90 MARCH 2016
by Raphael Rubinstein
NOMADIC
GAMES
The playful images of animals and toys
inMiguelAngelRíos’svideosalludetocomplex
social realities, offering oblique reflections on
violence and poverty in Latin A merica.
RAPHAEL
RUBINSTEIN is an
A.i.A.contributing
editor.
Miguel Angel
Ríos:Piedras
Blancas(White
Rocks), 2014,
video,5minutes.
Courtesy Arizona
State University
Art Museum,
Te m p e.
THE FIRST THINGthat Miguel Angel Ríos did when
installation began for “Landlocked,” the survey of his work
on view last fall at the Arizona State University Art Museum
in Tempe, was to pick up a paintbrush and write in large
cursive script the phrase “get lost” on a long wall at the show’s
entrance. If some oversensitive visitor took this as a gesture
of dismissal (as in, “get lost, I don’t want to see you”) he or
she would have been guilty of a misreading. Instead, the
Argentine-born artist’s statement was a concise suggestion
on how to approach the show: “get lost” as in “lose yourself,”
“stray into unknown territory,” “wander for a while.”he
phrase also seemed to be the artist’s exhortation to himself as
he and curator Julio Morales embarked on arranging a tightly
packed display of over 300 drawings, photographs and docu-
ments on the four walls of a large gallery. his wraparound
installation was a perfect prelude to the exhibition’s core—a
darkened gallery on a lowerloor where visitors could view
projections of 10 of Ríos’s videos. While “Landlocked,” which
the museum described as theirst survey of the artist’s videos,
didn’t include any of the pleated-map wall reliefs that Ríos
(b. 1943) gained attention with in the 1990s, the show never-
theless ofered an efective introduction to his artistic universe,in which the often brutal realities of Latin American society
are embodied in a distinctive combination of Post-Minimalist
form and condensed, wordless cinematic narrative.
Even without the artist’s advice, it was impossible not to
go astray while looking at the densely hung assembly in the
irst gallery. Although the ensemble was (by design) over-
whelming and disorienting, it made one thing perfectly clear:
Ríos is an artist with a generous and restless imagination who
revels in the practice of drawing. he installation featured
drawings made with graphite, ink or charcoal on everything
from thick watercolor stock to paper towels to photo mailers.
here were also collages, ilm stills, landscape paintings, elabo-
rately cut-up paper works, color photocopies, photomontages
and large photographs (one displayed on a lightbox). Tucked
away here and there were a few drawings made directly on the
wall (one depicting an eye secreting a tear), two plastic gloves
(one sporting the phrase “agarrame si puedes,” which can be
translated as “hold me if you can”) and a cardboard machine
gun with the words “we trust” stenciled onto it (which could
be read as an acknowledgement of narco power in Mexico
or a comment on gun worship in the U.S.). Nearly all of the
imagery related to the videos in the show, as did some spin-