ERICK MEYENBERG: THE WHEEL BEARS NO RESEMBLANCE TO A LEG
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission Street, San Francisco
14 October 2016 – 19 February 2017
Working at the interstices of drawing, collage, video, data analysis, and sound, Mexican artist Erick Meyenberg (b. 1980) generates immersive multimedia experiences that merge complex processes of translation—from data to object to image. Premiering in this exhibition, the three-channel video work The wheel bears no resemblance to a leg (2016) borrows its title from Les mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tiresias), a 1903 play written by the Polish-French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who coined the term surrealism. The plot, in which a man gives birth to children, conveys the poet’s essential idea: imagination will preserve art from modern science through the union of surprise and analogical parallels to reality.
The wheel bears no resemblance to a leg is an intricate case study of participation and coproduction between an artist and a specific community. Meyenberg proposes a theatrical exploration of the various dimensions of bio-power in everyday life, a notion that defines how violence and control is exerted on the physical bodies and lives of people. His project condenses a range of exploratory methodologies and interdisciplinary interactions developed at the arts residency space Casa Gallina (Mexico City), which functions as the sixth edition of the public art project, InSite. The exhibition deconstructs this process through the artifacts of making, turning from site and social relations to video and sound artwork.
