Exhibition Gallery JMV
Mexico City, 2011
About WH Scholz
Artes e Historia, Mexico, 2010
Exhibition Gallery Association of Art, Dresden, Germany, 2009
Exhibition Museum Chopo
Mexico City, 2005
Multimedia Dance Performance
Landscapes of Love
Documentary
Das Bild in mir / Image Inside
Fiction Film
Lost Wings / Verlorene Flügel
Documentary + Fiction Film
Shadow Seeker / Schattensucher
About WH Scholz
DNN, Dresden, Germany, 1994
Tepito - The Intelligent Labyrinth / Faces 2Sides / "Caras 2 Lados"
La Razón, México D.F., 17.07.2011
By Ernesto Lozano
The fierce neighborhood has a network, a social weaving of people that work every day. 90% belong to a space far from the conflicts and bad news the neighborhood generates.
The artist shows through his photographs the rational and emotional of people ; he makes visible the sensitive and the practical of each part, like a map of life.
The exhibition Faces 2 Sides (Caras 2 Lados), of the visual artist Wolfgang Scholz was opened in the gallery “José María Velasco”, at Peralvillo 55; which is easy to get to given the fact the Sunday bicycle route passes by two block away from the gallery . The exhibition is open till the 21st of august, and is free entrance.
Wolfgang Scholz is a German artist who works in multimedia and has lived in Mexico for the past 10 years, and is married to a Mexican dancer. He says he is grateful to be allowed to show the faces of “Tepito”’s inhabitants, in this show of divided faces, concept that he has been working on for the past twenty years”. He is surprised at “how open and amiable the people here (in Tepito, the so called fierce neighborhood) are”.
Taking as a starting point the psychological notion according to which one part of the brain determines the emotions, and the other that which is rational ( the recognizable and the hidden parts through the observation of a person). Wolfgang brings us close to recognizing the human face, inviting us to reinterpret it by looking at the deconstructed images of German faces , of people who have been close to him in Germany and people form Tepito.
Scholz tries to show the day and night , the sensible and the practical, the feminine and the masculine in each individual person, affirming that the face is a map that shows each individuals life-story, and tells us who the person is.
Faces –2 Sides is the gaze of a foreigner who looked into such a mythical place as is Tepito, the fierce neighborhood, attaining universal images from local faces, which he imbued with his personal seal. What resulted was fine and intelligent and daring anthropological work guided by his photographers hand.
The tip: Faces –2 sides : is completed with two short videos, that give an idea of Tepito’s context, they show people and situations, that try to show the laberynth and chaotic world it is.
La Razón speaks to Alfredo Matus, director of the José María Velasco Gallery and curator of the show.
Q: Why is Faces-2 Sides important? Because it is an artist that works with photography, art-objects, installation , video-art, and film making.
A: For this show we chose constructed photographic portraits that have been intervened digitally. Not only is the photograph constructed and manipulated, it also has set stages. The artist plays with the psychological idea that the sides of the two brain reveal emotions and the other the rational part. Wolfgang uses this idea as a metaphor from which he can go to divide the human face in two parts. One half he ‘clones’ in a mirror image to construct a face, the same he does with the other side, and then we have three faces: The real, and the two lesf and two right sides put together as described. The intention is to generate the emotional and the rational aspects of an individual. From here springs the project to “observe the face”. We all look at, ponder on things, but we seldom really observe.
Q: What does this idea of observing consist of?
A: In putting attention to details, understanding the other as an object. Scholz’s intention is that people reveal a bit of their lives’ history, that they reveal their character through the expressions he portrays.
Q: How did Wolfgang carry out the project?
A: Thanks to a year of field work . The intention initially of the project was to meet artists and closer friends of Germany, and we asked him to clone the idea so as to include such a special context as Tepito is. The project grew and got a new view as the artist got involved with the neighborhood and its people. The photographer not only got involved with the construction of portraits, but he got a sympathetic relation to the families and the people he worked with.
Q: How was the museography organized for the showing of Faces-2 Sides?
A: On one side we included the series of constructed portraits; on the other half of the space we showed the portraits of the people that the artist has created a nearness to while carrying out his investigations. Another part we have portraits that have a documentary value, which opposed to the constructed ones are in color and giving the person the priority, not only in the face, but the body language, the attitude, the personal attire; a complete image captured in a single shot. It is from here the title for the exhibition was chosen, using the term Faces –2 sides as a clue to what the neighborhood is: a labyrinth, full of complicated social nets, and difficulties to move through these nets of paths for which he one needs clues to get through- in his case to get to the people he wanted to take a picture of- such as in the Labyrinth of the Minotaur.
Q: What else is included in the exhibition?
A: There are videos with the idea to complete the statements by showing small scenes and situations which show the chaos , the labyrinth of the neighborhood. Labyrinth is the clue word for Wolfgang’s exhibition.
Q: What is the importance of the show for the people of Tepito?
A: It is important , because in the projects that we have done in this neighborhood, we keep trying to break the stereotypes. Finally Tepito is an emblematic sector of the “Chilango” (Mexico City) culture of Mexico City.
The red note, the yellow journalistic note, the scandalshave made this neighborhood a “scapegoat”, always mentioning it on TV, or in the news as a place of illegality. The sector has perhaps a 10% of crime; it doesn’t involve everybody. Tepito has a social network, of people that work every day, that live there; this is why the project has the intention of showing this other 90% of the population that make this place their own. It is a space that we know well, a place that is very lively, not just for commerce, but also for the people that do that commerce.
Q: Why did Tepito capture the artist
And have relations to the rest of the city in a special space.their illegal or legal issues, but because they are people that live. The arist in conscious that the city itself is a huge labyrinth in which there are several sub-labyrinths; nd tepito is a specific labyrinth.
“Wolfgang was interested in knowing Tepito’s inhabitants not just for their relation to legality or illegality, but rather as people that are living, that own a rational and an emotional side”
“To walk through the fierce neighborhood becomes something like a labyrinth of the Minotaur, that would need to filter out so as to discover the clues that will bring you to the people Wolfgang wanted to photograph”