It’s so Hardcore!
A
Mexican Diary
Since the end of January 2006, the MARCO
Museum in the Mexican Monterrey has been the first venue for “More Than
Meets the Eye,” a traveling exhibition of contemporary German photography
from the Deutsche Bank Collection. For almost three years, works from
photographers and artists such as Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, Wolfgang
Tillmans, Katharina Sierverding, and Günter Förg, among others, will tour
through Latin America. But what sort of cultural background is this
exhibition celebrating? And why would Mexico City care about Germany
photography? Cornelius Tittel packed his bags and, together with
the photographer Roberto Ortiz, departed for a trip through both of
the Mexican cities in which this exhibition is on view this spring. With
his diary, he describes the ins and outs of Mexico’s urban culture and his
encounters with the most diverse collection of individuals, including a
future porn movie producer, a punk playboy, an artist washing dead bodies,
and the world’s best wedding photographer.
The
MARCO in Monterrey:
First venue
for the exhibition "More thea Meets the Eye", Photo: Roberto Ortiz
Saturday,
4. 2. 2005
11 PM My Polyglott
Travel Guide refers to Mexico City as a "moloch full of pleasant
surprises." On the way from the airport to the hotel, however, two police
cars trapped an old Volkswagon
Beetle at a streetlight. The bloody driver bravely defended himself
against the police dogs that the police were keeping on a very long leash
– so long that their stark white uniforms wouldn’t get dirty. The taxi
driver murmured something, and the light turned green.
©Photo
Roberto Ortiz
Sunday, 5. 2. 2006
9:30
AM Check into the Hotel
Habita, Polanco. The most fashionable hotel in the most fashionable
neighbourhood, as my guide informs me. Eames
chairs, Castiglioni
lamps, Hermes
soap, and a pool on the roof.
10:30 AM The sun is shining,
24 degrees celsius. Even on a national holiday, the main street of
Polancos seems a bit quiet. Tomorrow there’s a sale again at Chanel,
Max
Mara, and Boss. Those with
money are probably all on Acapulco.
12 noon Even those who
aren’t rich seem to have left the city. Even Zoloco, the main plaza in
central Storico, is empty. In the Calle Uruguay I come across groups of
people. They are flowing over the Pasteleria
Ideal, a gigantic pastry shop that presents its wares on the tables.
Every customer takes a tray at the entrance, takes what they want, and
pays at the register. A few metres further are a few more people in the
seafood restaurant, Danubio,
where you can get an eight-course meal for 140 pesos (approximately 10
euros).
3:00 PM In the Coyoacán neighborhood, where Frida
Kahlo, Diego Riviera,
and the actress Dolores
del Rio lived in the 1940s. Only the barbed wire and security cameras
disrupt the village-like, bohemian atmosphere. In the Blue House ,
one can visit the living quarters of Frida Kahlo, and in Casa
de Trotzky the site of his execution. There is only a line in front of
the first.
©Photo
Roberto Ortiz, 2006
Monday,
6.2.2006
12:00 noon In the north
of the city lies the Basilica
de Nuestra Senora Guadeloupe. The virgin after which it was named is
something of a national symbol. "First we are Guadeloupan, then we are
Mexican", explains my taxi driver. Below the Basilica that rules over the
city from atop a hill, there is a modern pilgrimage church for at least
10,000 pilgrims. It is always full—a neverending flow of visitors move
through the stadium-sized concrete building whose charm is somewhat
reminiscent of Berlin’s Palace
of the Republic.
4:00 PM Flight with Air
Azteca to Monterrey.
5:30 PM The photographer Roberto Ortiz
picks me up—my guide for the following day. My first impression of the
city of three million inhabitants: a mix of Wuppertal
and Beverly Hills nestled among the mountains. No monorail, but instead a
huge Cookie Monster placed in the middle of the city highway advertising
the local entertainment park Plaza
Sesamo. Roberto made a number of appointments for me with artists,
dealers, and curators. On the way to the first meeting he explains that
Monterrey is the motor of the Mexican economy. "It’s too American for many
Mexicans", he says.
9:00 PM Check into the Crown
Plaza. Roberto suggests that we eat at the "Rey
de Cabrito". The restaurant looks as if Imelda
Marcos had decided to set up a Mexican Ranch. Much like Marcos, the
owner has manufactured a cult of personality. Next to the multiple
photographs of him posed with local politicians and musicians, the main
attraction is the two stuffed lions frozen mid-pounce. The red wine is
served ice cold.
