Daniel Guzmán, Sigue siendo rock and roll para mí (2005), Courtesy kurimanzutto, Mexico City

NEW YORK, NY.- The New Museum presents the first U.S. surveys of Daniel Guzmán and Steven Shearer on view from April 23 through July 6, 2008. “Double Album: Daniel Guzmán and Steven Shearer” brings together two artists—Daniel Guzmán, born in Mexico in 1964, and Steven Shearer, born in Canada, in 1968—who use an array of visual media to explore the overwhelmingly male world of rock ‘n’ roll and popular subcultures as a way to look inward at themselves. With both artists creating works across a variety of mediums, including sculpture, painting, photography, and video, “Double Album” allows for Guzmán’s and Shearer’s bodies of work to be explored independently, as well as in relation to each other’s practices. “Double Album” is curated by the New Museum’s Chief Curator, Richard Flood, and will occupy the second floor of the Museum. The exhibition will be accompanied by an innovative double-cover bilingual (English/Spanish) catalogue.

Both Guzmán’s and Shearer’s work indicates a linked, parallel adaptation of 1970s and 1980s pop icons and bands as personal surrogates and avatars of contemporary identity—each hides his self-portrait in plain sight in a landscape of iconic references. The artists share a generation and an intense interest in American popular culture, particularly as revealed through heavy metal music. They also investigate the state of prolonged male adolescence and the fierce tropes of teen bravado. While their nations are essential to their identity, the artist’s notions of boundaries blur into a NAFTA-infused soup where music, movies, street credibility, and the hybrid language of popular culture coexist without border patrol. Both are masters of emblematic autobiography, and their personas inhabit their works as proxies for an adolescent legion that shared their passion for rock bands, lyrics, posters, and celebrity deifications.

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Steven Shearer, Activity Cell with Warlock Bass Guitar (1997), Courtesy the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa