Press Release: Willie Varela
New Works 04.2
07.08.04
New Works: 04.2
July 8 – September 12, 2004
Fareed Armaly Washington, District of Columbia
Ulrike Ottinger Berlin, Germany
Willie Varela El Paso, Texas
Selected by Ute Meta Bauer
About the Artist
Since the 1970s Willie Varela has worked with photography, film, and
video, using source material found in popular culture to recontextualize
personal histories. The resulting works convey a sense of emptiness by
exposing the overabundance of media images and the potential of
consumerism to misdirect human desires.
Recently Varela has turned toward investigations of the moving image and its profound effect on the public. In Detritus, the Remix (1989/2002) viewers are forced to reckon with their intimate relationship to television. The installation requires them to look through a pair of peepholes in order to see Varela's 1989 film Detritus. The struggle to gain access to the images—which depict death, fire-eaters, wrestlers, violent sections of cartoons, and gruesome scenes from Hollywood movies—symbolizes the consumer's struggle to escape loneliness, as well as the futile search for fulfillment in goods and services. In this work, as in others, Varela implicates both the consumer and the media industry in perpetuating a system of empty promises.
Willie Varela was born in 1950 in El Paso, TX, where he currently lives and works. He earned a MA in Interdisciplinary Studies in 1996 from The University of Texas at El Paso, where he presently serves as Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre Arts and Film. Solo exhibitions include a mid-career retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (1994) and Crossing Over which originated as a collaborative project between the El Paso Museum of Art, TX and the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at El Paso and traveled to Artpace and Blue Star Contemporary Art Center, San Antonio, TX (2003). Group exhibitions include The Perfect World: Contemporary Texas Artists, San Antonio Museum of Art, TX (1991); Whitney Biennial, New York, NY (1993, 1995); and Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Film, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (1998).
About the Project
In Juxtapositions, Willie Varela focuses on advertising strategies
employed by the mass media. Culling footage from cities such as Las
Vegas, NV and Los Angeles, CA, he exposes the quotidian nature of iconic
figures in public spaces through individual, diptych, and triptych
photographs. A video projection, single channel video, and pervasive sound
piece complete the installation. The project suggests that consumer culture,
and those who buy into it, has turned imagery that was once sacred into
products to be bought, sold, and consumed.
Advertising's aggressive tactics are reflected in Varela's photographic
works. Hypnotic in their intense, television-like technicolor, the images
march across two walls of the gallery. Photographs of a crucifix are
juxtaposed with billboards of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Lopez. The critique
erupts in an ironic photograph of the Hulk's giant green fist coming down on
the awning of a movie theater, threatening to crush the massive artifice that
is Hollywood.
On the opposite wall a looped video, Made in San Antonio, projects clips
from television news broadcasts, streamed Internet videos, pornographic
scenes, and voyeuristic documentations of public spaces. A separate
soundtrack samples random splices of popular movies and commercials.
Amidst this chaotic assembly of consumer media, the presence of several
slower images offers redemptive power. The Waters, a film showing
the ebb and flow of natural water, is situated at the central axis of the space.
This video, coupled with similarly contemplative photographs (a lone man
standing on the street, an empty cemetery against a pristine sky), acts as a
signifier of the human condition in its most natural and vulnerable state.
Juxtapositions adopts mass media tactics to expose the industry's
marketing strategy of manufacturing desire where none intrinsically exists. It
hawks goods and services as fulfilling, but, paradoxically, the more we
consume, the emptier we feel.
Exhibition Dates
July 8 – September 12, 2004
Opening Reception
Thursday, July 8, 6:30-8:30 PM
Artists' Dialogue
Friday, July 9, 6:30-8:00 PM
Featuring Fareed Armaly, Ulrike Ottinger, Willie Varela, and guest curator Ute
Meta Bauer, Independent Curator and Artistic Director of the 2004 Berlin Biennial.
Brown Bag Lunch
Wednesday, August 11, 12:00-1:00 PM
Join Education and Curatorial Associate, Kate Green, for a tour of New Works 04.2 followed by a
brown bag lunch (provided by Sip) and group discussion. Call Artpace for menu and reservations.
Event Locations
All events held at Artpace, 445 N. Main Avenue. Free parking at Flores Street
and Savings. Artpace is open to the public Wednesday thru Sunday, 12-5pm,
Thursday until 8pm and by appointment. There is no charge for
admission.
About Artpace
Artpace San Antonio serves as an advocate for contemporary art and as
a catalyst for the creation of significant art projects. We seek to nurture
emerging and established artists and to provide opportunities for inspiration,
experimentation, and education. Our programs support the evolution of new
ideas in contemporary art and cultivate diverse audiences while providing a
forum for ongoing dialogue.
The International Artist-in-Residence program is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
445 North Main Avenue San Antonio TX 78205 t 210 212 4900 f 210 212 4990 www.artpace.org
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