The Art of Consumption:
a solo exhibition exploring modern consumer culture

December 7, 2007 – January 19, 2008

Artist Statement by Rodolfo Juarez :

My career as an artist began in Mexico against the back drop of civil unrest during the late sixties and early seventies. With other students, I protested in the streets demanding economic and democratic reforms. The government stormed rallies, murdered organizers, and intimidated the people who sought nothing more than simple justice. Consequently, my art has always been political. As I have matured in life and as an artist, and migrated to another country, I have become less concerned with the politics of one group and more concerned with the dehumanization associated with consumerism, globalization and capitalism.

People have been reduced to simplistic titles; at the very heart is the issue of supply and demand. Around the globe, the poor are devoured by the needs of the first world consumer. Their resources stripped from their land and sold to the highest bidder; they are forced to migrate, or choose to revolt.

In “first world countries” the human element that mobilizes these people is forgotten; the struggle to survive, to pay the bills, to realize some peace of mind is lost. As consumers, we no longer deal with people who cry and bleed and suffer. Instead, we deal with simplistic labels that have become their political and social representation.

While looking at a Zolof prescription bottle, I realized the beauty of the Universal Product Code (UPC); a series of black and white bars lays hidden somewhere on a package to give it its own unique identification. This is what we have done with humanity. As a society, we have allowed human beings to be reduced to nothing more than a bar code, an impersonal generic label for the purpose of economic calculation.

Staring at the bar code, I began to think about the Minimalists and their concern with the extreme simplification of form. Minimalism offered a unique forum to comment on a complex society on such simplistic terms. I picked up a cereal box and noticed the printer registration marks. It was then I began my first painting titled Zolof. The painting was a representation of the bar code on the Zolof bottle. I was in awe. It was magnificent; still, it was incomplete.

Many years earlier I had begun working and painting with tar. Not only did I like the texture, the consistency, and the way it lays across the canvas, but it is a constant reminder of the times we live in. It is the smell of cars rolling on the tarmac in July, of oil fields burning in Iraq, of a factory spewing its fumes against the backdrop of Mexico City. It is the unadulterated smell of human existence. I heated the tar and poured it on the canvas indiscriminately, like highways across the country.

I had an epiphany. Yes, this is the modern world. This is the world I live in. Though I felt saddened that some of the hope and idealism of more youthful years had dissipated, I felt a great catharsis knowing that I could finally articulate the arguments in my soul. This work, these UPC codes and printer registration marks, the tar spilled and poured across the canvas, the impersonal simple colors and lines, the lack of human form, the inability to see anything more than the label other than a slight disturbance from black tar, this is my vision of humanity. This is my work.