Eduardo Cervantes: Immortality Tales
Proyectos Raúl Zamudio/Empty Circle
499 Third Avenue
Brooklyn, NY, 10014
646-373-176
www.emptycircle.com
raul@emptycircle.com
www.proyectosraulzamudio.com
proyectosraulzamudio@gmail.com
Eduardo Cervantes: Immortality Tales, New Sculptures and Assemblages
October 7-November 3, 2023
Opening Reception: October 7, 6-9pm
Proyectos Raul Zamudio and Empty Circle are pleased to present Eduardo Cervantes: Immortality Tales. The solo exhibition of Mexico-born, New York-based artist Eduardo Cervantes consists of new sculptures and assemblages and a site-specific installation. The title refers to his interest in mythology and both the hero’s and anti-hero’s quest for the existential riddle of what happens after one’s life has been lived, and the question of immortality. There is another side to Cervantes’ themes and subject matter that is not historical nor literary but contemporary and one could even say scientific. For the advent of AI and the exponential advancement of life extension and longevity via science and medical breakthroughs are more than just woo woo or the equivalent of belief in a flat earth. This is underscored in, among others, the uber wealthy Bryan Johnson, who reportedly spends 2 million a year, on diets, exercise regimen, blood transfusions, and any sort of cutting-edge medical or scientific developments that he could harness to not only extend his life, but to live on indefinitely. Regardless, this doesn’t alleviate the anxiety of what Edgar Allan Poe coined as all humans inevitable meeting with the worm, that is to say, death. Eduardo Cervantes: Immortality Tales explores these questions and so much more in an exhibition that will reveal Cervantes as one of the most diverse artists working today.
Eduardo Cervantes is an artist whose multi-disciplinary work includes site-specific installation, video, assemblage, sculpture, drawing, painting, and anything that offers experimental possibilities. His approach is characterized by a critical and poetic discourse that regularly includes studio work next to contingent and site-specific works involving the spectator and reflecting on the constructive process.
There is a dystopic state, angular, and non-sequitur that pervades through all the work, it resists categorization, and repels a monolithic framework. The formal diversity of this work is centered on an anthropological deliberation that runs against the reductionism of sociological discourse. His unorthodox practice posits Mr. Cervantes within a large generation of Latin American artists from the mid-nineties that have broken away from the nationalist status quo of identity and decolonization, holding instead a very broad approach to the practice of art. Eminently conceptual, iconoclastic, and operating primarily as Institutional Critique
Eduardo Cervantes is a multidisciplinary artist with studies in Music, Architecture, Visual Arts, Art History, Philosophy, Physics and Math. He has lived and worked mostly in Brooklyn, New York since 2000. His work has been shown at the IV Havana Biennale, Cuba(1994), Eventa V, Sweden (2000), XIV Biennale Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City(2008), The Bronx Museum of the Arts (N.Y. 2006), Institute of Mexico in Paris (2005), The Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City (2003), Walter McBean Gallery at San Francisco Art Institute (1996), Carrillo Gil Museum Mexico City (1995, 1999, 2000), Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (2004), Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City (1996), Blue Star Art Space, San Antonio Texas (1993), El Eco, Experimental Museum, Mexico City (2008). Mr Cervantes has been the recipient of a number of State and Private Grants, such as Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, FONCA, Mexico City (1994-95), and Fondo Estatal para la Cultura y las Artes, Jalisco, Mexico (1996-97). His work can be seen in the files of Museo del Barrio, N.Y.; Drawing Center, N.Y.; the flat files at Pierogi 2000, Brooklyn N.Y.; and Heskin Contemporary, N.Y. Currently he co-manages ‘Rumpelstiltskin,’ an exhibition art space for aesthetic research in south west Guadalajara, Mexico, where he has curated Paranormal Bureu, a multimedia show with three artists from Brooklyn N.Y.