Guillermo Trejo Visiting Residency

For the last 8 years, Guillermo Trejo has been working on art installations that position prints as politically charged objects that carry perceptions and ideas that are particular to the medium. He is interested in using this particularity to discuss how we consume information, what Marshall McLuhan identifies in his famous phrase "the medium is the message" in his book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. In Luis Camnitzerhis essay titled Printmaking: A Colony of the Arts, printmaking is described as a colony in the sense that some traditions and values from other art forms have been imposed on printmaking, values that are not natural to printmaking and that will never be fulfilled. Regardless of whether this position is correct or not, Trejo uses this as a basis for his research during his visiting artist residency at Malaspina. For the project, he will create a series of abstract prints made by allowing the press to create "mistakes" that are the result of the unique mechanical characteristics of the printing process.

Guillermo Trejo is a Mexican/Canadian Artist based in Ottawa. He completed his BFA at the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving in Mexico City with a specialization in printmaking, and moved to Canada in 2007. The experience of immigration and distance has shaped Trejo's work. Since moving to Ottawa, he has earned an MFA from the University of Ottawa and has been an active member of the artistic community. He has exhibited at the Ottawa Art Gallery, Galerie Saw Gallery, and other artist-run centers across the country as well as in Europe and Mexico, In 2014, he participated in the Québec City Triennale and was shortlisted for the Ottawa RBC Emerging Artist Prize. He has been an Artist-in-Residence at Creative Fusion (Cleveland), and the International Symposium on Contemporary Art of Baie-Saint-Paul. In 2014, Guillermo also received the Young Artist FONCA (Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Mexico) grant for Mexican Artists and a production grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. In addition, Trejo has worked as a research consultant for the National Gallery of Canada. He also teaches at the Ottawa School of Art (OSA) and directs OSA Editions, a project that invites local artists to create limited edition prints at the OSA print studio.