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Dispatch is pleased to present Public Address, a project by artist Vicente
Razo consisting of sentences smuggled onto the covers of familiar celebrity
gossip magazines, suburban home furnishing catalogues, and department
store fashion brochures. In the process of requesting and receiving these
printed materials through the mail, Razo creates a space to inscribe concerns
relating to technology, faltering ideologies, and mass culture.
A series of selected magazines, catalogues, and brochures requested by
Razo over the internet either as free trial subscriptions or promotional
material will be shown on the walls of Dispatch. Substituting brash phrases
and fragments for actual names in the recipient address box, Razo employs
a gesture that is both tactical and concise within a defined space. The
Sears catalogue arrives addressed to 'Dan Graham’s Cash'; People
magazine to 'Guy Debord Crying'; and the Saks Fifth Avenue mailer to ‘Karl
Marx in Hell’. Both locating and reassessing Situationist strategies,
Razo claims these freely circulating printed materials for his own means
of production. By inserting his mechanized graffiti in the first line
of the address block, each mass-produced glossy is rendered into reflexive
objects, drawing on the relationship of the addressee to its immediate
visual, material, and cultural context. Fitting within the means of production,
each series of work concludes when the limited trial subscription ends
or when his stand-in “recipients” are dropped from the mailing
list.
Razo states, “These texts — inserted in the subject address
of the publication — create industrially produced originals. In
the context where the sentences appear they form a bizarre article, a
nano science fiction story in an odd item.”
Vicente Razo received his BFA from Universidad Nacional Autónoma
de México and MFA at New York Univiersity with further studies
at Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. Past exhibitions include
MUCA Contemporary Art Mexico University Museum; Jose Maria Velazco Gallery;
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center
and La Panadería Gallery among others. Lives and works in New York
City and Mexico.
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