Miguel Calderón
Guest of Honor
2006
Courtesy the artist
Miguel Calderón
Guest of Honor
‘I’ve been working on experimental film on and off for about 15 years and have always felt a desire to make something completely narrative, so in this case making a narrative film is an experiment in itself for me. I generally compile stories from people that I find interesting — I ask them to tell me strange or strong experiences they have gone through and then I write a short story which interprets their account. The purpose of this is to make a series of shorts that one day will come together as a longer film.’
Miguel Calderón, June 2006
Miguel Calderón’s short 35mm film Guest of Honor follows a family who encounter a deer on a Sunday picnic excursion and adopt it as a domestic pet with bizarre and scatological consequences. Calderón has made installations, paintings — once installed in the movie The Royal Tenenbaums — sculptures, films and a TV-style soap opera. In The Disciple of Speed (2004), a film documenting the life of an upper-class Mexican woman with psychic powers who drives race cars on the professional circuit, Calderón reveals his ongoing preoccupations of class, culture and sexuality through an engaging, occasionally slapstick and always exhilarating trash aesthetic, focusing on the fantastic aspirations inherent in the everyday.
Miguel Calderón (b. 1971) is a Mexican artist based in Mexico City. Recent group exhibitions include ‘Ultra Baroque: Aspects of Post Latin American Art’, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2001), ‘In the Air: Projections of Mexico’, Guggenheim Museum, New York, and ‘Prometer no empobrece: arte contemporáneo mexicano’, Reina Sofía National Art Museum, Madrid (both 2005). Calderón has also recently shown in the Yokohama Triennial (2005), the Sharjah Biennial (2005) and the São Paulo Biennial (2004).
Miguel Calderón’s Guest of Honor was co-commissioned by Frieze Projects/LUX and shown daily during the fair in The Artists Cinema. This film toured UK cinemas, shown before main features, through the Independent Cinema Office.
