Abraham Cruzvillegas
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Abraham Cruzvillegas (born 1968) is a Mexican visual artist. He is best known for his work with
found objects A found object (a calque from the French ''objet trouvé''), or found art, is art created from undisguised, but often modified, items or products that are not normally considered materials from which art is made, often because they already have ...
, and particularly his ongoing "autoconstrucción" project.


Biography

Cruzvillegas grew up in
Ajusco Ajusco is a lava dome volcano located just south of Mexico City, Mexico, in the Tlalpan borough of the city. It is the highest point in the city. Etymology Ajusco is a Náhuatl word variously translated as "source of waters" or "watered grove ...
, a district in the south of Mexico City. He studied Philosophy and Art at the
National Autonomous University of Mexico The National Autonomous University of Mexico (, UNAM) is a public university, public research university in Mexico. It has several campuses in Mexico City, and many others in various locations across Mexico, as well as a presence in nine countri ...
(UNAM). He later became a professor and went on to teach Art History and Theory at UNAM. As a sculptor and writer, Cruzvillegas began as a central participant in a new wave of conceptual art in Mexico City during the 1980s and 90s. Along with
Gabriel Orozco Gabriel Orozco (born April 27, 1962) is a Mexican artist. He gained his reputation in the early 1990s for his exploration of drawing, photography, sculpture and installation. In 1998, Francesco Bonami called Orozco "one of the most influentia ...
, Damian Ortega, Dr Lakra, and
Minerva Cuevas Minerva Cuevas (born 1975) is a Mexican conceptual artist known for site-specific interventions guided by social and political research and social change ideals. Her production includes installation, video works and photographic works as well ...
, Cruzvillegas was considered part of a new movement in Latin American art (which has been compared to the
YBA YBA or yba can refer to a number of things: * Young British Artists, a movement of British artists in the 1980s and 1990s * Yala language, a language spoken in Ogoja, Nigeria, by ISO 639 code * Young Buddhist Association, an association of Bud ...
boom in Britain in the 1980s. or the Modernist movement of the 1920s). Orozco has been proposed as one of the "dominant influence(s)" on his work. Together with Lakra, Orozco and Gabriel Kuri he participated in "Friday Workshops" ("Taller de los Viernes") in the 1980s, a weekly meeting in which the artists met and collaborated. As Cruzvillegas explained in the exhibition catalogue for 'Escultura Social: A New Generation of Art from Mexico City (2007): "We learned together to discuss, criticise, and transform our work individually, with no programmes, marks, exams, diplomas or reprisals. We did not intend to become known, prepare for a show, go against the grain, make our presence felt as a group, or even make work … this was my education". This then developed into the
artist-run space An artist-run space or artist-run centre (Canada) is a gallery or other facility operated or directed by artists, frequently circumventing the structures of public art centers, museums, or commercial galleries and allowing for a more experimental ...
"Temistocles 44" in the 1990s, founded by Eduardo Abaroa and Cruzvillegas. He lives and works in Paris where he teaches sculpture at Ecole des Beaux-Arts since 2018. His work is held in a number of collections, including
Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery in London, housing the United Kingdom's national collection of international Modern art, modern and contemporary art (created from or after 1900). It forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Live ...
,
LACMA The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961 ...
and
MoMA The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
.


Works and exhibitions


''autoconstrucción''

