The works of Spanish-born artist Eugenio Merino deal with matters such as politics, religion, and society with the purpose of making us question our assumptions — the truth we are told by society, by the images and constructs of the dominant culture. He is serious as he talks about how societies are trapped in the frozen ideologies of their dominant leaders — some dead, some alive.
Across town, at his solo show , we meet the artist standing below another familiar symbol made of laser-cut aluminum and enamel:. We live our lives in cages, designed and manipulated by the corporations under the illusion of freedom. This mask is the other end of the spectrum — the opposite of the people in the Occupy movement. Across from the mask of inequality is a solid cube — a block — suspended above what looks to be a disheveled, gray-haired, homeless man sleeping or is he dead?
Behind the homeless man, under glass, sits a pair of luxury glasses which look rather stylish until you notice the mushroom clouds on the lenses:. Once again, Merino is concerned about inequality and its effects. The rich are destroying the world, through willful ignorance or, more likely, through the active exploitation of its resources. Who killed the Earth? All we do is watch.
The sign is made of bronze and is typical of the signs you see on the streets of Houston. Merino tells me he is stunned by the number of homeless people he has seen in Houston.
I ask him why he chose bronze for the placard. The poor have few options for good food, and everywhere we see growing unemployment. Nine years ago Lithuania broke away from the Soviet Union, leaving a lot of empty plinths that had previously been occupied by statues of Lenin, Marx and their regional disciples. An obvious question remained: what to do with the empty plinths?
