Abraham Cruzvillegas

Born:
1968
Residence:
Mexico, Mexico
Nationality:
Mexican
Trust:
APT Mexico City
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PRESS & PUBLICATIONS

  • Our weekly edit of the top new museum and gallery shows worldwide, featuring Julian Schnabel in Berlin and the latest opening at power house Lévy Gorvy

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  • Magical Mexico City. A city of poetry, revolution, and art. Centuries of history, spectacular colonial architecture, intimate courtyards, extravagance, cuisine, and culture, Mexico City is a global city that has it all. In the last several years, it has increasingly become an art world destination, renowned for its up-and-coming gallery scene, prominent art collections and museums, and acclaimed art fairs ZONA MACO and Material Art Fair. Here are the must-see fairs, galleries, museums, and other attractions for a week in the Mexican capital.

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  • In a city where food is top of the cultural pile, several small alternative spaces are leading the emergence of a vibrant contemporary art scene.

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  • The latest Hyundai commission to adorn the interior of Tate’s Turbine Hall is a new site-specific installation by French artist Philippe Parreno.

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  • “Art is what helps draw us out of inertia.”

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  • Carré D’art-musée D’art Contemporain presents Abraham Cruzvillegas' “Approximating Vibrant Retroflex Self-constriction” that will run through February 19, 2017 in Nimes, France.

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  • This week, during the International Contemporary Art Fair, the Avenue Winston Churchill will be shut to ordinary traffic, and these two monuments to the Belle Époque will be joined again, giving visitors a chance to stroll along what was once an elegant esplanade.

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  • The length and height of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall is alive with ripples and rivers of pulsing light.

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  • kurimanzutto is pleased to announce the participation of renowned Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki in two simultaneous projects within Mexico City, both of which will take place outside the gallery: a solo presentation in Cantina Ardalio, organized by Abraham Cruzvillegas, and the third edition of Sonora 128, a one-wall exhibition space on a billboard programmed by Bree Zucker.

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  • 10 Exhibitions Opening This Week

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  • After a nine month search, the Dallas Museum of Art - DMA has appointed a new Director: Agustín Arteaga, currently the Director of the Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL) in Mexico City.

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  • The Dallas Museum of Art went on the hunt for a new director last fall when it parted ways with Maxwell Anderson.

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  • 10 Exhibitions Opening This Week

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  • Frieze Art Fair returns to London this month with an inspiring array of shows and special events. We take a look at a selection of must-see exhibition

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  • Champagne life...

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  • If I had to choose one museum from the many hundreds, maybe thousands I’ve visited, it would be the V&A. And I’m not alone in that.

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  • Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall commissions have given rise to a new kind of art: mega-installations large enough to make an impact in this vast industrial-cathedral of a space.

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  • The 13th edition of Frieze London takes place in The Regent’s Park, London from 14–17 October 2015. Frieze London is sponsored by Deutsche Bank for the 12th consecutive year, celebrating a shared commitment to discovery. Unrivaled in quality, range and depth, Frieze London 2015 provides a discerning perspective on contemporary art, utilizing the expertise of leading curators including Nicola Lees (Curator, 31st Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana), Clare Lilley (Director of Programme, Yorkshire Sculpture Park) and Gregor Muir (Executive Director, ICA, London) across its feature sections and program.

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  • Recent visitors to Tate Modern's Turbine Hall will have noticed it's been sitting empty since Richard Tuttle's winged monstrosity came down.

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  • Organisers of Deadline Festival are protesting the museum’s sponsorship deal with BP

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  • Tate Modern has unveiled the inaugural Hyundai Commission which replaces the Unilever Commission in the Turbine Hall by Abraham Cruzvillegas.

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  • Mónica Manzutto and José Kuri opened their gallery together over fifteen years ago. Today kurimanzutto has become one of Mexico’s foremost galleries.

