Daniel Guzmán: The man who should be dead

kurimanzutto presents the most recent chapter from the exhibition series The man who should be dead by Daniel Guzmán in the gallery in Mexico City. You must come in to get out is the continuation of the research into drawing that he has been conducting since 2017. For this presentation, Guzmán has expanded a selection of his drawings turning them into structures and spaces that can contain other visual references from his practice.

Music criticism, science fiction, narrative literature, essays and poetry are only a few of the references that inform the works in this exhibition, mainly the works by Lester Bangs, Bob Dylan, Greil Marcus, Jorge Luis Borges, Philip K. Dick, Rodolfo Walsh, Ricardo Piglia, Julio Cortazar, Roberto Bolaño, José Agustín, Alejandro Zambra, Oswaldo Zavala, Tamara Kamenszain, Rosario Bléfari, Mariana Enríquez, Cecilia Pavón, Fabián Casas, and Washington Cucurto. Similarly The Book of changes I Ching is a conducting thread that lead him through a series of coincidences related to the oracle which allowed the artist to articulate the depth and breadth of the exhibit. Hexagram 18, Ku / work on what has been spoiled, serves Guzmán not only as the creative basis for the material construction of the project, but also as the conceptual composition of each graphic universe contained in each piece.

Four wooden structures compose the exhibition and contain, inside them, a selection of drawings that have evolved throughout the last few years. Guzmán calls these structures “concentrated temporal narrative field essays” and they are organized in four themes: Killing the father / Killing the children / Burying the dead / Life Signals.

Guzmán calls this new drawing exercise: ways of reading and finding one’s way home.