Gameplayarts is pleased to present Playa, a survey of Mexico-based artists informed by post-Internet worldbuilding.
Opening Reception: Thursday, 7/18, 6-10 PM
With a special musical performance by Murakit (CDMX) at 9 PM
Address: 5511 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA
This summer, Los Angeles and its seasonal tourists are invited to immerse themselves in an exotic, simulated paradise. Playa unfolds as an ironic theater of Western desires, mirroring commercial worldbuilding logic to transform the gallery space into a faux Mexican beach resort. This setting authentically reflects a yearning for foreign utopias, weaving nostalgia and romantic idealism into an interactive dreamscape.
The works of Mexican multidisciplinary artists Alonso Cedillo (Mexico City), Murakit (Mexico City), Caro Lucero (Mexico City), Fernando Gress Muñoz (Mexico City), Alicia Valladeres (Mexico City), Juanna Pedro (Xochimilco), and Clutch (Guadalajara) reinterpret popular visual culture through various appropriations. Each artist offers their unique critique of Western imagination through post-Internet practices, creating a multidimensional showcase encompassing video games, digital art, drawings, and Internet-based curatorial projects like Patadas de Ahogadx from Centro Cultural Kappa (Guadalajara) and Neo_Tortellería (Guanajuato).
Typically a “luxury” attraction site, the resort blurs distinctions between high and low culture, revealing a critical presence of kitsch that comes from situating objects of common culture in formal contexts. The artists draw on digital aesthetics of the 1990s when U.S.-transferred pop culture hit a cultural apex in Mexico. Caricatures of the appropriative West, stemming from video games and Japanese manga, resonate deeply within the Mexican collective subconscious raised in Web 1.0. This active interplay of idyllic nostalgia and transnational internet aesthetics subverts the gallery to render a false nirvana meant to confront Western sensibilities.
Playa will be on view at Gameplayarts, 5511 W Pico Blvd, from July 18 to August 3, 2024. The exhibition welcomes walk-in visitors on Thursdays from 6 to 9 p.m. and Saturdays from 12 to 5 p.m.
For more information and updates on the exhibition, please visit https://gameplayarts.org/.