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  • Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas’ sculptures appear haphazard, disjointed and improvisational – and they are. Inspired by his parental home in Ajus

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  • Vo’s work explores the intersections of personal experience and major historical events, including the impact and mutations of Catholicism as it

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  • The seventh season of Art21, PBS’s television series on “Art in the 21st Century”, will feature three Latin American artists when it starts in October

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  • Mark Twain's great American novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published 125 years ago, is still regarded as a mainstay of the literary canon

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  • Abraham Cruzvillegas (b.1968, Mexico City) is an artist and writer who works found materials to explore specific location

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  • ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH, that bacchanal disguised as the Western Hemisphere’s most prestigious art fair, takes place Dec. 2 to 5.

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  • Regen Projects and kurimanzutto are presenting Distant Star / Estrella Distante an exhibition based on the writings of Chilean born writer

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  • A nomadic artist, Abraham Cruzvillegas scrutinizes the cultures, histories, populations and sites at his every port of call.

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BIOGRAPHY
Abraham Cruzvillegas 
(1968)
Rather than being defined by a particular medium, Cruzvillegas' work can be understood best through his process, which is deeply influenced by his surroundings. Often, this involves a very personal form of research in which the artist explores his own relationship to objects, their making, as well as the social context from which they emerged. The majority of his work from recent years is linked by the precepts of Autoconstrucción, a concept Cruzvillegas has developed in relationship to his practice. He uses the term to describe an improvised method of building, but it’s also an ideological premise – one that presents change as a permanent state, arising from the chaotic and fragmentary nature of life: "something definitively unfinished, something that is building itself forever: fragmentary, contradictory, weak, unstable, dark, transparent, warm, stupid, delirious, chaotic, crippled. It’s movement and life, it’s love, it’s sex, it’s me".
 
Cruzvillegas draws on diverse references to create his work. One such influence is his examination of his family’s home in Ajusco, Mexico. Ajusco was initially settled and developed during the great migration of workers to Mexico City in the 1960s. Many were former peasants who built their homes ad hoc, resulting in a neighborhood with unique architecture and a deep sense of community. This community defined Cruzvillegas' early life, and his decision to examine the construction of his family home is both a sculptural project and a means of exploring his own origins in material terms. His work, which includes video, sculpture, painting, drawing and song, addresses this history while responding to his contemporary experience of landscape, people, and forms found in his immediate surroundings. In this way he eloquently reveals identity as an indefinite, unstable structure, one that undergoes constant transformation and reconstruction. 
 
Abraham Cruzvillegas has been the recipient of many awards, including the 5th Yanghyun Prize, granted by the Yanghyun Foundation in Korea (2012), as  well as the Prix Altadis d' arts Plastiques (2006).
 
His most important exhibitions include: MALI in situ: Abraham Cruzvillegas, Museo de arte de Lima, Lima, Peru (2015); Autoconstrucción, Museo Jumex and Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico and Mexico City (2014); Abraham Cruzvillegas: The Autoconstrucción Suites, Haus der Kunst, Münich, Germany (2014) and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, United States (2013); Self Builder’s Groove, Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Diens, Berlin, Germany (2011); Autoconstrucción, the Film, The New Museum, New York, United States (2011);  The Magnificent Seven: Abraham Cruzvillegas, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, United States (2009); Autoconstrucción: The Soundtrack, Center for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, United Kingdom (2008), among others. Additionally, his work has been included in group exhibitions at various institutions, including: The Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Guadalajara, Mexico (2014); Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, United States (2013); The Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo MUAC, Mexico City, Mexico (2011); Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom (2011); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca MACO, Mexico (2009); The New Museum, New York, United States (2007), among many others.
Furthermore, his work has been included in many biennials, including: Sharjah Biennial 12, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2015); Biennial de Havana, Havana, Cuba (2015); The Shanghai Biennial, Shanghai, China (2012); dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel, Germany (2012); 12th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey (2011); 6th Biennial Media City Seoul, Seoul, South Korea (2010); 10th Biennial de Havana, Havana, Cuba (2009); The 50th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2003), among others.
 
Abraham Cruzvillegas currently lives and works in Mexico City.

For additional information about this artist, visit Mutual Art