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You are here: Home / LACE / 2000-2004 / A Morir (’til Death)

A Morir (’til Death)


October 15 – December 10, 2004

A Morir (’til Death) by Miguel Angel Rios in collaboration with Rafael Ortega will consist of a three-channel video installation shot in Tepoztlan, Mexico; the work focuses on a popular street game called “trompos” that involves spinning tops. Viewed from multiple perspectives, the video begins with one spinning top and culminates in a cacophonous profusion of numerous tops in a single game that includes thirty of the most skilled players in town, aged 14 to 50. Through the documentation of this simple scenario, dynamics of competition, invasion and territorialism are signaled both visually and aurally. The lyrical movement of the tops is accompanied by their intense, sycopating sound. Confined within a white grid painted on asphalt, the masses speak to both space and subjectivity. The relative violence is complicated by the game’s high formality and beauty. A Morir (’til Death) negotiates both politics and poetics in abstracting narrative about urban sprawl, congestion, and war. This exhibition, organized by curator Lauri Firstenberg, Assistant Director/Curator of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, marks the debut of Rios’s work to Los Angeles audiences.

Spanning close to three decades, Rios’s international art career recently includes one-person exhibitions at Media Gallery at the Apeejay Techno Park, South of New Delhi, India (2004); Artspace, Sidney, Australia (2004); White Box, New York (2004); and group exhibitions at Gallery Noire, Basel Art Unlimited, Basel (2004); Artists Space, New York (2003); Sidney Biannale, Sydney, Australia (2002); P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2001); among many others, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1998). Born in 1953 in Catamarca, Argentina, Rios lives and works in New York City.

Related Events

15 October
Lecture by artist Miguel Angel Rios

5 November
Lecture by Bill Kelley Jr., educator, independent creator, and theorist.

Filed Under: 2000-2004, Exhibition, Installation, LACE, Video Tagged With: 2004, A Morir ('til Death), Exhibition, installation, Lauri Firstenberg, lecture, Miguel Angel Rios, Rafael Ortega, Video

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Among them was Anna Homler (@homlerian), who will be performing with Jeff Schwartz and David Javelosa (@microwave_buddha) during “ENDURANCE” next Sunday, May 17. 

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LAABF (@printedmatter_artbookfairs) features artists and collectives, small presses, institutions, galleries, and much more. Check out their website for a full calendar of events. We hope to see you there! @printedmatterinc
Happening May 16 and 17, “ENDURANCE” presents Happening May 16 and 17, “ENDURANCE” presents performance art and interdisciplinary work by elder artists. 🔶 

Pictured here is “BLACK GOLD/FEVER,” a 2011 multi-media performance by Ulysses Jenkins. The performance called back to the artist’s 1980 piece, also performed at LACE, entitled “Columbus Day: a doggerel.” Utilizing dance, video projections, music, and spoken word, “BLACK GOLD/FEVER” measured the toll placed upon the environment and Indigenous peoples. 

See Ulysses Jenkins and the Dark Bob as part of “ENDURANCE.” This event is free to attend with RSVP. Tickets are going quickly, and LACE has created a wait list to accommodate interest. Click the link in our bio for more information. 

Please note: Because seating is very limited for this program, we ask that if you can no longer attend, you release your ticket so someone else may attend. Performance line-up subject to change.
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