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Mundillos— The World With Which We Surround Ourselves: The Reina Sofia gallery scene (1114 words) Tangled Up In Blue Xanon, Galería de Arte: Charles Malinksy My name's Lolita Art Madrid: Teresa Moro Jur. Vanstaen’s Bio-Lógico at Budo El Perro at Galería Salvador Díaz Nono Bandera: Photo España: best of the festival Vicente Blanco: it sometimes happens you're sleeping |
El Perro at Galería Salvador Díaz
January 2006 - MAP magazine Galeria Salvador Díaz
Combining crafty branding techniques, post-modern street pop culture, and good old-fashioned, anti-war politics, the visual artists’ collective El Perro (Ramón Mateos [1968], Iván López [1970], and Pablo España [1970]) brings their video installation to Galería Salvador Díaz now through January. Five synchronized projections show skaters with “Democracia” T-shirts and skateboards reeling through Madrid’s abandoned Carabanchel prison headquarters. A fusion between commercial promotion for The Democracy shop, Madrid’s urban skate culture, and thought-provoking, politically-aimed artistic expression culminate to a skater, olly-ing over a resin-and-alabaster sculpture and pay homage to the Iraqi prisoners of Abu Grahib. In case the subversive message of flying over the shackles of the Iraqi man aren’t clear, El Perro poses their message: “In what kind of democracy do we live? What kind of democracy is the occidental world exporting? … The democratic ideal in our country and abroad is simple and honest: You are free to do what you want as long as it is what we want you to do" Though turning the skate video into high-brow art dealing with world politics while hawking skate gear might seem like a slippery slope, El Perro manages to pull it off unpretentiously enough to make it worth the experience.
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