Melanie Smith
Parres Cero, 2006
Melanie Smith (1965)
Parres Cero, 2006
16 mm film transferred to DVD, monitor
1 min 10 sec
Parres is a small town, somewhere off of the highway, between Mexico City and Cuernavaca. This anonymous town, neither recognizably Mexican or other, is the stage for Melanie Smith’s Parres works. These pieces explore the construction and breakdown of pictorial illusion, through the processes of painting and film. They point towards the symbolic space created by the self-reflexivity of the mediums. Installed in a provocative manner, each piece explores the disappearance or revealing of the visible world through transformative processes of reproduction; exploring the idea that the ability to conceal can be equally as powerful as the ability to reveal.