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Señora Larius at her Bauhaus-Villa in
Monterrey.
©Photo Roberto Ortiz,
2006
Tuesday, 7.2.2006
10:00
AM Franciso Larius invited us to breakfast in his Bauhaus
Villa on the outskirts of a gated community in the hills above Monterrey.
He is successful and enjoys it. His large-format, mostly decorative
canvases, which he sells mostly in Los Angeles and Houston, are hanging
above Mies van der
Rohe's Barcelona
chairs. That which doesn’t sell so well is kept in black sketchbooks.
Drawings of children whose eyes are covered, whose wrists are slit open
and whose hands are burning and are bound to driftwood threatening to
drown. "He paints these things for himself", his wife explains. And Larius
tells stories from his childhood in a small village on the Pacific: "It is
very Catholic there, still. Everything revolves around guilt, pain, and
punishment." His little brother always ran away from home until his mother
began to tie him to a tree in the garden. At least then she always knew
where he was. "These images always saved me", he explains. Even the
earliest of his paintings dealtwith salvation. Larius wants to rekindle
the tradition of Ex
Voto, traditional images of devotion commissioned by individuals
who experienced some sort of tragedy and who want to prove their faith to
Jesus Christ or the Virgin from Guadeloupe.
Francisco
Larius and Cornelius Tittel
©Photo
Roberto Ortiz, 2006
1:00 PM
Parque Fundidora
. Bernd and Hilla
Becher would feel right at home: a de-commissioned factory that has
been renovated into a cultural centre. The photography department is
exhibiting German fashion photography from 1945 on: F.C.
Gundlach, Will McBride
, Wolfgang Tillmans, Peter
Lindbergh. Next to this, the local brewery Femsa is presenting
its own Biennial. Larius doesn’t seem to be an exception here: violence,
sex, and Catholicism are the themes of the hour. Newspaper covers with
acts of violence, lingerie with cardinal’s emblems, and photographs of
butterflies whose bodies are replaced with labia. One image is called, Fruta
con Carne—where vaginal close-ups are montaged over old master
paintings of fruit and vegetables. Hardcore stuff.
3:00 PM Ramis
Barquet. The gallery that already has two branches in New York. The
really good stuff is all hanging in the office: drawings from Marco
Arce, who seems to be a kind of Mexican Raymond
Pettibon. One shows Martin
Kippenberger dancing naked from the waist up. Laura Pacheno suggests
that we have to try the grasshopper at one of the restaurants in town.
9:00
PM Casa Oaxaca . I’m
eating grasshopper-tacos with avocado and I’m a bit disappointed. It’s a
bit crunchy. The insects taste a bit like crabs that weren’t shelled
properly. This time the red wine isn’t served cold, but instead sweet.
Wednesday
8.2.2006
Photographer
Juan Rodrigo Lluno at his studio
©Photo
Roberto Ortiz, 2006
10:00 AM
Visit with Juan
Rodrigo Llaguno, probably the most talented wedding photographer in
the world. Llaguno runs a photography studio in Garca Garcia, a suburb of
Monterrey. There are a few Vanity
Fairs lying in the sparse entryway, and some black-and-white
photographs of happy families are hanging on the walls—proud mothers and
newlyweds. Then the shock: what Llaguno does with his "free time" ("I
could never live from that alone") is one of the best things I’ve heard in
a long time. For one series, for years Llaguno—who cites Diane
Arbus and Irving
Penn as two of his greatest influences—visits the park where he played
as a child. There he photographs the growth of the upper-middle class and
the nannies. He refers to it as a phenomenon, pointing to the pictures
that he took week after week with his huge, antique camera: these children
spend so much time with their nannies that eventually they begin to
resemble them.
Juan
Rodrigo Lluno
©Photo Roberto
Ortiz, 2006
For another series, he has for
years been going to the same square in the centre of Monterrey, where he
sets up his camera and asks people passing by if they wouldn’t mind being
photographed with him. From mayors to migrant workers, he captures a sort
of panorama of society that is reminiscent of August
Sander. He claims that the only problem is that his pictures don’t
look Mexican enough. An American curator once told him to focus on Mexican
clichés in order to be taken seriously on an international scale. Indios,
the suffering of the farmers in the south, or maybe the wrestlers of
Mexico City or the victims of senseless violence. "Unfortunately, that is
not my world. I can’t go to Chiapas
and take pictures of rebels. That is as if I were to go to another country
altogether. I have to live in the place that I work."
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