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Opening reception: Friday, October 19 @ 8PM
Every five seconds the same scenario repeats itself. Every five seconds each worker repeats the same action. Every five seconds for ten hours a day.
Access Gallery is pleased to present Juan Zavaleta’s Slaughterhouse and The Souls of God. Violence, eroticism, the hiding of death, and how we represent these concepts in our morals, values and laws have been at the forefront of his practice, and as such, Zavaleta was challenged when presented with an opportunity to work in the kill floor area of one of the biggest meat processing plants in the world. Slaughterhouse and The Souls of God are two works that arose out of Zavaleta’
s two years of employment in the meat processing plant, and subsequent mental and physical breakdown.
For the past fifteen years, Juan Zavaleta has been working on projects that deal with human behavior and conduct, specifically our tendency to repeat ourselves to our detriment. Throughout the 1990s, he was a member of SEMEFO, the Mexican collective of artists that investigates the aesthetics of death through disturbing sculptural installations.
Juan Zavaleta is an artist and former member of SEMEFO, the Mexican collective active in the 1990’s whose performances and installations dealt with death and violence. This is his first exhibition in Vancouver. He currently resides in Brandon, Manitoba.