Added May 2, 2007
Didactic Creative Process, an exhibition by Federico Mendoza at Sweet Foray Gallery.
Federico Mendoza will present an exhibition that relates the arts to the values of culture through creative processes and education at large.
This is an ideal education where the teachers, parents, administrators, artists, politicians, the media and any profession can take responsibility as learners and educators. From the artist's point of view, little emphasis is made of the creative process in itself. The general public is almost always presented with a finished "product." This seems to have become the cultural norm. Expression is defined in terms of High Art Products or Popular Taste Products, Expensive Products or Cheap, with a recognized value or as anonymous and valueless. Didactic Creative Process is an opportunity for many to see the process through a series of visual, emotionally and intellectually interactive installations.
Federico Mendoza defines himself as a crazy, creative, semi-clandestine artist. He has worked in Europe as a self taught independent artist. In Australia he completed a fine arts degree and a graduate diploma in adult education. Federico in the past three or four years has been attempting to develop artistic installation works in universities, parks, libraries and even in unlikely places like suburban streets and the beach. The idea was to promote and assert the values of creativity from the maker directly to the public. The experience partially failed because of the amount of energy and frustration it took.
"It became a nightmare trying to deal with people," Federico said.
"Finally, I realized such a direct cultural project finally becoming forced onto the habitual structure of dealing with the same constraint as a more formal project. It has to be administered, organized, defined, and the whole thing has to be formally proposed and presented," he said.
Following the typical unwritten rules of conforming and adapting to particular social rituals, even if he happens to disagree, Federico says he now takes a more formal approach to his art.
Didactic Creative Process can be seen at Sweet Foray Gallery 5A 118 Main St Katoomba. September 7 to 17. Opening at 6pm, drinks and chat with the artist on Saturday at 3pm. Details 024782 4797.
Artist statement
Profile; I have a virus called; a.p.c.a.f. (A Passion for Creativity in All its Forms). As far my memory goes this virus has finished by installing itself in all my vital organs including my poor brain. Collaterally (as we call now the victim of ideology reinforcement), I have developed a strong allergy for the obliged social ritual of empty assumptions about the arts in general, this virus also at times produces a fever that prevent me to be polite sometimes in matters touching creativity. Even if as a person generally most people find me quite polite, well behaved, and more or less educated, for this reason I cannot be of any help to assist society or Art Market Town in the making of a big fuss about some famous artists, recognized talent ,future emerging talent and other definitions that pretend to measure the supposed talent that we may have or have not. These tendencies to measure competitively, everything that the artist does or does not is destroying or frequently substituting the values of culture for a stipulated price... so I have finished by having the tendency to call myself crazy, creative, clandestine artistus or submerged artist. That of course it is the dubious and strong effect of this particular virus and has nothing to do with the uneasiness to adapt or adopt the social ritual of conformism to a marketable (marketed) society that in the latest times extends and identify culture with a price on it.
C.V. personal date (fragment)
translation very approximate from the original in Spanish
I was born
accompanied by the pain of my mother
the waiting of my tall father
with mustache
my older brothers and sister
not so tall and without mustache
my aunt
that always accompanied
all the waiting of my family
In a little village
where even the stones
have a soul
that is why it is called; Piedrabuena (The Good Stone)...
ffmendoza 2000