Colt Frac-Tiles

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Pacific Design Center
Green Building Lobby
8687 Melrose Avenue
West Hollywood, CA 90069

Mexico City-based artist Artemio produced a site-specific installation at Art Los Angeles Contemporary: a “carpet” of custom ceramic tiles installed in the Green Building Lobby at the Pacific Design Center. Invoking familiar icons of urban violence, specifically the guns used in much of the drug related violence happening throughout Mexico and the United States, the tiles were employed in a repetitive and decorative manner, undermining their individual symbolism and synthesizing a number of social critiques in their placement and design – for example, the sterility of exchangeable iconography functioning to insulate its signifier from gritty realities.

Support for this project was provided by Ceramica Suro.