Julio Morales: There’s Gonna Be Sorrow

Galería de la Raza
2857 24th Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

March 9 - April 28, 2007
There’s Gonna Be Sorrow
A Solo Exhibition by Julio Morales

[second of two posts highlighting March programs at the Galleria]


"There’s Gonna Be Sorrow," Julio Cesar Morales’ first solo exhibition at the Galería de la Raza, is inspired by singer David Bowie’s 1974 failed theatrical adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which later became the concept album Diamond Dogs.

There’s Gonna Be Sorrow is a stunning sonic and visual landscape that evokes the dystopian future explored by Orwell’s novel and Bowie’s music. In Morales’ work, peril, expectation, desire and disillusion create a field of tension. Working from a Latino perspective, Morales uses mutated sound samples of Diamond Dogs, language, typography, and idiosyncratic symbols from the Latin American urban landscape —such as the broken bottles that are often found embedded in the concrete atop walls to protect and define property boundaries—to create a dangerous topography that evokes issues of immigration, alienation, dystopia and surveillance.

The project includes multi-channel video, sculpture and sound with original music by Los Creamators and additional audio of the artist’s aunt singing obscure Mexican songs. Morales utilizes digital media in the broadest sense – as a printed mural, recorded sound, LED signs, video etc. His artistic practice can be described as employing the DJ’s method of remixing as a means to analyze the politics of culture.

Morales’ work has been previously shown at The 2006 Singapore Biennale, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany; 2005 ARCO International Art Fair, Madrid, Spain; Swiss Cultural Center, Paris, France; The Rooseum Museum of Art, Malmo, Sweden; Peres Projects, Los Angeles; 2004 The San Juan Triennial, San Juan Puerto Rico; Fototeca de Havana, Cuba; Harris Lieberman Gallery, New York City; MUCA ROMA, Mexico City; and The San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. There’s Gonna Be Sorrow was made possible thanks to an Individual Artist Grant from The San Francisco Art Commission."

[image from the Galleria Web site.]