Art Lies, Volume 48, Fall 2005 Page: 55
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Art as Opinion
Marcos Ramirez ERRE
by Kate BonansingaThe University of Texas at El Paso's unique positioning on the United
States-Mexico border empowers its one-year-old Stanlee and Gerald
Rubin Center for the Visual Arts to emerge as a leader in the exhibition
of new art that addresses and dissolves boundaries, be they aesthetic,
social, geographic or political. Since I began my tenure as the director of
galleries at UTEP in 2000, I have made myself aware of artists who tackle
these issues, especially those who directly address U.S.-Mexican rela-
tions in innovative ways.
Marcos Ramirez ERRE was one of the first artists to come to my
attention, primarily because of two important projects that he pro-
duced for inSite, the periodic, binational art event in San Diego/Tijuana.
In 1994, ERRE brought the economic periphery of the border to center
stage when he built Century 21, a replica of a typical, provisional dwell-
ing found in the poor communities that comprise Tijuana's outskirts. He
installed this structure on the formal plaza of the Centro Cultural Tijuana
in the heart of the city, juxtaposing the monumentality and permanence
of Mexico's institutional architecture with the temporality and flexibil-
ity of seminomadic residential structures. Also for inSite, in 1997, ERRE
built Toy an Horse directly on the border at the heavily trafficked San
Ysidro crossing between San Diego and Tijuana. The artist modeledthis gigantic wooden structure after Homer's description of the Trojan
Horse in the Iliad, down to its capacity of thirty people. One head faced
Mexico, the other the U.S. Both Century 21 and Toy an Horse were tem-
porary and have since been dismantled.
Though ERRE has addressed political, social, economic and aes-
thetic boundaries for years, this is the first time his art has been exhib-
ited in Texas-a territory about 1,000 miles long, or, roughly, half the
length of the U.S.-Mexico border. In his recent work, the artist applies
firsthand experience of the polarities that characterize border communi-
ties to more general and philosophical comments about political injus-
tice and cultural miscommunication on a global scale. The four pieces
that comprise his exhibition in the Rubin Center are about war-just
one possible result of misunderstanding and disagreement between cul-
tures. Four Pilots of the Apocalypse, the centerpiece of the show, con-
sists of four video projections of excerpts from Hollywood movies about
military combat edited and sequenced by the artist, who deleted scenes
with recognizable actors. Each video is projected from a wood and alu-
minum helicopter-shaped sculpture centered on each wall. The walls
act as image-filled screens, each only about ten feet away from the
screen across from it and from the helicopter that is the source of itsARTL!ES Fall 2005 55
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Bryant, John & Gupta, Anjali. Art Lies, Volume 48, Fall 2005, periodical, 2005; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth228013/m1/57/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .