Mexico City, May 6 – 29, 2004
Curated by Laboratorio Curatorial 060 (Gabriella Gómez-Mont, Sol Henaro, Lourdes Morales, Javier Toscano, Daniela Wolf)
Artist: Máximo González
In Efecto Invernadero, Máximo González comments on the economic forces that drive the world, for example by “planting” a tree in the gallery and placing works from the products of one of its brethren around it: dead branches, paper, and – the ultimate paper product – money. In Cara y Seca, a delicate but worthless dead branch takes on a new value both by being set in a gallery space and by being entirely wrapped in shredded banknotes. Plaza de Mayo consists of three Argentine banknotes that usually bear the stately image of Buenos Aires’s main square. Upon these, the artist intervened using watercolors, creating a very different image of the plaza. In the first, he added a demonstration before the governmental palace, turning it into the “Mothers of May Square”, showing the women who march silently every Thursday demanding justice for the young that “disappeared” during the military regime. In the second, a helicopter flees the palace’s roof, a reference to the escape of the country’s last elected president, Fernando de la Rua, who was forced to resign in 2001 because of a financial crisis that left at least twenty-four dead. In the final banknote, the palace and its surrounding buildings lie in ruins, reflecting the Argentine economy.
