The Logic of Disorder: The Sculptural Materialism of Abraham Cruzvillegas

Abstract

Two models of object experience dominate definitions of sculpture today. One argues that commodification is a universally uniform experience of relentless violence that frames all materialities everywhere within the demands of the globalized market. The second argues that the "unruliness of things" can still disrupt the "rule of the commodity." The autoconstrucción sculptural practice of Abraham Cruzvillegas, argues Greeley, marks a third position. Derived from the "self-building" architecture of the squatter settlement on the edge of Mexico City where he grew up, Cruzvillegas’s work is located in the dialectic between object experience in developing countries and object experience in the hegemonic 'centers' of developed countries and the market-driven international art circuit. Under the rubric of autoconstrucción, Cruzvillegas exploits this dialectic, not to claim any utopian redemptive space outside the world market system, nor to insist on a universally uniform experience of commodification within it, but rather to assert the asymmetries of object experience induced by global economic integration.