From 2007 onwards, Cruzvillegas has produced a series of works exploring what he calls autoconstrucción, or self-construction. As described by Chris Sharp in ''
Art Review ''ArtReview'' is an international contemporary art magazine based in London, founded in 1948. Its sister publication, ''ArtReview Asia'', was established in 2013. History Launched as a fortnightly broadsheet in February 1949 by a retired country ...
'',
"autoconstrucción has been able to manifest in ..many guises, places and modes: from small autonomous sculptures to large sculptural-cum-architectural installations; from mobile musical collaborations to an hourlong film, even a play. Autoconstrucción is multiplicity incarnate. Indeed, the term could be said to designate more of a spirit and an ethic than, say, a theory-driven aesthetic."
Autoconstrucción is in part inspired by his hometown of Ajusco, a neighbourhood that was mostly built by collective effort, use of accessible materials at hand, and improvisation. Christina Catherine Martinez stated in the
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
in 2022, "Play is the substrate of autoconstrucción and its driving force, even as Cruzvillegas alternately breaks up and buttresses the idea with a catholic range of historical and artistic touchpoints, interests and memories." Cruzvillegas himself stated in Art:21, "Sometimes, I just play with the materials, finding combinations, taking whatever is at hand ..things, they speak, ndI try to find a balance among them". Autoconstrucción, writes art historian Robin Greeley, is "a sculptural practice of dynamic contingency derived from the ad hoc building procedures common in squatter settlements on the outskirts of megacities. ..Cruzvillegas works with found materials in a process of inventive appropriation." From 2012, this project was accompanied by works around the theme of "autodestrucción", Cruzvillegas explained that through the autodestrucción works he "wanted to show how "Internationalism" or "Style" is something that is to be appropriated, customized, modified, adapted and even destroyed, according to specific, local, individual, subjective needs." From May to June 2018, kurimanzutto new york hosted an Autocontusión installation. It included new pieces, such as a mural inspired by Manhattan.


''Empty Lot''

In 2015, Cruzvillegas produced the
Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery in London, housing the United Kingdom's national collection of international Modern art, modern and contemporary art (created from or after 1900). It forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Live ...
Turbine Hall commission; his work, 'Empty Lot' was on display between 13 October 2015 and 3 April 2016. The work consists of 240 wooden triangular plots bordered with wooden frames, filled with 23 tonnes of soil collected from different parks and gardens across London (including
Hackney Marshes Hackney Marshes is an area of open space in London's Lower Lea Valley, lying on the western bank of the River Lea. It takes its name from its position on the eastern boundary of Hackney, the principal part of the London Borough of Hackney, an ...
,
Peckham Rye Peckham Rye is an open space and road in the London Borough of Southwark, London, England. The roughly triangular open space lies to the south of Peckham and consists of two contiguous areas, Peckham Rye Common to the north and Peckham Rye Park t ...
, the
Horniman Museum The Horniman Museum and Gardens is a museum in Forest Hill, London, England. Commissioned in 1898, it opened in 1901 and was designed by Charles Harrison Townsend in the Modern Style. It has displays of anthropology, natural history and music ...
and
Buckingham Palace Buckingham Palace () is a royal official residence, residence in London, and the administrative headquarters of the monarch of the United Kingdom. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is often at the centre of state occasions and r ...
). The entire work is raised on two large stepped, triangular scaffolded platforms, overlooked by growing light, and interspersed with smaller sculptural works. In an interview with ''
The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'' he stated,
"the history of mankind is based on movement, transformation, hope utowning a piece of land that is yours and for your family is the main hope of everybody – having a shelter, having a piece of land. This idea of hope is one that I’m dealing with in this work for the Turbine Hall."
In her review for the ''
Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Jap ...
'', Rachel Spence compared the work's "tidy blank triangles" to
El Lissitzky El Lissitzky (, born Lazar Markovich Lissitzky , ; – 30 December 1941), was a Soviet Jewish artist, active as a painter, illustrator, designer, printmaker, photographer, and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant-garde, h ...
and the work generally to
Walter De Maria Walter Joseph De MariaRoberta Smith (July 26, 2013)Walter De Maria, Artist on Grand Scale, Dies at 77 ''New York Times''. (October 1, 1935July 25, 2013) was an American artist, sculptor, illustrator and composer, who lived and worked in New Yor ...
's New York Earth Room stating,
"The result is a work of art which works on more levels than
the Shard The Shard, also referred to as the Shard London Bridge and formerly London Bridge Tower, is a 72-storey mixed-use development supertall pyramid-shaped skyscraper, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, in Southwark, London, that for ...
: as process, as performance, as politics and as spectacle. Cruzvillegas says he hopes it will be somewhere "that something can grow out of nothing". Like a green-fingered Beckett, his less-is-more philosophy makes him a seer for our times."
Writing for ''
The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...
'', Mark Hudson noted the influence of "
Buckminster Fuller Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 â€“ July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more t ...
's geodesic domes and the grid-structured gardens of the Aztecs" and stated, "As a piece of gigantic sculpture, Empty Lot is one of the more dynamic and exciting of the Turbine Hall commissions. It feels suspended like a geometric island, perfectly poised in the immense space." Jonathan Jones, writing in ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'', called it "lazy and complacent, as if unbothered by the challenge, uninterested in winning an audience", an artwork with "no aesthetic power and precious little to think about", selecting it as his "worst" installation in the Turbine Hall series.


