ADRIANA LARA, LASSER FASHION MARTIAN HAWAIIAN MESTIZO WEARABLE PAINTINGS AND FASHION SHOW, AT HOUSE OF GAGA, MEXICO

press release:
Adriana Lara
La pintura (lasser) moderna
Colección primavera/verano 2012
And one day art became so fashionable that fashion saw itself in art.

This exhibit takes the meeting point between the fashion world and the art world as a chance to restate the distinction between the two and the implications of this distinction. The exhibit’s starting point is an article published in La Jornada with the title “Painting strikes back” which questions the appreciation of contemporary art and its decline, taking as an example a piece by Adriana Lara. The article’s title, which was also the title of a colloquium in La Esmeralda Art School, becomes the perfect slogan to speak about trends and fashion as agents in the art market.

With the Modern (lasser) painting exhibition, Lara joins the dialogue about the role of contemporary art and, more specifically, art produced in the periphery, such as Mexico, and proposes a rethinking of art as fashion juxtaposing concepts such as identity vs. style, style vs. trend, trend vs. art, art vs. identity.

In the performance Painting strikes back (Spring/Summer Collection 2012) Lara takes the precarious state of the Mexican fashion industry as a way of showcasing the difficulty of imparting a personal substance on the construction of an identity that tends to be subjected to marketing within the global “style” market.

Through this performance turned fashion show, the artist is also presenting the exhibit’s central piece, Etre, a painting taken from a rave which depicts an alien, symbol used often to represent the world of Trans music and designer drugs, which in a way serves an anti-identity tag. The models coming out of this painting, walk on a spiral carpet which is used as a catwalk and will help give shape to the final stage of the performance in the center of the gallery: a living sculpture.

The fashion collection presented at the performance will continue to be shown throughout the exhibit in an art format, on a stretcher, strengthening the link between the two spheres.

As an antagonistic element, and a sort of self-sacrifice, the piece True artists are in the streets appropriates a slogan found on Brazilian streets. The artist substitutes this slogan for what is genuine in her own work in an attempt to grant freedom to art in an anonymous and untraceable ground.

For the exhibit’s title, Lara reuses her musical project’s name –Lasser Moderna- in order to give meaning to modern painting in 2012. She makes use of laser as a symbol of the present, but above all she plays with the multiple meanings of ‘modern’. In Mexico, besides being associated with the different tendencies in different points in History, ‘modern’ is associated with fashion. On the lateral side of the gallery, Lara exhibits a painting also titled Modern (lasser) painting, that has a USB on oil paint –USB as a tangible representation of information (perhaps containing a new trend?)- and a horizontally projected laser.

In the image that appears in the exhibit’s invitation, the pictured person’s awkwardness and discomfort comes through and reminds us of how an identity that tries to imprint itself in art will be inhibited by the unforgiving light with which each trend is discarded every time a new collection comes from abroad.1

Special thanks to Emilio Acevedo, Ana Bazdresch, Diego Berruecos, Guillermina Fabre , Arturo Jiménez, Brenda Legorreta, Mauricio Limón , Mauricio Mesta, Ana Livia Ramírez Luis Rincón, José Rojas, Ylenia Rosas .

NOTE:
1- The text in the invitation reads -On the 13th of August, 1521, although heroically defended by Cuahutemoc, Tlatelolco fell to Hernan Cortes. It was neither a triumph nor a defeat, it was the painful birth of the Mestizo People that is Mexico today.”

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