Guest of Honor follows a family who encounter a deer on a Sunday picnic excursion and adopt it as a domestic pet with bizarre and scatological consequences. Miguel Calderón is working on an ongoing series of narrative films based on stories Calderón has compiled from strange real life experiences told to him by friends and associates, a series of shorts which Guest of Honor initiates, will one day come together as a longer film.
About the artist
Miguel Calderón (b. 1971) is a Mexican artist based in Mexico City
Calderón has made installations, paintings – once installed in the movie The Royal Tenenbaums — sculptures, films and a TV-style soap opera. Previous film The Disciple of Speed (2004) documented the life of an upper-class Mexican woman with psychic powers who drives race cars on the professional circuit. Calderón’s occasionally slapstick, always exhilarating trash aesthetic focuses on the fantastic aspirations inherent in everyday society. Calderón has shown his videos in numerous film festivals and has also directed music videos and was the lead singer in the bands Mazinger Z and Intestino Grueso. In 1994 he established the artist run space La Panadería, Mexico City. Forthcoming projects include the Busan Biennale (2006).
Recent exhibitions include the seminal survey exhibition Ultra Baroque: Aspects of Post Latin American Art which toured multiple museum venues in the USA during 2001. Calderón has a prolific history of exhibitions and projects, participating in wide range of activities. Recent group exhibitions include In the Air: Projections of Mexico , Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum , New York and Prometer no empobrece: arte contemporáneo mexicano , Reina Sofía National Art Museum, Madrid (both 2005). Calderón has recently shown in the Yokohama Triennale, Japan (2005), the Sharjah Biennale, United Arab Emirates (2005) and the Sao Paul o Biennale, Brazil (2004).
This Frieze Projects/LUX commission is Calderón’s first 35mm film production.
