These seven works are part of the series Chromosome Damage, composed of more than one hundred drawings of anthropomorphic figures, apparently female, that seem to be part human, part divine, and part animal. The title of the series comes from a song of the same name by Chrome, an experimental rock group from San Francisco.
The takes another look at the images and iconographic motifs of sculptures and Mexican archaeological remains, especially of the deities Coatlicue, Tlaltecuhtli, and Cihuacoatl. All three are female goddesses of the earth, embodying dual symbols of death and sacrifice, fertility and life. The Mexica deities were made up of dualities between origin and destruction, fundamental principles of a culture based on cycles between life and death, in which sacrifice represented the guarantee of life and the natural order. The brown paper, the red, brown, and yellow tones of the pieces refer precisely to this telluric quality.
The works show unfinished representations in movement that twist and unfold, showing different parts of the body. Some seem to have been captured in a process of metamorphosis, charged with energy and with an overwhelming force capable of creating, like the Mexica deities, the entire universe. In the artist's words, "these drawings seek a way to represent how the universe is deformed, how matter dissolves and twists, and then recombines before our eyes."
The representations of Chromosome Damage seem to be linked to each other, holding a dialogue with jumps in time, based on allusions to Mexica archeology, the work of Jose Clemente Orozco, Henri Matisse, Francis Bacon. and Willem de Kooning. The result is a series of disturbing drawings where the divine and the prosaic, the sensual and the grotesque merge into the same image.
EKA, December 2019
https://drawingroom.org.uk/exhibitions/Chromosome-Damage
https://drawingroom.org.uk/shop/chromosome-damage-daniel-guzman
https://www.yaconic.com/daniel-guzman/
https://www.tierraadentro.cultura.gob.mx/daniel-guzman-la-eterna-transformacion-de-la-figura/
These seven works are part of the series Chromosome Damage, composed of more than one hundred drawings of anthropomorphic figures, apparently female, that seem to be part human, part divine, and part animal. The title of the series comes from a song of the same name by Chrome, an experimental rock group from San Francisco.
