ALEJANDRO CARTAGENA at Circuit Gallery @ Gallery 345 (345 Sorauren), Saturdays 11 am-5 pm or by appointment, to May 29 reception today (Thursday, May 5), 7-10 pm artist’s talk/book signing Saturday (May 7), 1 pm. 647-477-2487. See listing. Rating: NNNN
Circuit, a toronto-based online gallery, presents photos from Alejandro Cartagena’s politically engaged five-part documentary project Suburbia Mexicana: Cause And Effect.
In Fragmented Cities, he turns a deadpan eye on rows of tiny new homes – their boxy shapes and bright colours an odd combo of Mexican and modernist style – under construction outside Monterrey, Mexico’s third-largest city.
The Other Distance shows the bland shopping malls and green spaces that serve the city’s wealthy Urban Holes documents vacant lots in central areas where fragments of torn-down buildings remain visible.
In The People Of Suburbia, Cartagena captures Juárez residents outside their new homes, workers living the dream of home ownership, their wary faces betraying the tensions of living amidst the drug wars.
Most disturbing is Lost Rivers: what appear to be traditional landscapes, some quite lovely, others on closer examination strewn with garbage, show the drying riverbeds left by poorly planned development.
Cartagena’s deep analysis of late capitalism adds complex layers of meaning to these images.
