CAAM – San Antonio Abad, Las Palmas

June 12 – September 13, 2020

The Wayward Canon

Mark Aerial Waller

Mark Aerial Waller's work transitions between video, photography and installation across the narrative languages of film, television and video art. His work integrates cross-references on film, music, art, astronomy, history, science and literature with elements of pop culture that coexist in our memory. Waller blurs the lines that characterize and delimit each of these areas, appeasing the cinematic genres, the perception of time and space, shaking the logic of the viewer to open the way for curiosity for the unexpected. On doing so, he creates works of unlimited significance that fluctuate between the conceptual and the material, the cultured and the popular, the work of art and life, allowing different levels of interpretation that change through the experience of the spectator.

Before turning twenty, Waller worked at the London Filmmakers' Co-op, viewing hundreds of avant-garde and experimental films. The almost humorous possibility proposed by the structuralists of reversing the established order and expanding the possibilities of the medium involving the viewer, confirmed his position in artists’ cinema, to be one of the fundamental lines of his trajectory.

This exhibition presents a selection of works that activate the legacy of the avant-garde as a space for the breakdown and expansion of artistic conventions. Recovering science fiction as a shelter to imagine utopia confronting the dominant trend that leads us towards a dystopian future of neoliberalism, climate change and post-truth. 

It's about awakening the sense of what's possible in the face of paradigms that limit our perception of the screen and life. To reverse the limits that mark our status as image and information receivers and question the museum to the possibility of being inhabited in another way. Waller invites us to explore, to find new regulatory behaviours to free our imagination: practice yoga-horror, watch a suspense serial, participate in a The Wayward Canon event... decide how to enjoy a journey in search of the unexpected, with some doses of humour.

Text by: Gemma Medina

Mark Aerial Waller, Installation view, The Wayward Canon, CAAM – San Antonio Abad, Las Palmas, 2020

Mark Aerial Waller, Installation view, The Wayward Canon, CAAM – San Antonio Abad, Las Palmas, 2020

Mark Aerial Waller, Installation view, Wayward Canon, CAAM – San Antonio Abad, Las Palmas, 2020

Mark Aerial Waller, Installation view, Wayward Canon, CAAM – San Antonio Abad, Las Palmas, 2020

Mark Aerial Waller, Installation view, Wayward Canon, CAAM – San Antonio Abad, Las Palmas, 2020

Mark Aerial Waller, Installation view, Wayward Canon, CAAM – San Antonio Abad, Las Palmas, 2020