MEXICO CITY.- Museo Jumex is presenting Imagine the view from here!, by the artist Michael Smith, whose practice uses wry humor to pitch the everyday experiences of aging, failure and enthusiasm against aspirational images projected by corporate and institutional cultures.

This project includes an installation and a video starring "Mike,” the artist’s alter-ego, who greets every new possibility with a naïve and slack-jawed combination of confusion and enthusiasm.

The video Imagine the view from here! finds Mike visiting a possible timeshare located within the Museo Jumex that promotes a contemporary lifestyle, in comparison with other established expatriate communities of San Miguel de Allende.

Commissioned for the museum and filmed on location, the video is presented within an installation that includes Smith’s 1996 work How to Curate Your Own Group Exhibition, an infomercial that reflects the professionalization and increasing popularity of contemporary art accompanied by the recognition of curation within a broader culture.

Mike’s experiences reflect upon the integrated nature of business and culture, and how the individual is adrift within them, through parody and bathos alike. From this perspective, and for all its playfulness, Imagine the view from here!, enables a form of institutional critique.

Smith’s videos, performances, and installations have been exhibited internationally at festivals and institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Whitney Biennial 2008, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; documenta 8, Kassel, Germany; and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. He has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, among other organizations. Since 2001, Smith has been a professor of performance art at The University of Texas at Austin.

The project is organized by Kit Hammonds, Curator, Museo Jumex, and María Emilia Fernández, Curatorial Assistant, Museo Jumex.