exhibition. This opportunity gave me the chance to focus on printmaking and to experience life in the Midwest. Watching a Browns football game, seeing Obama up close and walking through the metal detectors in the elementary schools are just some of the experiences I could have never imagined…At the Other Side of Lake Erie, refers not only to a geographical location, but also to the cultural differences between Canada and the USA through the eyes of a Mexican.
Print media has particular qualities, it can be a functional product (advertisement, poster) or seen as an artistic work. This duality allows printmaking to be an open space for artistic and conceptual research through the creation of aesthetically pleasing works or by the exploration of the techniques involved in printmaking. For example, relief prints, silkscreen and letterpress have been an indispensable part in the socio-political landscape for the last 100 years. Print media is not only a system of communication but also the medium that creates and shapes ideas and consequently our reality.
In my work, I investigate the uses and history of printmaking. I am interested in exploring how the printmaking process is related to the way we understand politics and social issues. There is a particular quality of printmaking that is created through reproduction. In my artistic practice, I develop the complete editions as the material for the creation of a work, as the generator for installation works. My practice demonstrates the creation of the interactive nature where the quality of reproduction and the diffusion of ideas are evident. I explore the conceptual quality of printmaking and how this media has infinite possibilities of exploration.