Eric Reyes Lamothe

Bio

(Pachuca, Hgo., Mexico, 1974) BFA at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas in Mexico City. As a painter and printmaker he has 7 solo shows and 35 group shows in Mexico, Peru, the US, Canada, France, Portugal, Poland and Japan. His work is in the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He has participated in common projects as the organization of art festivals, art education for children in rural communities and the creation of two temporal independent studio-gallery spaces. He also has been involved in UNESCO projects for indigenous communities.

He was Professor at the Art Institute of the Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Hidalgo in the Art History and Printmaking department.

Among his awards are: two grants for art production FOECAH; the State Prize for the youth in Hidalgo, Mexico; scholarship for studies in the University of British Columbia, Canada; Mutis scholarship for doctoral studies in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.

He is a second year MFA student at the San Francisco Art Institute with a Fulbright scholarship.

Statement

PROMISE

This is the kind of credential you get when you go to a Catholic Church and promise not to drink for a period of time. People usually do this to keep themselves away from alcohol, tobacco or drugs, especially when they go to a party or a bar. Showing a credential is one of the few ways for keeping yourself abstemious, and you can do it for the amount of time that you want. For me, the action features three implications:

1. The observance of the boundaries between artistic practice and religious rituals.

2. The relationship of alcohol consumption and labor.

3. I am the actor of a role that does not necessarily represent a need for myself. In this case, I am trying to be into a situation that belongs to the “other”, as I am neither a believer nor an alcoholic.


DIARY

This is a detail of my diary. The drawing was made after an image I remember I saw on a wall in Marrakech. But this image I had in my mind may not correspond to the one I am drawing. So, the image I present is a mere fiction that interprets someone's ideas (the drawing on the wall) and relocates it as an interpretation of the thing I want to see and relates to my own practice and ideas.


WALKING THE CAR

This action took place in the streets of a mid size city in Mexico. It is a response to the initiative taken by the municipality when they changed the shape of the walkways of the city's park (traditionally for pedestrians) into one that allows the movement of cars. In this way, walking the car is a reverse operation of what the Government did, as it is taking the space used by cars, using it as a track for pedestrians. The action was performed by a group conformed by artists and a sociologist.