Hugo Garcia Urrutia + MK Semos:
Sin Limite - The Mexican Tsunami
Soaring - custom print on reclaimed wood flooring
36 x 25 inches - 2010
36 x 25 inches - 2010
Sin Limite - The Mexican Tsunami - Artist Statement
Working primarily in reclaimed substrates and materials, Hugo Garcia Urrutia and MK Semos unify image and form along with a strong message in their current body of work, Sin Limite - The Mexican Tsunami.
Reflecting on gradual changes in Mexico's socio-environment and the country's struggle to deal with them, Garcia- Urrutia and Semos are likening these current issues to a tsunami, in part because like a tsunami this phenomena is an epic catastrophic event, a welling up of emotion, hopefully finally reaching a culmination of awareness and awakening.
The photography work created by MK Semos and Hugo Garcia Urrutia in this collaborative exhibition is also an ongoing body of work and visual interpretation of an urban landscape, from Mexico and other cities around the globe, as places of inner experience. The imagery is initially created by Semos, who utilizes a manual, very basic Holga film camera, allowing her to create and manufacture intuitive collages of composition inside the camera by overlapping frames and double exposing the film. Later, after processing the film, “story boards” are chosen from her lengthy narrative of images, signs, pop-color, and surprise code.
The work is taken to another level with the collaborative effort of Garcia Urrutia, as he experiments with different un-orthodox substrates and photographic finishes. The imagery is integrated with reclaimed hardwood floors in this case, allowing the viewer to experience the grains and truest colors of the wood; the quality of the wood becoming part of the image composition. The reclaimed hardwood is also reminiscent of the high foot-traffic imagery that the viewer can see in the artwork itself.
In the installation piece titled The Mexican Tsunami, created by Garcia Urrutia, the artist's intention is to bring awareness to a now immune, and in some cases defeated community, that is numbed by an ongoing wave of violence. The metaphoric “Tsunami” in Mexico presently is embodied in an overflow of crime, drugs, economic disparity, and an overall sense of devastation in most of the population. Garcia Urrutia's observation over the past years is derived from his experience of being a transplant from his hometown Ciudad Juarez, on the US border to El Paso.
By definition, Tsunamis have proven to represent a significant hazard around the globe. México is no exception, because there is firm evidence of the effects of past large tsunamis. Information, and knowledge of faulting characteristics along the Mexican zone, leads to a clear differentiation of two zones of potential tsunami hazard: locally generated tsunamis, in the subsidence region, and remotely generated tsunamis north of this zone. Based on this zonation, two types of tsunami warning systems are proposed: real-time for the southern zone, and delayed-time for the northern... Some of these sites represent important socioeconomic resources for Mexico, and have therefore been chosen for a vulnerability assessment and microzonation risk analysis…
Sin Limite - gallery portfolio (.pdf, 3.1MB)
Sin Limite - in Modern Dallas
Sin Limite - in The Dallas Observer
Hugo Garcia Urrutia - curriculum vitae (.pdf, 224k)
MK Semos - curriculum vitae (.pdf, 198k)