From November 20,2010 through February 12, 2011

For nearly a decade, Llanos has performed across the globe through the persona of  Videoman,projecting provocative images in public spaces using mobile video units designed by the artist himself. The exhibition featured documents of  Videoman performances and a visual history of Llanos’  Videoman series from different sites across the globe including video, drawings and  Videoman   paraphernalia. 

The Rubin Center exhibition included the eighth and final version of the series, in which Llanos “kills” Videoman on the border.

Llanos worked with filmmaker Gregorio Rocha to film the  Death of Videoman on the streets of Segundo Barrio and Columbus, New Mexico.  Llanos responded to the theme of the centennial of the Mexican revolution using mobile video images of contemporary Mexican society projected onto historic buildings throughout the region. He chose sites of historical importance and engaged the sites with predetermined sets of images that link the past with the present, acting out a drama routed in tales of the Revolution, accompanied by an original corrido composed for the film, and featuring local actors and scenery. This final exhibition of the  Mexico 2010   series at the Rubin Center drew attention to neglected historic buildings and sites of the revolution while at the same time engaged important themes of contemporary politics and society in Mexico.

The exhibition Revolutionary Imaginary opened November 20th during normal gallery hours, but the opening reception was postponed until January 27th so that the public could view the final edited version of Rocha’s 16mm video short.

Fernando Llanos is a cultural catalyst, engaging a wide range of roles in the art world including artist, curator, author and editor. His work as an artist has been presented in more than twenty countries, and in spaces that include the Festival of New Cinema and New Media in Montreal, Kunst-Werk Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, World Wide Video Festival in Amsterdam and the Guggenheim in New York.  He has curated more than 15 projects in video, some of which have been presented in Museo Rufino Tamayo, the International Festival of Contemporary Cinema in Mexico City and the Caixa Forum in Barcelona, among others.  Llanos also curated a retrospective of Felipe Ehrenberg’s work, which was presented in the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City (2008) and The Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California (2010).  He has been a professor of drawing and digital art appreciation in several universities in Mexico City, and has given workshops on video in Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Brazil and Colombia. 

Gregorio Rocha has worked as an independent film, video and television director and producer since 1982. His artistic work has been shown in Mexico and abroad, including at the Guggenheim Museums in Bilbao and New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. He received the Award of Merit in Film from the Latin American Studies Association in Miami, Best Fiction Video at the Vidarte Festival in Mexico City and the Mesquite Prize for Best Experimental Work at Cinefest in San Antonio, among other honors. In addition to making films, Rocha is an early film historian and curates film programs. He also teaches at institutions such as the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC) and New York University.