''The Water Trilogy''

This series of installations were shown in Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris (2017), the Hermès Foundation in Tokyo (2017), and the
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Municipal Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen () is an art museum in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The name of the museum is derived from its two most important donors, Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans and Daniël George van Beuningen. The museum is located a ...
in Rotterdam (2017 - 2018). He stated, "I had invitations to make projects in those cities. Then, I found a common thread with a link to a subjective circumstance happening at the time in the neighborhood where I was born and grew up in Mexico City —
water scarcity Water scarcity (closely related to water stress or water crisis) is the lack of fresh water resources to meet the standard water demand. There are two types of water scarcity. One is ''physical.'' The other is ''economic water scarcity''. Physic ...
..For me, constructing dams, expanding land overseas, or just creating political figures from left and right banks became material for a free, autonomous art project, using traditional music from the Huasteca region in Mexico. Three new lyrics were written as a starting point, addressing environmental, political, social, historical, economic, and aesthetic issues."


Other works and exhibitions

His works have been shown throughout America, Europe and Mexico. Elements of the Autoconstrucción project were shown (amongst others) at
Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery in London, housing the United Kingdom's national collection of international Modern art, modern and contemporary art (created from or after 1900). It forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Live ...
in March 2012, in the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford in 2011, at the
Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill, Minneapolis, Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in ...
in 2013, and at the
Haus der Kunst The ''Haus der Kunst'' (, ''House of Art'') is a museum for modern and contemporary art in Munich, Bavaria. It is located at Prinzregentenstraße 1 at the southern edge of the Englischer Garten, Munich's largest park. It was built between 1933 an ...
,
Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...
in 2014. His work is held in a number of collections, including Tate Modern, London and
MoMA The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
, New York. Cruzvillegas has shown his work in single and group exhibitions in a number of galleries across Europe, South America and the United States. In 1994, his work was shown in the Fifth
Havana Biennial The Bienal de La Habana was a traditional Latin, Caribbean event, originated in Havana, Havana, Cuba, that aims to raise awareness to promote contemporary art and giving priority to Latin Americans, Latin-American and Caribbean artists. The eve ...
; in 2002 in the XXV
São Paulo Biennial SAO or Sao may refer to: Places * Sao civilisation, in Middle Africa from 6th century BC to 16th century AD * Sao, a town in Boussé Department, Burkina Faso * Serb Autonomous Regions (''Srpska autonomna oblast'', SAO), during the breakup of ...
; in 2003 in the Fiftieth
Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...
; in 2005 in the 1st Torino Triennale; in 2008 in the Bienal de Cali, in Colombia; in the Tenth Havana Biennial, and the Seventh Bienal do Mercosul in Portoalegre. His work has been shown at the
New Museum The New Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum at 235 Bowery, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-nam ...
, New York City, at Tate Modern in London and at Aishti Foundation as part of the Trick Brain Exhibition in Lebanon. Cruzvillegas participated in ROUNDTABLE: The 9th
Gwangju Biennale The Gwangju Biennale is a contemporary art biennale founded in September 1995 in Gwangju, South Jeolla province, South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half ...
, which took place September to November 2012 in Gwangju, Korea. In August 2012, it was announced that Cruzvillegas had won the Fifth Annual
Yanghyun Prize The Yanghyun Prize is an annual award for artistic achievement. It was created in 2008 following the wishes of Sooho Cho who promoted various cultural activities with the ultimate goal of bringing Korean art to the world stage. The Prize, awar ...
In 2014, he was the subject of a joint exhibition at both the
Colección Júmex Colección and variants may refer to: Art *Colección Júmex Music *Colección (Roy Brown album), ''Colección'' (Roy Brown album), compilation album *La Colección (Master Joe and O.G. Black album), compilation album *La Colección (Lucero album) ...
and the
Amparo Museum The Museo Amparo, located in the historic center of Puebla (city), Puebla City, is one of the most important historical museums in Mexico. It was inaugurated in 1991 and sponsored by the Amparo Foundation, which was founded in 1979 by Manuel Espi ...
. In April 2018, Cruzvillegas created a site-specific installation at the Kitchen, New York made out of debris collected in the streets of Chelsea, housing a series of performances combining theatre, dance and aerial acrobatics. The work incorporated instruments from different regions of Mexico like
ocarinas The ocarina (otherwise known as a potato flute) is a wind musical instrument; it is a type of vessel flute. Variations exist, but a typical ocarina is an enclosed space with four to twelve finger holes and a mouthpiece that projects from the bo ...
, the jaw bones of donkeys and seashells. In 2020–2021, Cruzvillegas curated a garden featuring more than 1,000 plants of 27 different species for a work called "Agua Dulce" at Collins Park outside of
The Bass The Bass Rock, or simply the Bass (), is an island in the outer part of the Firth of Forth in the east of Scotland. Approximately offshore, and north-east of North Berwick, it is a steep-sided volcanic plug, at its highest point, and is home ...
in Miami Beach; as part of the work, performers mimicked the song of birds and hum of insects. In 2022, Cruzvillegas exhibited works entitled 'Tres Sonetas' at
Regen Projects Regen Projects is a contemporary art gallery in Los Angeles, California. History Regen Projects was founded in 1989 by Stuart Regen and Shaun Caley Regen at 619 North Almont Drive in West Hollywood, California. Artist Matthew Barney had his ...
in Los Angeles, which "gravitate around the rhythm and the structure of a poem by Concha Urquiza" of the same name. In 2023, he gave the Rouse Visiting Artist Lecture at
Harvard University Graduate School of Design The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) is the graduate school of design at Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It offers master's and doctoral programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urban ...
, entitled: "Centring: A Definitely Unfinished and Temporary Structure for Art Making". The exhibition ''Every Sound Is a Shape of Time'' on view at the
Pérez Art Museum Miami Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)—officially known as the Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County—is a contemporary art museum that relocated in 2013 to the Maurice A. Ferré Park in Downtown Miami, Florida. Founded in 1984 as the Cent ...
in 2024, exhibited the works of seventeen artists in the museum's collection, including a piece by Abraham Cruzvillegas. The show gathered an intergenerational and international group working on a myriad artistic languages.


