Artist: Daniel Guzmán
In his solo exhibition Magical Mexican Beans, Daniel Guzmán presents a series of new pencil drawings and acrylic paintings as well as a site-specific multimedia installation: a table with traces of food, a couple of can-and-string telephones, plastic plants and a personal selection of Mexican music, all inspired by the motto “There ain’t no party when there ain’t no beer”. By presenting his show as a pretext for sharing free beers and having a party, he transforms it into some sort of rudimentary communication technology, though instead of focusing on the idea that the artist should communicate with the public, he encourages the viewers to communicate with each other. Guzmán’s drawings are pieces of a bizarre puzzle in which words and images form an intuitive and personal diary or a chaotic comic strip. They range from simple messages to baroque and obsessive compositions of amoeba-like monstrosities. In these series, Guzmán goes from the confessional to the childish fascination with the grotesque, the obscene and the macabre.
