Biography

The Yanghyun Foundation ( Eunyoung Choi, Chief Director ), announced as the winner of the 5th Yanghyun Prize on August 23 2012.
He is awarded the 5th Yanghyun Prize as the honorable winner of the year at the award ceremony held at Auditoriums, National Museum of Korea, Seoul, Korea, on Oct. 12.
Abraham Cruzvillegas (Mexico City, 1968) is a member of The International Taoist Tai Chi Society, studied Pedagogy in the National University of Mexico,
and was a member of Gabriel Orozco's workshop from 1987 to 1991.
He also participated in diverse artist run projects, like Temístocles 44, La Panadería and he's also the founder of La Galería de Comercio in 2010.

His work has been shown in the Contemporary Art Museum-Houston (cat), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (cat), Redcat in Los Angeles (cat),
Tate Modern Gallery in London, Cove Park/ CCA Glasgow (cat), Wattis Institute in San Francisco (cat), the South London Gallery in London,
the Centro Cultural Monte Hermoso in Spain, the New Museum in New York , the Museum of Modern Art-Oxford, Le Grand Café in Saint Nazaire, the Porn Film Festival in Berlin,
Media City-Seoul, among others.

He participated in 1994, in the V Havana Biennial; 2002, in the XXV São Paulo Biennial; 2003, in the L Venice Biennial; 2005, in the 1st Torino
Triennale; 2008, in the Bienal de Cali, in Colombia; in the X Havana Biennial, and the VII Bienal do Mercosul in Portoalegre; in 2011 in Istanbul Biennial. In 2012
he is part of documenta13, in Kassel, the IX Gwanju Biennale, and the IX Shanghai Biennale.
Since 1990 Cruzvillegas has taught, lectured, gave tutorials, and coordinated seminars and workshops, at the DIA Art Foundation, Malmö Art Academy, Ruskin College-Oxford,
Duke University, NYU, Glasgow School of Art, CalArts, the New Museum, California College for the Arts, the Nasher Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago,
Tate Modern, the Guggenheim Museum, the University of Houston, Universidad Nacional Iberoamericana, Universidad de Guanajuato, Tamayo Museum, Centro de la Imagen,
Centro Nacional de las Artes, Universidad de Sonora, Universidad de Las Americas, San Francisco Art Institute, UCLA, UCSD, ENAP-UNAM, La Esmeralda, among others.
Weerasethakul is currently working with Illumination Films in London on a new feature film, provisionally entitled Love in Khon Kaen.
He is represented by the galleries such as Scai the Bathhouse in Tokyo, Kurimanzutto in Mexico City and Anthony Reynolds in London.
His works are in a number of public collections such as San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Foundation La Caixa, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Tate.

Work

A new self-portrait as a mismeasured punctuated
lack of equilibrium (with_denim), 2011

Autoconstruccion, 2008, Mixed media,
Variable dimensions

The Optimistic Failure, 2011, Animal dung, grass, soil,
Jesmonite,
recycled timber, recycled metal,
hemp twine, 294x685x370cm

Progreso, 2003, Brass hinge,
Moroccan toothpick-and-weed flowers,
golf tees,
and campeche wax, 250x50x74.9cm

Jury Citation

Abraham Cruzvillegas' work centres on a dialogue between objects and their social and economic relationships and histories.
Abraham Cruzvillegas is best known for his sculptural use of everyday object, circumstances and vernacular and improvisatory architecture.
His work, centered on a dialogue between objects and their social, economic and historical significance, is both a declaration and a protestation,
playing on various modalities of abstraction and representation, improvisation and intentionality, you bring forward the treasures of pedestrian walks
and the left-overs of scavenging hunts to help us see our surroundings anew. Since his first solo exhibition Reciclaje (Recycle) in 1990 we have encountered his work in solo
and group exhibitions held across Europe, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and more recently Asia.

For almost two decades, Cruzvillegas has steadily and rigorously honed an aesthetic vocabulary that treats the most humble and common of materials with the careful attention
of geologist to render collections of urban debris and organic materials assembled into handsome, ephemeral constructions. In doing so, Cruzvillegas’ work pays homage
to the ethereal, to time, in a plastic investigation that he has called “auto-construcción,” which roughly translated in English to “self-building.”
Different to the individualist motto “do-it-yourself,” auto-construcción as he has stated “starts with the place you find yourself” and revolves around the activity of unearthing
and uncovering of the self.

Abraham Cruzvillegas studied pedagogy at the UNAM (Universidad Autónoma de Mexico) and engaged in material questions
in the studio of Gabriel Orozco during the early 1980s.
He has been the recipient of numerous awards including: Atelier Calder.
Artist Residency in 2005; Altadis Contemporary Art Prize in 2006; the Residency at Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Umbria, Italy in 2007;
a residency at Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., and Artist Research Fellowship at Cove Park, Scotland in 2008.
More recently he was in residency at Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco and is currently a resident of the distinguished DAAD Artists in Berlin Residency Program.