Reception and influences

For the 2002 São Paulo Biennial, Cruzvillegas wrote: "However art makes itself evident, it shall remain, above all, raw source material in all its natural, unstable, physical, chaotic and crystalline states: solid, liquid, colloidal and gaseous. It is the joy of energy." Reviewing Cruzvillegas' 2003 show for ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'',
Holland Cotter Holland Cotter is an American writer and co-chief art critic with ''The New York Times''. In 2009, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Life and work Cotter was born in Connecticut and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. He earned his A.B. fr ...
wrote, "In all Mr. Cruzvillegas's work, little is stated but much is said". In a
monograph A monograph is generally a long-form work on one (usually scholarly) subject, or one aspect of a subject, typically created by a single author or artist (or, sometimes, by two or more authors). Traditionally it is in written form and published a ...
on Cruzvillegas' work in ''Frieze'' magazine in 2006, Tom Morton discusses an untitled work from 1993 which recalls
Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, ; ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...
's 1913
Bicycle Wheel A bicycle wheel is a wheel, most commonly a wire wheel, designed for a bicycle. A pair is often called a wheelset, especially in the context of ready built "off the shelf" performance-oriented wheels. Bicycle wheels are typically designed ...
, though the spokes have been replaced "by a circular panel on which his father, now an academic, once painted a bouquet of red carnations". Morton states, "by bringing the work of these two men together Cruzvillegas not only expands the notion of 'influence' so that it might include the micro-stuff of specific domestic context alongside the macro-stuff of art history, but also casts into doubt the purity of the ready-made – which is to say, its inconsequentiality, its mute object-hood." Chris Sharp, writing in
Art Review ''ArtReview'' is an international contemporary art magazine based in London, founded in 1948. Its sister publication, ''ArtReview Asia'', was established in 2013. History Launched as a fortnightly broadsheet in February 1949 by a retired country ...
in January 2013, wrote: "his works are often united by an identifiable formal sensibility, whose predominantly found-object or poor-material aesthetic influence is as indebted to
Robert Rauschenberg Milton Ernest "Robert" or "Bob" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combine painting, Combines (1954â ...
,
David Hammons David Hammons (born July 24, 1943) is an American artist, best known for his works in and around New York City and Los Angeles during the 1970s and 1980s. Early life David Hammons was born in 1943 in Springfield, Illinois, the youngest of ten ...
and
Jimmie Durham Jimmie Bob Durham (July 10, 1940 – November 17, 2021) was an American sculptor, essayist and poet. He was active in the United States in the civil rights movements of African Americans and Native Americans in the 1960s and 1970s, serving on the ...
as it is to
Gabriel Orozco Gabriel Orozco (born April 27, 1962) is a Mexican artist. He gained his reputation in the early 1990s for his exploration of drawing, photography, sculpture and installation. In 1998, Francesco Bonami called Orozco "one of the most influentia ...
. The difference between them and Cruzvillegas, however, is the highly personal, specific and inherently protean programme to which his cultural and material universe adheres." Discussing his works, Niamh Coglan, writing for
Aesthetica ''Aesthetica Magazine'' is a publication focusing on art and culture. Established in 2002, the magazine provides bi-monthly coverage of contemporary art across various disciplines, including visual arts, photography, architecture, fashion, an ...
