FAENA: Aprendiendo a beber con John Baldessari / Learning to Drink with John Baldessari

 

 

 

 

Bar El Oso Negro, Guadalajara, MX

July, 2018

 

 

 

FAENA is:

Napoleón Aguilera, Aldo Álvareztostado, Paulina Ascencio, Ramiro Ávila, Daniela Ramírez, Bruno Viruete

 

 

We are five agents that came from different disciplines: visual arts, architecture, and humanities. We named our workgroup FAENA, which means doing something that requires physical or mental work. 

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For this project, we met once a week for several months in a local canteen, El Oso Negro (The Black Bear). The 75 year-old bar is located in the heart of one of the most traditional neighborhoods in Guadalajara, and it is as picturesque as it sounds.

 

In 2017, Jumex Museum in Mexico City organized a major survey of the work of John Baldessari. It was called Learning to Read with John Baldessari.

 

Triggered by this exhibition, we worked in an exercise we called Learning to Drink with John Baldessari, where we took Baldessari’s list of class assignments to develop and interpret in the context of the bar. We had an open night and invited a bunch of friends to hang with us at El Oso Negro.