“THE LOVE MACHINE” | MEXICO CITY
Museo Universitario de Arte Contempor\u00e1neo (MUAC)<\/h2>\r\n\r\n

A collaboration between Manuel Felgu\u00e9rez and P\u00e1ramo.<\/h3>\r\n\r\n

P\u00e1ramo is honored to participate in\u00a0Trajectories<\/em>, the exhibition presented by Museo Universitario de Arte Contempor\u00e1neo (MUAC) to celebrate the life and work of Manuel Felgu\u00e9rez (Zacatecas, 1928), a key figure in the development of contemporary art in Mexico. Under the artist\u2019s supervision, P\u00e1ramo built a reproduction of\u00a0La m\u00e1quina del deseo<\/em>\u00a0[The love machine], now exhibited at MUAC, in Mexico City.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

The original piece was built in 1973 by Felgu\u00e9rez as a request from chilean artist, writer and filmmaker, Alejandro Jodorowsky, who used it for his cult film\u00a0La Monta\u00f1a Sagrada<\/em>\u00a0[The Holy Mountain]. It was a mobile piece with a geometric structure which functioned in the movie as a transgressive device. Both the machine and its mockup were lost after the shooting.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

La m\u00e1quina del deseo<\/em>\u00a0was reactivated 45 years later \u2013for the first time in Mexico\u2013 for its presentation at Felgu\u00e9rez solo exhibition at P\u00e1ramo, in March 2018. Enrique Nu\u00f1o, museographer and artist (member of Gabinete Homo Extraterrestre), designed the new mockup and built the piece\u2019s reproduction in collaboration with Astrid Abbadie.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

In a conversation with Pilar Garc\u00eda,\u00a0 the curator of\u00a0Trajectories<\/em>,\u00a0 Felgu\u00e9rez explains the context in which he created the original piece. Jodorowsky had conceived an \u201cart factory\u201d for the movie and he commissioned the mexican plastic artist to create a fake art collection. Later came the invention of\u00a0La m\u00e1quina del deseo<\/em>, as Felgu\u00e9rez himself recounts:<\/p>\r\n\r\n

\u201cWe had an American model who had come to do the film and he said, \u2018Man, why don\u2019t you have this beautiful woman turn a machine on?\u2019 \u2018What should we do?\u2019 \u2018Whatever you want,\u2019 he said. He was very laid-back, he trusted me. But we didn\u2019t have the money or the parts to make a kinetic machine\u2014kineticism was in vogue at the time. The idea was to build a machine that would start off as a cube, and as it was turned on by a plastic phallus, it would get bigger. Since we didn\u2019t have the motors to make this happen, the crew formed part of the device. \u2018Come on guys, move this piece, raise it up\u2019. A group of six or seven strong men began to do all the movements by hand. And so we went from a machine that got bigger on its own to doing everything by hand. Everything was plastic. I made a model out of cardboard boxes, to see how it would transform. All of the girl\u2019s movements were directed by Alejandro, though. \u2018Let\u2019s see, move over here, turn around, now show off your body\u2019. It was all directed by him, but it was based around the machine. It came first, and then the scene was built around it. To finish it off, there was a little machine that squirted water. The little machine came out from below and came all over the set. That\u2019s the whole story. For us, it was pure laughter, pure fun [\u2026]\u2019<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n

Trajectories<\/em>, by Manuel Felgu\u00e9rez, is open at MUAC from December 7, 2019 to May 10, 2020.<\/p>\r\n\r\nImages: MUAC, P\u00e1ramo and\u00a0The holy mountain\r\n<\/em>1-3: Views of\u00a0Trajectories<\/em>, MUAC, 2020\r\n4-6:\u00a0La m\u00e1quina del deseo<\/em>\u00a0at P\u00e1ramo, 2018\r\n7-8:\u00a0Stills from the film\u00a0The holy mountain,<\/em>\u00a0by Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973 <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\t <\/div>\n\t \t<\/div>\n\t\t <\/div>\n\t \n\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Under Manuel Felgu\u00e9rez’s supervision, P\u00e1ramo built a reproduction of ‘La m\u00e1quina del deseo’ [The love machine], now exhibited at Museo Universitario de Arte Contempor\u00e1neo (MUAC) in Mexico City. The original piece was built in 1973 by Felgu\u00e9rez as a request from chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, who used it as a transgressive device in his cult film ‘La monta\u00f1a sagrada’ [The holy mountain].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1195,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"yoast_head":"\n