Theo Michael / The Hermit's Symmetry
19 May - 26 August 2018
Casa Del Lago - UNAM
Bosque de Chapultepec Primera Seccion S/N,
San Miguel Chapultepec I Secc,
11850 Ciudad de Mexico, CDMX
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Room 1, Hermit's Symmetry,
360 x 480 x 220 cm, 2018, various materials
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Room 1, Hermit's Symmetry, 2018 (detail),
360 x 480 x 220 cm, various materials
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Room 1, Hermit's Symmetry,
2018 (detail), 360 x 480 x 220 cm, various materials
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Room 1, Interplanetary Farmer,
2018, 60 x 75 x 80 cm, various materials
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Room 1, Poverty Hedonists, 2018,
100 x 75 x 60 cm, various materials
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Room 1, We Didn't Need An Ark But We
Build One Anyway, 2018, 60 x 80 x 60 cm, various materials
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Room 2, Access To Poverty, 2014,
140 x 90 cm, weathered print on wood panel
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Room 2, Let Go Of The Designer,
2018, 180 x 100 cm, weathered print on wood panel
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Room 2, Made By Assistants,
2014, 140 x 90 cm, weathered print on wood panel
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Room 2, The Documents,
installation view
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Room 3, Crisis Management Table,
2018, 230 x 160 x 108 cm, installation view
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Crisis Management Table, 2018 (detail),
230 x 160 x 108 cm
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Room 3, Crisis Management Table,
2018 (detail), 230 x 160 x 108 cm
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Room 3, Crisis Management Table,
2018 (detail), 230 x 160 x 108 cm
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Room 3, Crisis Management Table,
2018 (detail), 230 x 160 x 108 cm
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The practice of Theo Michael
(Thessaloniki, Greece, 1978) is a hotbed of activity. There is a
proliferation of creatures, environments, materials, tools,
intangible inventions, shapes and images as diverse as:
a palm leaf mat,
Saudi Arabia, humor,
the Internet, glue, a bacterium,
architecture, the printing press,
a sci-fi comic book, foam rubber, art,
the screw, Diogenes of Sinope,
surplus, evolution, water, politics, success,
a sleeping bag, collapse, food,
childhood, a corner, graffiti, the sound "riuu."
When merging with the rhythm set
by Michael, this melting-pot of mixed origin has the peculiarity of
generating a temporal suspension and undefined character on the
objective it pursues. In other words, it casts doubts on things we
consider static or too elemental to be reconsidered in terms of their
use, origin and raison d'être. This feature provides this
artist's work with a critical sense of the dynamics of
overexploitation, overproduction and inertias of hyperconsumption
within our societies and their still prevailing conviction of
civilization's linear, homogeneous progress. Or, in other words, what
South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han terms "the hell of
sameness"—a state or situation in which the only difference
allowed is a marketable and therefore fleeting one.
The figure of the hermit—the
radical character that distances himself, stops and inhabits a
non-civilized space—has taken this room in Casa del Lago as its
temporary abode and testing ground. Contrary to his custom, the
hermit has left the doors open and, even odder, imagines a possible
interlocutor, an audience.
Víctor Palacios