The Perfect Ever (or how oil discovered humans)
IN DEVELOPMENT
NGV x recess: Artist Film Program, Melbourne Now, NGV
Video, 2021-23
Ramirez reflects on this perceptual game by replacing an apparition of the Virgin Mary in 'Las Rosas del Milagro' ('The Miracle Roses', 1960) with an iconic reduction of the original Virgin image. Ramirez extends this strategy to other scenes, where he eliminates the dialogue in the source material to isolate the expressions of ‘awe’ performed by the actor, while incorporating a soundtrack. The result is an ambiguous and sinister mirage that points to the palpable yet comical darkness of a divinity briefly visiting earth.
Music by Bonnie Cummings.
Vampires of the Earth
IN DEVELOPMENT
MARS Gallery
Various mediums, 2023
Following this organising logic of undeadness, the show also employs mediums such as neon, which mimic the vampire’s cycle of awakeness and slumber, by requiring electricity same as this creature necessitates blood. While also also incorporating black reflective surfaces that allude to the vampire’s inability to gaze at its own reflection, suggesting the exploitation of fossil fuels are a mirror of our image. Finally, it mines wellness infographics to re-encode the messages of care culture with a death drive – as if infected by the dark gift of vampirism, in an ever state of multiplication.
The Conservatives
IN PRE DEVELOPMENT
Available For Opportunities
Video, 202X
This film shows the moment two white cis hetero lovers kiss for the first time, only to discover one of them carries a ‘sonic virus’ that distorts hearing upon the sharing of saliva. Located within the vampire genre, this work trades in the aesthetics of right wing extremism: a white man in his mid 20s, who unbeknown to his date is a white supremacist, touches lips with a white woman of similar age, who is a vampire. This encounter takes place in his apartment, where she slowly discovers objects that suggest the male kisser is a covert extremist. Once infected with the dark gift from the female kisser, he suffers from an extreme form of cognitive distortion, which manifests on the screen as an experimentation with sound and image. In ‘The Conservatives’, the vampire is a fascist ideology and transmission is radicalisation. Thus, the work purposely trades in a couple that epitomises the target of identity politics.
This work is based on Ramírez essay The Monstrous Kiss and Its Perversions, which looks at the history of kissing as a community practice in early Judeo-Christianity, where he discusses media that disrupts this legacy, by turning kissing into an act of division rather than union. The vampire’s bite epitomises this perversion as an osculation that inverts values of social harmony.
Snowflake
IN PRE DEVELOPMENT
Available For Opportunities
Various Medius, 202X
This project is motivated by Ramírez’ prose writing, which often incorporates pathos through a comical lens. Seeking to translate this creative senbility into his arts pratice, he began employing marbles for their ability to simultaneously convey humour and distress. It is also an opportunity to explore the melancholic dimension of his key interests, such as the gothic suffering associated with the vampire. While connecting it with his work in the area of cultural criticism.
The Monster Problem
IN PRE DEVELOPMENT
Available For Opportunities
Novella, Various Mediums , 202X
1) The manuscript is a series of chapters about a fictitious art critic and former gallery director, who returns to his hometown of Guadalajara after a period of diaspora. On the way to a local exhibition opening called The Monster Problem, a vampire bites him. Every chapter onwards recounts dangerous encounters with the underworld that continually frustrate his attempts to visit the exhibition. This plot is humorously framed by the artist kindly opening the exhibition for the critic at night, only to be stood up, in every chapter. The literary device of vampirism, with its avatar of immortality, is an opportunity to explore the criminal occurences that make Mexico one of the most dangerous countries in the world.
2) The exhibition component actualises The Monster Problem, the show that the critic fails to see in every chapter. The Monster Problem as a speculative installation is comprised of humorous objects that establish melancholic, adversarial and supernatural relationships in community with each other. Suspended in a condition of ambivalence, these works tease out the push and pull of two entities caught in a vampiric relationship. The materials further tease out the relationship between the Professional Managerial Class and arists.
The overall project humorously draws from Ramírez’ diverse living experiences in the artworld as an artist, critic and gallery director.