Magazine in February 2013, notes that "Works such as Aeropuerto Alterno (2002), A.C. Mobile (2008) or Sin Título / Untitled (1999), which directly references
Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, ; ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...
's
Bicycle Wheel A bicycle wheel is a wheel, most commonly a wire wheel, designed for a bicycle. A pair is often called a wheelset, especially in the context of ready built "off the shelf" performance-oriented wheels. Bicycle wheels are typically designed ...
(1913), exhibit a strong Duchampian element, not just for their aesthetic form but for appropriative elements", and goes on to state "Cruzvillegas does with material what
Marcel Broodthaers Marcel Broodthaers (28 January 1924 – 28 January 1976) was a Belgian poet, filmmaker, and visual artist. Early life Broodthaers was born on 28 January 1924 in Brussels, Belgium. Career Broodthaers was briefly associated with the surrealist ...
and
René Magritte René François Ghislain Magritte (; 21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgium, Belgian surrealist artist known for his depictions of familiar objects in unfamiliar, unexpected contexts, which often provoked questions about the nature ...
did with words and linguistics". Similarly, Gareth Harris, writing in
The Art Newspaper ''The Art Newspaper'' is a monthly print publication, with daily updates online, founded in 1990 and based in London and New York City. It covers news of the visual arts as they are affected by international politics and economics, developments i ...
in January 2014, notes: "With his vast range of dynamic assemblage sculptures meticulously built from found objects, the Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas has been dubbed the 21st-century equivalent of
Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, ; ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...
." In 2014, Cruzvillegas was profiled (with
Tania Bruguera Tania Bruguera (born 1968 in Havana, Cuba) is a Cuban artist and activist who focuses on installation and performance art. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts where she works as head of media and performance at Harvard University. Bruguera has ...
and
Wolfgang Laib Wolfgang Laib (born 25 March 1950 in Metzingen, Germany) is a German artist, predominantly known as a sculptor. He lives and works in a small village in southern Germany, maintaining studios in New York and South India. His work has been exhibit ...
) in the third episode ("Legacy") of the seventh season of the
PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
contemporary art programme Art:21 - Art in the 21st Century. Cruzvillegas has said of
Gustav Metzger Gustav Metzger (10 April 1926, Nuremberg – 1 March 2017, London) was a statelessness, stateless artist and political activist who developed the concept of Auto-Destructive Art and the Art Strike. Together with John Sharkey, he initiated the ...
" isposition as an activist and artist has been a big inspiration for me". In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Cruzvillegas' work was compared "to the bronzes of Catalan sculptor Julio Gonzalez, who combined forms both organic and abstract, to the entropic cage forms of British artist
Anthony Caro Sir Anthony Alfred Caro (8 March 192423 October 2013) was an English abstract sculptor whose work is characterised by assemblages of metal using ' found' and industrial objects. He began as a member of the modernist school, having worked with ...
, and to the arrangements of wires, covered in hair, by U.S. artist David Hammons", to which Cruzvillegas replied, "these guys are super important to me as artists ..I use that language."


