Published by Gabriel Rico, 2015
Printed and produced in Mexico
Recycled 100 bond paper, Carnival Linen Red soft cover, printed on Risograph RZ390, 115 pages
First edition, limited to 400 copies
Signed by the artist
Featuring text by: Texts by Octavio Abúndez, Lorena Peña Brito, Paulina Ascencio, Fracisco Curro Borrego, Jose Dávila
Each book was shot by Gabriel Rico with a ball bearing gun piercing the cover and approximately the first 30 pages.
Artist Statement for B@V
B @ V is a project based on the observation of aesthetics of a violent act leading its results in creating art pieces. Violence is understood here as an action that modifies or compromises a stable state in the space-time through matter or energy. As it happens in spontaneous symmetry breaking, a process from which new particles are created or also on the formation of a singularity seen as the maximum condensation of matter in a point, on the verge of exploding: the prelude of the Big Bang.
The exhibition is an analysis of the historical facts of “direct violence” oriented to the creation of artworks linked to “cultural violence”, according to the concepts of the sociologist Johan Galtung. The association of violence with negative concepts like evil, malice, ugliness, etc., is questioned to understand it rather as an integral and necessary part of reality.
Thus, it is proposed to demonstrate the beauty in violence (not of violence) through the observation of violent historical facts in recent history; some so important that have compromised the lives of thousands of people or other more modest like a solitary detonation, with no more apparent side effects than breaking the silence at night.