Javier Fresneda

N.A.S.A.L. presents the exhibition Cálculo Expreso by Javier Fresneda.

The iron horse, the quintessential effigy of modernity, derails at the crossroads. The catastrophe disturbs the vanishing point. A train enters the tunnel at its usual pace but, when exiting amongst the explosions, the steam generated by its machinery is confused with the smoke of the burnt gunpowder.

In Cálculo Expreso, Javier Fresneda delves into a series of railway accidents in order to review Mexico’s infrastructural development and the images associated with progress involved in the historical transition from horse to train. The exhibition re-articulates this shift through a series of drawings on denim and a set of wooden sculptures, in which equestrian fragments are amalgamated with pieces of iron machinery. Additionally, Fresneda maps out the Mexican territory as a cross traversed by zipper-rails that allow its paths to branch out, breaking down its geography.

Historical dates either dance or stagnate. Jesús García Corona was born in 1881, the one who lost his life in 1907 as ‘the hero of Nacozari’. In 1904 the print The Great Derailment of Temamatla (El gran descarrilamiento de Temamatla) by José Guadalupe Posada Aguilar was published, recounting the accident that occurred in 1895. The dates 1902 and 1915 mark the derailment of the Hidalgo railway at the Tepa station and the Guadalajara railway disaster, respectively. However, Cálculo Expreso is more than an index of dates: it is a transhistorical tunnel consolidated with biographical, sociopolitical, and technological images. The following lexicon accounts for these figures, invokes their sounds, and extends their connotations.

— Paulina Ascencio

Photo: Ramiro Chaves