Often arresting photographs, paintings and prints by some of England’s best known living artists are showing until February at the University of Guadalajara’s elegant art museum, located at Avenida Juarez and Enrique Diaz de Leon. Meanwhile, the Cabañas Institute and Ex Convento are also hosting show British artists.
Perhaps the best known of the trio is David Hockney, whose series of imaginative, engravings that illustrate poems and fairy tales fills several salons.
Painter George Blacklock was the only one of the three Brits who was on hand for the opening of the shows this week and he provided animated insight into his and cinematographer/actor Gary Oldman’s work. The two of them frequently collaborate, although their work at MUSA is shown in separate, adjacent salons.
For me, the highlight of the three shows was Oldman’s work, a collection of large-format, panoramic, black-and-white photos taken in New Mexico, Europe and other locations. The pieces depicting New Mexico waste spaces (dumps, deserts and, believe it or not, parking lots) were breathtaking. Oldman, of course, is known for his lead acting roles as Dracula and Beethoven and as supporting characters in Batman films, among others.
“George Blacklock/Gary Oldman, Slipping Glimpsers” and “David Hockney, Words and Pictures” show at University of Guadalajara’s Museo de las Artes until February. Free entrance. Avenida Juarez 975 near the Expiatorio church and plaza. Open daily 10 a.m.-6 p.m. (33) 3134-1664, www.musa.udg.mx.
Two other exhibits featuring British artists are also showing in Guadalajara. The Ex Convento del Carmen is hosting Cholombianos, featuring photographs and research done by Amanda Watkins into the social phenomenon in the state of Nuevo Leon in which young people fuse the traditional music of Monterrey with Colombian cumbias to create their own style of life.
Meanwhile, the Cabañas Cultural Institute is showing works by David Shrigley, a British artist known for his humorous cartoons and compositions that take on the inconsequential, the bizarre, and the disquieting elements of everyday life.