Neurotic Playground: Symptoms of Distress, Tension and Irritability

With the presence of Leonardo Ramírez (artist and curator) and Lothar Müller (artist and director of Kunsthaus Santa Fé)

And with the presence of Carlos P, Consul General of Mexico in Toronto and Gerardo Ochoa Sandy, Cultural Attaché, both from the Consulate General of Mexico, Toronto

Performances by LoBil and Pam Patterson, July 3, 7 pm
Runs through August 9

Red Head Gallery is pleased to present

Neurotic Playground: Symptoms of Distress, Tension and Irritability
an exhibition by artists from

Kunsthaus Santa Fé Gallery in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico:

Oscar Aguirre, Tania Candiani, Liliam Domínguez, Daniela Edburg, Rocío Gordillo,
Lothar Müller, Ana Quiroz, Leonardo Ramírez, Rafael Rodríguez

Curated by Ana Quiroz and Leonardo Ramírez

The Red Head Gallery has initiated a collaboration with the contemporary art gallery Kunsthaus Santa Fé to create an exchange between the two venues, both run as artist collectives. Kunsthaus Santa Fé has been invited to exhibit a selection of their artists in Neurotic Playground, which opens July 2 and runs through to August 9, 2008. In turn, artists from the Red Head Gallery will travel to Mexico in February 2009 to exhibit their work at Kunsthaus' location in San Miguel de Allende, in an exhibition entitled Deviant Detours.

The first of the two exhibitions, Neurotic Playground, has been curated by Ana Quiroz and Leonardo Ramírez, and is based on the premise of neurotic boredom, a term used in psychoanalysis by authors such as Otto Fenichel. According to psychoanalytic theories, a disappearance of compulsive goals results in neurotic boredom. Thus, the bored person seeks an object that would help him find the missing goal. He knows that he wants something, but doesn't know what, except that he lacks a goal. Neurotic boredom, unlike apathy, generates symptoms of disquiet, tension and irritability.

Artist and curator Leonardo Ramírez writes: "the incorporation of progressively more infantile images Š into daily life has passed from an initial, moderate stage to one that is complex and overwhelming. Thus, issues such as death and violence become mere mechanisms defined by a certain aesthetic of video games or self-repairing fiction, of a strange belief that everything can be resolved without much complication, simply by watching the next episode of one's favourite television series, or by resetting the Nintendo or Xbox game." He continues by emphasizing that "these attitudes are created in suddenly large and silent environments, aseptic, luminous and recognizable, transformed into places that throb and breathe Š. A world in which the line separating reality from fiction curves back to consume itself; a life full of atrocious content in Technicolour."


The Red Head Gallery, 401 Richmond Street West #115, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 3A8,
Wed-Sat 12-5 pm
+info: 416-504-5654,
art@redheadgallery.org
www.redheadgallery.org