Horacio Cadzco (México D.F. 1979)

Horacio Cadzco
THE DESTRUCTION OF A SUIT

THE MULTI-SENSORY experience of Mexican artist Horacio Cadzco's solo exhibition "The Destruction of a Suit" at JAUS Gallery is a new take on the social contract we all make with each other, the process of living, growth and death, and art we are only rarely able to call metaphysical. Cadzco's work can easily be categorized as a performance, documented through photographs, video, drawings, text and what remains of the suit itself. The premise strikes one as an act of young male bravado, but this later dissolves into a reflection on ecology, adaptation and temporality. The work becomes an aesthetic demonstration of the human condition, and of being alive in the world in the Hegelian sense during our brief encounter with material forces.

In 2005-2006, Cadzco spent 365 continuous days living in his suit. He never took it off, never cut his hair or his nails, and never bathed during that one year. The project can be seen as an homage to performance artist Tehching Hsieh, who undertook his own transformative "One Year Performances" between 1986 and 1999.

Cadzco's white suit cost him $700, and he was a dashing, handsome example of masculinity in it. This moment is documented in video and through something akin to fashion photography, though with a minimalist background. Over the course of the year, Cadzco's daily experiences began to take their toll on the threads, and the suit became stained with bodily fluids, torn and remarkably malodorous. Select months later are documented through playful fashionista photographs as Cadzco's minimalism becomes process art. The fact that Cadzco doesn't lose his sex appeal brings to mind the YouTube sensation of China's Xi Le Ge ("Brother Sharp") — "the world's most handsome homeless man," who has recently appeared in fashion shoots and even gotten marriage proposals based on his hard, disheveled chic.

To complete his project Cadzco lived in a small hotel room in Mexico City, which he also used as his studio to document his psychological process of deterioration and disheartenment as those who had invested in his ??youthful élan their hopes for the future soon projected onto him an abject idea of the subhuman. Approval and welcome became loathing, and he was even beaten up in the street while police looked on, doing nothing as kids battered him with kicks and verbal abuse. Cadzco's humanity not only survived this experience but also the sensationalistic reception later of the work on Univision's "Primer Impacto" and "Sábado Gigante."

The show at JAUS is the first opportunity to see Cadzco's complete project. The artist, present for the opening, confessed that the work brought on a trauma, but not as expected. Rather, Cadzco says the moment of dis-inhabiting his suit, which had become his home and second skin, forever changed him. The fear of stepping into the shower and losing the self that had been accreted and conjoined to the urban environment as much as to the suit itself is probably the best point of meditation on this ambitious, thoughtful work of art.

- Carrie Paterson

ARTILLERY MAG.
Killer Text on Art
mar/apr 2011
vol 5 issue 4


Horacio Cadzco (México D.F. 1979)

"Siempre me ha angustiado lo transitorio de las cosas, la inestabilidad de los hechos y de nuestras convicciones. No creo en el "sano juicio", en el "buen gusto", ni en el "buen comportamiento". Tener la seguridad de pertenecer, creer en la permanencia de aquello que hoy tal vez nos pertenece y presumir de ello, siempre me ha parecido absurdo y hasta gracioso por ridículo.

Cuando comencé a desarrollar mi trabajo lo hice desde la emoción y la sensación, pues dentro de lo que se considera normal o bello, me parece que se esconde lo banal y lo más vulnerable de nosotros mismos.

Represento y reutilizo lo ordinario para esconder o develar mis propios pensamientos en conflicto, buscando sean conocidos y aceptados. Deseo encontrar orden y balance en emociones contradictorias. Corromper la "normalidad" presente en un hecho o en un pensamiento, me divierte tanto como el final inesperado de un chiste. Por ejemplo, alterando el valor del cuerpo o equiparándolo con objetos inútiles o de uso temporal. Trabajo con esculturas, dibujos o acciones que contrastan con las cosas más comunes (objetos o situaciones), y mis propias emociones en relación con la vida y con la muerte.

Me interesan las características que distinguen a determinadas clases sociales o agrupaciones culturales (los estereotipos, la idea del bien, las normas de conducta, los hábitos de higiene, los rituales contemporáneos de belleza y los rituales que ejercitan la conciencia espiritual o la participación en la comunidad) porque éstas nos involucran en situaciones específicas las cuales tienen forma, características propias, son hechos, sucesos que dejan a su paso rastros, materiales o simbólicos.

Me motivan las situaciones relacionadas con lo sucio, lo impropio, el fin de las cosas, el cuerpo abierto y lo salvaje. He trabajado con desechos corporales y me he involucrado minuciosamente en sus peculiares procesos: escupir constantemente sobre un espejo para opacarlo, recolectar saliva y orina para congelarla en bloques, recolectar mocos y moldearlos para formar racimos de frutas y moscas, o juntar mis propios pellejos para hacer un racimo de flores.

He trabajado con uñas, costras, cabello, dientes, etc. para hacer pequeños ensamblajes y he registrado mis procesos de cicatrización para formar tapices ornamentales. He registrado en fotografía y en video mis "malos comportamientos": arrastrarme por las calles, lamer el piso, quemarme y reventarme las ámpulas, no bañarme, no cambiarme de ropa, sentarme en un restaurante "distinguido", jugar con la comida y comer groseramente mientras construyo una escultura..."
H.C.