Manuel Minch conceives the exhibition Cargo as a group of material translations of the traces that can appear in the different processes of transit. The exhibition is formed by various marks and codes that identify different social contexts in the spaces, infrastructures and the networks of logistics and industrial displacement of goods.
These traces leave a record of human presence in the networks of goods transport, referring to contexts of subalternity of the working sectors within the capitalist machine, mainly within the scheme of delocalization that constitutes the system of production and sale in the new market structures. These contexts of vulnerabilization of the working class have been translated into processes of acceleration and hegemonization of moral behaviors that undermine other labor sectors instituted as replicas of the transport network. This is the case of the uberification of the service sector, the fragility of the global cultural sector or the pathologization of anxiety and work stress.
Minch offers a genealogical reading of traces in mercantile displacements through history. This connects the appearance of cultural practices on the railroad lines since the nineteenth century to contemporary approaches produced in the same contexts. Minch appeals to hobo culture (as a set of codes, languages and ethics specific to the vagabondage of itinerant workers since the Great Depression in the USA) and to the recognition codes of the monikers (signatures and logos of self-referential presence on the freight cars of railway lines). Similarly, the artist refers to the attempts that seek to evidence a narrative mark in the spaces of displacement, such as graffiti on trains or tags in urban spaces- both part of the social and popular culture since the late seventies with a focus on the marginalized neighborhoods of large cities.
The exhibition presented by the artist from Santander at Juan Silió Gallery focuses on the traces that humans leave behind when transiting. Not only as allegorical marks of their own identity, but also as chronological contingencies, as traces that highlight the contact of social in the same space, but in different times. – Simultaneously, Minch, who is also attentive to how globalized space becomes chimerical, proposes forms of subversion of the same models he analyzes. For example, the piece Moniker (2021), which can be seen in the gallery, is processually composed of an image subordinated to the flow of the global market. To achieve this, each of the parts that form the installation is intended to be attached to different containers of goods, entering into the flow of trade and causing a deformation of the image itself according to global transport routes. In this way the composed image encompasses the maximum possible territory, while in its advance it proposes a countercultural distribution mechanism that takes advantage of the very resources stipulated by the logistical dynamics of transportation.
Manuel Minch transforms on heavy matter the tensions that occur in the superstructure of the capitalist market, highlighting the evidence of a social order that is generated in specific contexts and replicated over time. His proposal is fully logical, tending to reveal our constant contact with the problematic issues portrayed descriptively in his work. The translation is accurate, coming to propose counter-activation mechanisms as part of his research and offering a situated analysis of the lived experiences behind the graphic and symbolic traces that appear in the pieces that make up this exhibition.
Text: Álvaro Porras Soriano.
CARGO
12 June – 31 July, 2021
Manuel Minch
Galería Juan Silió
C/ Doctor Fourquet, 20. 28012 Madrid
Opening Hours:
Tuesday – Friday
11AM – 7PM
Saturday
11AM – 2PM