Pepo Salazar
Pepo Salazar
Pepo Salazar
Pepo Salazar
Amsterdam, 11 Mar - 15 Apr '06
'Ritch bitch with stinking slit /
sits on slim kid's stiff dick /
Drink and lick / Think a hit.'
Pepo Salazar (Vitoria Gastéis, Basque Country, 1972).
Since 1990 Salazar has been working on videoperformance, video, sound, drawing, installation and photography. In his work Salazar spectacularly twists and manipulates concepts from their etymological base.
Concepts that historically had a utopic and subversive connotation are metamorphosed completely through the language of the media and what possibilities of persuasion these new meanings have. The result of this mutations is a collection of depoliticised images, words and strategies adapted to neoliberal ideology and marketing.
In his work Salazar tries to show and criticise these aspects and includes elements that belong to the artistic sphere, to subversive positions found on the fringe of politics, to the operative capacity of cultural projects in a society which definitely does not understand complex political language.
On a visual level, the pieces show a space in which a performance has taken place (the performance can be seen on a video as part of the piece) where there are backdrops, merchandising goods related to the field of music, stages lighting, reflective displays, stage lighting, screensavers where you can see the machinery that makes them work, individuals pushed to extremes by their idols, potential weapons in the form of iron piping, fire extinguishers, chains etc. that are talking about the destructive process in the act of consuming, neon lights with hidden messages, deafening music as well as babbling recitals and guttural simultaneous poems.