AZIZ + CUCHER

In the video installation You’re Welcome and I’m Sorry (2019, originally commissioned for MASS MoCA), elements of the carnivalesque signal the theatre of our global financial system. Within six flat-screens of various sizes,costumed characters in deconstructed power-suits dance and gesticulate across quasi-corporate locations,intertwined with images that evoke the spectre of white supremacy. The figures’ oration of financial formulasfeed into a multi-layered soundtrack, as visceral as the kaleidoscopic walls, rendered in colours of bank logos.The immersive quality of the work captures the ‘irrational forces that mould our political and economicsystems’.

Expanding on these themes and motifs, a series of new, mixed media paintings (2021—22) translates the kinetic energy of the absurd, suited figures to two-dimensional works on canvas. Satirising the complexity andmystification of the financial system, the costumed figures are here rendered in compositions of mesmerisingtextural and visual contrasts. The artworks’ meticulous material creation continues Aziz + Cucher’s interest inusing dense, pixelated surfaces as analogies for the pervasive information that floods contemporary life.

2022 marks the 30th anniversary of the artists’ collaboration and to celebrate this milestone La Fábrica Editions (Madrid) and Gazelli Art House are pleased to present XXX: Aziz + Cucher 1992—2022. Covering theartists’ entire career, this monograph will include 130 full colour reproductions of the work that the artistshave created together since 1992. Essays by independent curator Agustin Perez Rubio and cultural critic ArunaD’Souza will be featured, along with a conversation with pioneering digital artist Lynn Hershman Leeson.

Anthony Aziz (B. 1961, USA) and Sammy Cucher (B. 1958, Peru) have worked together as artistic duo Aziz + Cucher since 1992. Experimenting across a variety of media including digital imaging, sculpture, animation,and video-installation, their work is marked by a distinctive concern for technology and its impact on thehuman body, consciousness and society.

Regarded as innovators in the field of post-photography, Aziz + Cucher have long held a cross disciplinary conversation between the painterly and photographic. Not only were earlier series, such as Dystopia (1994-95),based on the conventions of portraiture established in the Renaissance, but their production involved a kindof electronic painting where pigment and paint were replaced by pixels and data. The dynamic relationshipbetween these two mediums tipped decisively towards the painterly in later series, such as Synaptic Bliss (2003-4)and Scenapse (2007-2013) where colour and line became key expressive elements.

More recent series have encompassed ideas of collective consciousness, political and social unrest, and the effects of technological mediation. Fascinated by the pictorial storytelling and exacting craftsmanship ofclassical weaving, Aziz + Cucher’s tapestry series Some People (2014-16) looks to evoke the senselessness andfutility of these ongoing conflicts and the anxiety of the historical moment we all inhabit.

Aziz + Cucher have been exhibited globally, notably at the 46th Venice Biennale, with works held in museum collections including: the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; TheNew School Art Collection, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; National Galleryof Australia. Based in Brooklyn, the artists are members of the Fine Arts faculty at Parsons School of Design(New York).