Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: TECHS-MECHS | Gray Area | Closes May 31, 2023

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: TECHS-MECHS

A Survey of Mexican Technological Culture
March 16–May 31, 2023
Interactive Art Exhibition
Image: Pulse Topology Installation View. Gray Area, San Francisco.

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Rafael Lozano Hemmer: TECHS-MECHS is interactive art at its best. It’s sensory art with an element of surprise—that gives rise to suspense—and ends in delight. The Gray Area show includes several of the Mexican-Canadian artist’s works, including Pulse Topology, an installation consisting of 3,000 lightbulbs pulsating to the recorded heartbeats of its participants; Synaptic Caguamas, in which a series of beer bottles are programmed to behave like neuronal connections in the brain, thus never repeating a pattern twice; and Airborne Newscasts, where body heat sensors move snippets of live news around viewers’ shadows.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Pulse Topology, Synaptic Caguamas, and Airborne Newscasts. Gray Area, San Francisco.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Pulse Topology Demo. Gray Area, San Francisco.

Pulse Topology is the obvious star of the show as it is an existential and technological play on the echocardiogram, taking inspiration from the heartbeats of the artist’s twins from an ultrasound and the 1960 film, Macario. It is based on the Brothers Grimm tale, “Godfather Death”, in which Macario (played by Ignacio López Tarso), a poor woodcutter with several children, discontented with his station in life, spirals into an obsession with a solitary turkey feast. His despondency causes him to go on a kind of mental hunger strike, and so his wife steals a turkey in hopes of saving Macario from self-starvation. As Macario goes off to work with his bird, the Devil, God, and Death all appear before him and ask to share his meal. Macario chooses Death as his dining companion, who in return, gives him the ability to heal the sick. In the end, Macario tries to cheat Death, but does not succeed.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Airborne Newscasts (Clip from Macario), 2013. Gray Area, San Francisco.

A testament to this great cinematic drama is its 1961 Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film—also significant because it was the first time a Mexican film was included in this category (Macario is available for FREE on YouTube). Also FREE on YouTube is the EXCELLENT documentary, MEGALODEMOCRAT: The Public Art of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, which features the 2008 installation Pulse Park (similar concept to Pulse Toplogy) and Airborne Newscasts.

My first encounter with Lozano-Hemmer’s work was during Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Unstable Presence at SFMOMA in 2021. It was an unforgettable show, I particularly liked Call on Water, a fountain dispensing poems in fog by the Mexican poet, Octavio Paz.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Call on Water, 2016. SFMOMA, San Francisco.

Anyone who is auditory-sensitive like myself, will be triggered by his work. At times I feel slightly overwhelmed in its presence and I process this as noise—sensation—imagery—sensation—symbolism—noise—sensation—noise—repeat—repeat.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer takes facets of the human experience—whether it’s joy, wonder, injustice, pain—and links it back to the viewer through poetic simulation. So you have multiple levels of connectivity, where the artist is connecting to the experiencers—and the experiencers with each other, and so on and so forth. It’s art being created on a dimensional scale, and what is more tech that that?

🗓 Rafael Lozano Hemmer: TECHS-MECHS runs until May 31, 2023 at Gray Area in San Franciso’s Mission District.

Guillermo Gómez-Peña Performs Tech-illa Sunrise for the Opening of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: TECHS MECHS. Gray Area, San Francisco.

The Opening Party included a DJ set by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Gray Area, San Francisco.

QUICK GUIDE: Gray Area

⭐ HOURS: Open Wednesday–Saturday 1 p.m.–8 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m.–6 p.m. PROOF OF VACCINATION REQUIRED for visitors ages 12+.
⭐ ADMISSION: General Admission Adults $25; Seniors, Students, Educators $15; Ages 12 & Under FREE. Membership starts at $55.

⭐ DISCOUNTS/FREE: Use code ARTLOVE20 for 20% OFF. FREE for San Francisco Mission District residents in zip codes 94110 and 94103 with a valid license/ID. 6 children limit for free entry. You may not bring out of town guests for free. 

⭐ EVENTS/PROGRAMS: SYNC: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Eli Keszler live performance on 4/20 & 4/21 (originally commissioned by Pace Live). Open Metaverse Intensive is a deep dive of extended reality (XR) technologies that students can use to synthesize virtual worlds and merge them with the physical (10-week course, 5/23 deadline to apply). 

💌 Did you see the show? What did you think? Let us know in the comments (in the Reviews section located on the third tab at the top of the page).

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