Julio Orta

Installation

(acrylic pyramid, jackal skull,white led light)

This piece looks at the nexus of materiality, temporality, and encoded meaning. The monolith as a construct unites human symbolic culture, from the Moai of Easter Island to the tribes of ancient Britain. The signifier of the skull is similarly cross-cultural, cross-temporal, and ambiguous in meaning: a number of potential messages are available, but in the context of this contemporary monolith built not of stone but of materials prevalent in our current milenium.

"Thinking About Babies"
Galeria taller mecanico.
2012

Unattended children will be sold as slaves, such a picturesque phrase could be seen in one of the pictures that Julio Orta keeps posted on one of his ineffable Facebook albums. That reinforces the image that he himself has built regarding his relation and understanding of the concept of childhood. As one may guess,  this conception is far from being close to that which Unicef proposes as the structure and pretext of existence.

Since the eighties in the last century (1979 has won its place as the International Children’s Day); this type of certification letter of children as human beings has worked for a lot of things, weirdly very little to generate their true protection and care.

On the same Unicef webpage, there are data such as the 11 million children dying annually before reaching five years of age. This is more than 29,000 deaths per day, most of which are due mainly to preventable causes. Those who survive suffer the consequences of other serious lacks, such as malnutrition,  access to medical care and education, and greater possibilities of being victims of explotation, violence and AIDS. Not uplifting, is it? 

It is in this context that we are going to realize that the fact that Julio claims that he still likes primates more that infants is merely a banal anecdote. Let us allow him to tell us through these works how he has been exorcising certain demons and let us see where he is in relation to this topic.

Marco Granados

December 2012

Installation
( 6 80 x 60 cms / 31.5 x  15.8 inch acrylic pyramids, 1 lion skull 6 tiger skulls, 6 led lights)

“No te llevas cosas a la tumba,” or ” “You don't take things to the grave”, is a folkloric expression in Mexico refereeing to the ultimate futility of materialism. Ironically though, we are sent to the grave literally encased in at least one last possession, a coffin. Good money is spent on elaborate tombstones or mausoleums to ensure that we take still more to the grave. This piece is concerned with this architectural intermingling of death and material wealth. Of course, wealth is not necessarily the only thing proclaimed by expensive mausoleums; the may be the dead’s last statement of personal identity. I started taking interest in this idea when my mom told me her wishes for her burial in a mausoleum surrounded not by religious symbols but by statues of cats.

the new wall gallery
2012

In February of 2002, Wu You Lin, a Chinese entrepreneur living in Mexico managed to obtain the rights to commercialize the image of the virgin of Guadalupe before the Instituto Mexicano de la Propiedad Industrial. He has recently renovated the registry for another 10 years.

Julio Orta’s exhibition refers, among many other things, to the religious as an object of consumption, to consensus, to conflicts in the formalization of contemporary art, to stereotypes, to contemporaneity’s sociopathy, and finally to the use of appropriation as a production strategy. Everything sprinkled with caustic and informed humor.

Marco Granados

February 2012.

"Welcome to Monterror¨
Neon light
(400 x150 cmts / 157.50 x  59 inches)

The city of Monterrey changed dramatically over a couple of months in 2008: the once safe city was suddenly plagued by shootings and kidnappings and business owners were coerced into paying "protection fees" to criminal organizations. Now, everyone in Monterrey has a friend, or a friend of a friend, who has been kidnapped or killed by the organized crime. In 2011 the narcoterrorists attacked a major casino in the center of the city, leaving 61 people dead.

“Welcome to Monterror” memorializes this time of increased violence. By 2010 it was common for the city’s young people to call  “Monterror” to the city of Monterrey,  The design is one of the most recognizable symbols of the city, the saddle-shaped mountains that surround it called “Cerro de la Silla”. In 2008, Monterrey’s license plates featured the Cerro de la Silla in the colors used in this piece. This reference to the automobile acknowledges that most if not all the shootings and kidnappings in the city happen via car.
 

Video-installation
(plastic doberman, tafil box-xanax-,tv,sticker,molecule of alprazolam in black paint)

DOBERXANAX is a video installation about the pharmaceutical industry capitalizing on our natural emotions like anxiety. In addition to the video, the piece includes a box of TAFIL  (the Mexican brand of alprazolam, marketed as Xanax in the US), a drawing of the alprazolam molecule, and a list of other brand names of alprazolam in the world.

Installation
(120 x 90 cms /47 x 35 inch stuffed wild cat and robot dog simulating breathing)

"History is written by the victors"
This quote attributed to Winston Churchill summarizes the way we think about and write modern history. The modern age has seen great empires crumble and their memories more or less eradicated, as in the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs.  In our contemporary moment of protests all over the world, with people challenging their governments for freedoms and justice, it sadly seems that the governments are winning and writing their own histories of these events, often with the complicity of the news media shaping the way these stories are told. Though a blood-thirsty dictator or religious zealot’s successful domination does require a powerful manipulation of information and image, these regimes are not always stronger than those who protest even when they seem to overwhelming get away with literal murder. In this piece, the skinned wildcat is a stand-in for the ferocious strength.