↳ Exhibitions

Andrew Roberts at Pequod Co.

December 23, 2020

Artist: Andrew Roberts

Exhibition title: We are sorry to notify you that due to the end of the world your package has been delayed

Venue: Pequod Co., Mexico City, Mexico

Date: November 21, 2020 – January 16, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Pequod Co., Mexico City

Pequod Co. presents We are sorry to notify you that due to the end of the world your package has been delayed, by Andrew Roberts (Tijuana, 1995), from November 21, 2020. A provocative show that rethinks the figure of the undead.

The exhibition investigates the transit of what we understand as rotten meat through two materials: skin and silicon. A tattoo can be a codex to invoke dismembered memories while a computer’s processor is the portal to reanimate voices confined to the liminal factory of the beyond. What contemporary fears and anxieties about the undead do we harbor in our imagination? The artist responds with the proper make-up of loins that are too creepy for Netflix.

Roberts’ work is comprised by a series of carnal silicone sculptures, reminiscent of a low-budget Mexican gore film, as if they were the black ink imprints of memories emanating from an endriago imaginary. The undead in this show have been generated by a computer programmed to resurrect the voices of bodies trapped between the corporate advertisement and the undead. They are the poems, monologues and intimate soliloquies of a cadaverous interiority or the performance that arises post-mortem. Roberts’ carnal prostheses appear as the empty corporalities of the parasitic and as the bloody containers of everything that refuses to die.

We are sorry to notify you that due to the end of the world your package has been delayed anchors its production on the historical transformation of the undead — a cultural constant shaped by the most visceral concerns of each era, from war events to biopolitical realities. The artist explores how the cinematographic and video game industries have built a hegemonic perspective in which the figure of the zombie and the horror genre are traversed by racial and colonial phenomena to later be instrumentalized for economic propaganda and imperial purposes.

Text by Bernardo Núñez Magdaleno

Andrew Roberts, We are sorry to notify you that due to the end of the world your package has been delayed, 2020, exhibition view, Pequod Co., Mexico City

Andrew Roberts, Undead, 2020, performance, tattoos on silicon mask and sleeves, VR set and Nintendo Switch, variable duration

Andrew Roberts, REANIMATOR: days gone bye, 2020, Color tattoos on silicon, 50 x 35 x 20 cm

Andrew Roberts, COOTIES: the rotten core, 2020, Color tattoos on silicon and cap, 30 x 25 x 35 cm

Andrew Roberts, EXHUMED: miles behind us, 2020, Tattoos on silicon, 30 x 35 x 28 cm

Andrew Roberts, PET SEMATARY: the hearts desire, 2020, Tattoos on silicon, 10 x 35 x 48 cm

Andrew Roberts, CARGO: a certain doom, 2020, Tattoo on silicon, 15 x 52 x 10 cm

Andrew Roberts, BRAINDEAD: what comes after, 2020, Tattoos on silicon, 20 x 40 x 15 cm

Andrew Roberts, PONTYPOOL: too far gone, 2020, Tattoos on silicon, 30 x 30 x 10 cm

Andrew Roberts, El regreso de los muertos vivientes 3 (The return of the living dead III), 4K video, digital animation, color, sound, 2020, 4’10’’

Andrew Roberts, Anillo rojo de la muerte (Red ring of the dead), 4K video, digital animation, color, sound, 2020, 3’25’’

Andrew Roberts, Contemplaré el fin del mundo, tranquilo, desde mi silla Acapulco (I will contemplate the end of the world on my Acapulco chair), 4K video, digital animation, color, sound, 2020, 3’00’’

Andrew Roberts, Dragón negro de ojos rojos (Red-eyes black dragon), 4K video, digital animation, color, sound, 2020, 3’00’’

Andrew Roberts, Headless panchos and disembodied tenchas (Panchos descabezados y tenchas descorporadas), 4K video, digital animation, color, sound, 2020, 3’00’’

Andrew Roberts, Copiloto (Copilot), 4K video, digital animation, color, sound, 2020, 3’00’’

Andrew Roberts, NPC (Non-playable character), 4K video, digital animation, color, sound, 2020, 3’00’’

Andrew Roberts, El pronóstico meteorológico para hoy indica tu temprana muerte (Today’s weather forecast indicates your early death), 4K video, digital animation, color, sound, 2020, 2’50’’