Miguel Calderón's work has always been brash and often a bit self-obsessed, in a cool way, kind of like that of Ashley Bickerton’s painted self-depositions. An earlier series of photographs (co-starring the artist) portrayed adolescents in school uniforms acting out in a fashion that engagingly straddled a fine line between childish pranksterism and pure sexual violence. In his most recent exhibition, Calderón seems to be pushing the limits of artistic practice almost to the point of absurdity. Aggressively Mediocre, Mentally Challenged, Fantasy Island: Circle One of the Above, is the title of a crowded installation (though Fantasy Island seems the most accurate).
In one sculpture diorama, we look down upon Mr. Roark, Tattoo, et al, and a raft of island revelers enjoying the fun and sun. A long tent houses a video projection of a performer imitating Tattoo, the celebrated dwarf. A series of tacky paintings illustrate scenes from bad movies where the bad guy (Calderón) is on the run in a car full of nude, bodacious blondes sitting beside him. (Yeah, right). Elsewhere, six ceramic water fountains flow with Tidy Bowl blue liquid over a landscape populated by little Neanderthal figurines pissing, cooking, and fighting with one another. The fountains are markers of wealth when set in front of mansions in Mexico, and Calderón pleasurably pisses on the aristocracy. The piece that best seems to represent Calderón’s aspirations to demonstrate the “aggressively mediocre” with the poignancy of earlier works is a video projection of a man (the artist) “ pissing" water from the top of Mexico City's only skyscraper down on another man dressed in business attire (also the artist). Blue urine might have been more subversive and in line with the exhibition. Yet, considering NAFTA, maybe Calderón is rightly pissing on the big money, from which the artist is not immune.
In the scope of visual art’s current fascination with globalism, the young Mexican artist, Calderón, has been waiting on the fringe unlike many of the artists who have recently been spotlighted in places like Istanbul, Johannesburg, or New York, as participants in large-scale groups exhibitions. Calderón just had his second solo show at Andrea Rosen’s major, well-established New York gallery yet he has not been swept up in the rush to colonize the world's markets, uh..., I mean artists, who speak the language of Western-style contemporary art. Maybe that’s because Calderón, like the best of the artists who have recently become known in the “centers" as well as the “ margins", has the goods, and knows how to turn an old thing into something new.
As Gerardo Mosquera has discussed in this magazine, the economics of globalism is a two-sided coin. On one hand, there is now an increased level of diversity in terms of what gets seen and talked about in visual art (see the new book Cream published by Phaidon Press in October 1998). On the other hand, globalism in the art world may all too well mirror the uglier aspects of Western hegemony and imperialistic cultural capitalism, so closely associated with the United States. Whether you want to look at this on the positive side or the negative side is up to you. It's a bit of both. Nonetheless, this exhibition was a jumbled hodgepodge for an artist truly worth following. His heart is in the right place and even if this show is only hinting at his abilities, there is an ambiance of sagacity within the whole that should prove formidable well into the future.
FRANKLIN SIRMANS