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Astillas (Splinters) by Javier Guzmán

Found Materials and Debris from East London, 2024.

Chronoplasticity or How to Eat a Rolex, Raven Row Gallery, London, UK


Astillas explores how a sequence of patterns and systems developed in
my homecity in Mexico allow for infinite possibilities to build site
specific—local, autonomous devices to inhabit the contemporary metropoli.

For a couple of weeks i was in London hacking into the urban algorithm
to reveal the vernacular expressions found in its residual soup— casting
spells and splintering material realities to test their substance.

I collected materials that have stood the test of time, and transformed
their functions and cognitive perceptions with the slightest low tech
interventions— by curving , folding , and sometimes cutting. During my
time at Raven Row’s Rebeccas flat i was cooking this work— a residual soup
that assembles different times, contexts and realities while aproaching
the building process from an inexpensive, self suficient and post-development
approach— opposing consumer society and challenging current production methods.

The sofás, tables and lamps are playful, intuitive and resourceful.
If you visit the exhibition i invite u to use them ( ˘ ³˘)♡

Chronoplasticity or How to Eat a Rolex


Curated by Lars Bang Larsen and Juan Pablo Garcia Sossa


The works in Chronoplasticity attempt to fold or stretch time. They ask
what and how histories should be told, and consider new conceptions of
the ‘historical’, connecting the no-longer to the not-yet. Big events
and political struggles of the last half century echo in the show, and
many works speak to the tension between the personal and larger surrounding
forces. Plasticity can also relate to the body, and its shape-giving or
mark-taking encounter with something else.

On three floors of Raven Row, disparate positions are mapped out through
the work of thirteen artists and one collective, selected by writer and
theorist Lars Bang Larsen. In the top floor flat, itself a time warp,
Bang Larsen has invited curator Juan Pablo García Sossa to make another
exhibition. García Sossa has in turn invited fourteen artists and groups
from the network of his ongoing research project Futura Trōpica for a show
titled How to Eat a Rolex.
In November, the Venom Zine Library, an archive of BIPOC zines assembled
by Maya Acharya and Janna Aldaraji, will open on the top floor.

Bang Larsen’s selection of artists traverses geographies and temporalities.
Sophie Podolski’s drawings from the late 1960s reimagine the nervous system,
Adriana Knouf mixes with lichen to travel into space, Anna Daučíková considers
the liminal body and Emanuel Almborg studies the social behaviour of babies.
Öyvind Fahlström conjures the garden of his childhood to decry
the present and usher in a better future. Textiles by Safia Farhat, Nelly
Sethna and Synnøve Anker Aurdal reclaim cultural forms eclipsed by
colonialism, while the embroideries of Zapantera Negra – a collaboration
between a Zapatista collective and Emory Douglas, former Minister of Culture
of the Black Panther Party – use traditional crafts to negotiate the idea
of revolution. Dierk Schmidt uses painting to record the climate emergency
as a continuation of colonial
expropriation, and Juan Pérez
Agirregoikoa’s drawings tell of Fascism’s abuses through his family
history. P. Staff refracts images through a trans poetics, John Davidsen’s
roses concentrate cycles of life and death, and Anu Ramdas has practiced
clairvoyance on a residency in Raven Row, to channel its energies into a
new series of drawings.

Artists in How to Eat a Rolex include Aarati Akkapeddi, Aycoobo,
Kathleen Bomani, Javier Guzmán Cervantes--ex soup, Gabriel Chaile,
Stephanie Comilang & Simon Speiser, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Sarah Kazmi,
Marcos Kueh, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Mwana & Latedjou,Paola Torres Núñez
del Prado, Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín, and Moisés Horta Valenzuela – 𝔥𝔢𝔵𝔬𝔯𝔠𝔦𝔰𝔪𝔬𝔰.

Link to galleries website

     <--ATRAS