Theatrum Anatomicum (And Other Performance Lectures)

"Helguera knows the lecture form inside out, in all its frailties and anachronisms, and he cares for it. But expect the Professor-Doctor of its terminal condition to be doing stand-up at the funeral."? Dominic Willsdon, The Leanne and George Roberts Curator of Education and Public Programs, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art "While Helguera writes in a manner that suggests parody, he is simultaneously deadly serious and entirely accurate... [he] routinely appropriates academic language or strategies to create his artworks, which can appear as books, recordings, symposia or even a nomadic museum. With these he astutely observes the politics of culture and its effects on society, what it means to us and how we are taught to appreciate it." Amanda Coulson, Art Review "Pablo Helguera is [...] a splendid liar, a first-class storyteller, a curious mind constantly in search of stories, a creator of parallel universes and impossible characters living in credible situations, which invariably probe our certainties, intuition and knowledge." Naief Yehya, writer and critic Theatrum Anatomicum (and Other Performance Lectures) brings together a number of performance scripts that blend the dramatic elements of theater with the gravity of the academic presentation, and bring into dialogue topics as disparate as the Latin American soap opera, the origins of the Kindergarten, the history of the Shakers, the US/Mexico war and the social dynamics of the art world. In these series of experimental works, the voices of real and fictional characters come together in a critical exploration of history, politics, and art. Pablo Helguera is a visual artist living in New York whose works and performances have been presented in museums and art spaces internationally. He is the author of the books The Pablo Helguera Manual of Contemporary Art Style, The Boy Inside the Letter, The Witches of Tepoztlán (and Other Unpublished Operas), and Artoons. These books are published by Jorge Pinto Books Inc.