Residencies

* 2005 Residency at Atelier Calder, Saché, France * 2006 Altadis Contemporary Art Prize, France-Spain * 2006-2007 Residency at Brownstone Foundation, Paris * 2007 Residency at Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Umbria, Italy * 2008 Artist Research Fellowship,
Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...
, Washington DC * 2008 Residency at Cove Park/CCA, Glasgow, Scotland * 2009 Residency at the Wattis Institute/CCA, San Francisco * 2010-2011 DAAD Artists in Berlin Residency Program


Personal life

Cruzvillegas is married to Alejandra Carrillo, a lawyer specialising in migratory issues who has worked for the
UN High Commissioner for Refugees The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, l ...
in Mexico.


Bibliography

A list of recent publications include: *''Textos sobre la obra de Abraham Cruzvillegas,'' Jaime Soler Frost, ed. (Secretaría de Cultura, México, 2016) *''The Logic of Disorder: The Art and Writings of Abraham Cruzvillegas,'' Robin Adele Greeley, ed., (Harvard University Press, 2016) *"El corazón de las tinieblas" (Heart of Darkness), Joseph Conrad, illustrated by Cruzvillegas (Sexto Piso, 2014) *"Abraham Cruzvillegas: The Autoconstruccion Suites", Patricia Falguieres (Walker Art Center, 2013) *"100 Notes - 100 Thoughts Documenta 13", Abraham Cruzvillegas (Hatje Cantz, 2012) * "Autoconstruccion: The Book", Clara Kim, Jimmie Durham, Mark Godfrey, Ryan Inouye and Abraham Cruzvillegas (Redcat, 2009) *"Abraham Cruzvillegas: Autoconstruccion", Francis McKee and Abraham Cruzvillegas (CCA, 2008) * Robin Adele Greeley, "The Logic of Disorder: The Sculptural Materialism of Abraham Cruzvillegas," ''October'' 151 (Winter 2015): 78–107 *"Los Dos Amigos", Abraham Cruzvillegas and Dr Lakra (Turner/UNAM, 2007) *''Abraham Cruzvillegas. Challenge of Failure and Confusion of Possibility,'' Sunjung Kim, ed., (Seoul: Samuso/Huynsil Publishing Co., 2016) *''Abraham Cruzvillegas: Autodestrucción4: Demolición'' (London: Thomas Dane Gallery, 2014)


References


External links


Galerie Chantal Crousel

Found and Lost, Frieze Magazine, October 2006

Review of Autoconstrucción, Frieze Magazine, January 2009

Abraham Cruzvillegas Profile, Art Review, January 2013

kurimanzutto gallery page

'The Art of the Nuevo', Financial Times, November, 2010

'Abraham Cruzvillegas: Autoconstrucción', Metro, 30 September 2010

'A Mexican in Paris', Vice Magazine

TateShots: Abraham Cruzvillegas
The artist on his piece ''Autoconstrucción''. 17 March 2011
Abraham Cruzvillegas
at
Kadist Art Foundation KADIST is an interdisciplinary contemporary arts organization with an international contemporary art collection. KADIST hosts artist residencies and produces exhibitions, publications, and public events. Founded by Vincent Worms and Sandra Te ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cruzvillegas, Abraham 1968 births Living people Mexican contemporary artists National Autonomous University of Mexico alumni