The GNO (Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario) welcomes the Z'otz* Collective, which will create a new ephemeral mural on of the gallery's indoor walls during the Up Here music and public art festival.
Evicted from the Anthill opens at GNO Aug. 19 (the opening reception is at 4 p.m. that day) and runs until Sept. 28.
Working together since 2004, the members of the Z'otz* Collective collaboratively catalogue the fantastical hybrid fauna that inhabits their shared dreamscape.
Their co-operative drawings depict a wide range of often-coalescing creatures. The limbs of mammalian quadrupeds fluidly converge with clawed birds’ feet, tree trunks or even a naked human foot.
When built structures appear, they are almost always smaller than most of the living organisms on display, as if to suggest moving into urban environments requires a shrinking of the physical self—or simply to suggest that cities and towns are themselves outgrowths of the body, extensions of ourselves.
The co-operative process embraced by the Z’otz* members – Nahúm Flores, Erik Jerezano, and Ilyana Martínez can itself be likened to the composite beasts they so seamlessly illustrate.
As playfully described by Mark Laliberte in his catalogue text for a past Z'otz* exhibition, “[an] amorphous, unbounded, six-armed being manifests in their studio as they play-and-work as one, like the spirit of an old god invoked.”
If the elaborate creatures populating the world of Z’otz* are the result of playful work, they are not necessarily jubilant or joyful themselves. Rather, their postures speak to a kind of silent resilience or sustained reaching. Many of the larger bodies are in positions of disequilibrium, limbs outstretched to connect with their own disparate parts.
Through their work, Z'otz* make visible the wondrously convoluted and mystifying relationships that bind all living organisms together.
Visit GNO's website for more information.
