ASU Art Museum presents first survey of video work by Miguel Angel Rios in ‘Landlocked’ exhibition

The ASU Art Museum is pleased to present "Miguel Angel Rios: Landlocked," the first survey of video work by the Mexico City-based artist. The exhibition will be on view Sept. 12 to Dec. 26, 2015 in the Top and Kresge galleries at the ASU Art Museum’s Mill Avenue & 10th Street location in Tempe.

Landlocked follows Rios’ remarkable journey into an artistic practice that addresses issues of power, apathy and violence. Incorporating an innovative use of social and political narratives and original production techniques, the exhibition includes four never-before-seen works commissioned by the museum. Those new works, explains ASU Art Museum curator Julio Cesar Morales, are “very much site-specific and grounded in a new approach to land art. Rios challenges traditional modes of representations within landscape.”

“To date these are the most ambitious and challenging video projects of Rios’ career,” says ASU Art Museum Director Gordon Knox. “Landlocked is an excellent example of the way the ASU Art Museum seeks to support artists that have had a transformative impact on their peers and on subsequent generations.”

In addition to the video installation, a portion of the exhibition is dedicated to Rios’ process, intended to give a look into the mind of the artist. Viewers are invited into Rios’ “studio of curiosities,” where they can view research materials, photographs, works on paper, storyboards, production ephemera and video documentaries of the making of some of his most-acclaimed works.

Landlocked is part of the Contact Zones series of exhibitions at the ASU Art Museum, which focuses on contemporary migration and its intricate uncertainties within border culture, destiny and contested histories. The series includes new commission-based video installations, public engaged programs, guest-curated exhibitions and artist initiated projects.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Miguel Angel Rios is known as “an artist’s artist,” a reference that traces back to his well-known paintings and collage work of the late 1980s and 1990s, which were included in the seminal 1994 exhibition Mapping, curated by Robert Storr at the New York Museum of Modern Art.

“At the height of his career, Rios picked up a video camera, and without hesitation or fright, shifted mediums and artistic processes in the late 1990s,” says Morales. “His early experiments with sound and video would provide the emotional power that he later mined by pushing the boundaries of a camera to its limits and at times to its destruction.”

Ríos studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and has received numerous awards, including the John Guggenheim Fellowship. A selection of his exhibitions includes the 2015 Lyon Biennale, France; DOCUMENTA (13) Kassel, Germany; Perez Art Museum, Miami; Des Moines Art Center, Iowa; Artists Space, New York; Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; John Weber Gallery, New York; Torino Triennial, Torino, Italy; and New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York.

His work is included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; La Maison Europeene de la Photographie, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C.; Patricia Cisneros Collection, Miami; Phoenix Art Museum; The Museum of Fine Art, Houston; Centro de Arte Contemporaneo Reina Sofia, Madrid; Isabel and Agustín Coppel Collection, Mexico City; Boris Hirmas Said Collection, Chile; Kadist Foundation, San Francisco; and MALBA Museo de Arte Latinoamericano, Argentina.

Landlocked coincides with two other presentations of Rios’ work around the world, including his debut at the 2015 Lyon Biennale, curated by Ralph Rugoff and a solo project, Endless at Sicardi Gallery in Houston. Both projects will run concurrently with the ASU Art Museum exhibition. For more information, visit sicardi.com/artists/miguel-angel-rios.

RELATED PROGRAMS

On Tuesday, Sept. 1, 5:30–7:30 p.m., the ASU Art Museum will host a public preview of the exhibition with curator Julio Cesar Morales and the artist. Morales will also lead a tour of the exhibition as part of the museum’s #ThirdWednesday series on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2015 at 1:30 p.m.

An opening reception for the exhibition will be held Friday, Sept. 11, from 6:30–8:30 p.m. (with a members, alumni and press preview from 5:30–6:30 p.m.).

All ASU Art Museum events are free and open to the public.

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE

A 150–page catalogue designed by renowned Mexican designer Fernando Corona will accompany the exhibition. The publication includes essays by Brazilian curator and writer Paulo Herkenhoff, an interview with curator Julio Cesar Morales and additional text by visual artists Carlos Amorales, Cristobal Lehyt and Javier Tellez, with an introduction by ASU Art Museum director Gordon Knox.

CREDIT

This exhibition is supported by The Diane and Bruce Halle Foundation as part of an ongoing series of exhibitions at the ASU Art Museum focusing on innovative Latin American art and artists.

Additional support was provided by Sicardi Gallery.

Public Contact: 
Juno Schaser
PR Specialist
480.965.0014
juno.schaser@asu.edu

Media Contact:
Juno Schaser
PR Specialist
480.965.0014
juno.schaser@asu.edu