Daniel Schwarz
in Chandler
EXHIBIT
The Mexico–United States Border
Across from Cantine du Chenail | 1 Rue de la Plage | Chandler
Daniel Schwarz, New York (United States) | danielschwarz.cc
The Mexico–United States Border reduces to a scale amenable to the eye the immense border separating the U.S.A. and Mexico. The route of some 3,000 kilometers, reaching from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, can be found here at our feet, with its topography compressed by way of Google Maps satellite imagery. The bodies of water, the deserts and the urban areas follow one another uninterruptedly in a continuous plotting, one that contrasts ironically with the current closing of borders and the complexity – the impossibility, even – of passing through this territory for a great many people.
Daniel Schwarz has used digital tools and data to create a physical image of a vaguely familiar geography, shot through with political issues that nevertheless remain invisible to the naked eye. With this mapping he brings a critical gaze to bear on present-day political and social crises by exploring current systems of recording and surveillance. At the heart of the Gaspesian landscape he makes palpable, without naming them, the mass violence, the cracks and the tensions on the U.S.–Mexican border. An act as simple as it is monumental is being performed here in order to understand the world and the chaos that runs through it.
EXHIBIT AT RENCONTRES
The Mexico–United States Border
A German artist based in New York, Daniel Schwarz uses photography and surveillance devices to show control structures and the underlying powers that shape our relationship with regions, here and elsewhere.
Daniel Schwarz’s work has been presented in Europe, including at the 9th Berlin Biennale and at the 70th Venice Film Festival. He has exhibited in a number of museums and institutions in the United States, such as the Nevada Museum of Art, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MassMoCA) and the Goethe-Institut in Washington, DC. In Canada he has been part of the exhibit Signs of Passage at the National Gallery of Canada.
Denouncing the lines and faults of chaos
CHAOS denounces the bankruptcies of a present fragmented by conflicts. It reveals the faults that give shape to places and that affect populations, notably through borders, architecture or military zones: Youri Cayron and Romain Rivalan in Palestine; Debi Cornwall at the Guantánamo Bay military detention center; Nadav Kander in Russia and Kazakhstan; or Daniel Schwarz and Andreas Rutkauskas along the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada.