You’ve never heard of Los Grumildos? All right, neither have I. But courtesy of publicist Adam Bricault (who brought me into the orbit of the puppeteers behind A Night With Walt Whitman) comes word of a new puppetry run at HERE Arts Center. See the video below the press release.
Here Arts Center’s
Dream Music Puppetry Program
Presents
Los Grumildos
Created by
Renowned Peruvian Artist Ety Fefer
July 28 – August 2
HERE Arts Center’s Dream Music Puppetry Program proudly presents Los Grumildos, a special limited engagement featuring an extraordinary puppetry installation/performance, brainchild of Peruvian artist Ety Fefer. Los Grumildos is a puppetry experience that offers New Yorkers a glimpse at a host of seedy and sordid yet charming characters, with no moral judgments. This special event takes place Tue., July 28 – Sun., Aug. 2 at HERE Arts Center (145 Sixth Ave).
Los Grumildos are plasticine-made hyperrealist automatons. These Barbie-sized dolls could have escaped from a Bukowski book or a John Waters film, each fulfilling an inner child’s unconscious voyeuristic fantasies. Visit a magical land where creatures inhabit a kind of B-side fairytale and a place where the Victorian dollhouse meets burlesque. And more, check out a Jungian world of mythological, half-human half-animal specimens playing in bands and dancing to electronic beats.
This experience is inspired by characters that inhabit the dark underbelly of downtown Lima, Peru, but could be found anywhere — from Sao Paulo to Barcelona, Bangkok to New York. Ety Fefer creates a world that is a home to those marginal creatures that tend to be rejected, despised or outcast by society. The hyperrealist details and extreme expressions of the characters suggest their most intimate feelings hinting at the humor and humanity that abounds, while interpretation of the narrative is left to the viewers.
Los Grumildos has been touring Europe for the last four years, whether in a ’50s-style bar in Switzerland, the catacombs of a church in Catalonia, a suburb of Toulouse, the Sziget Music Festival in Budapest or a clandestine hangout in Berlin. Now for the first time Los Grumildos land in North America to be exhibited at HERE Arts Center in New York! Brought up in Lima in a family of Polish and Turkish descent, Ety Fefer’s modeling gift has been with her ever since she was a kid. Without any formal education, she discovered the secrets of modeling in plasticine. Her innate modeling ability combined with her fascination with anatomy and traveling, along with a penchant for unusual characters, led her to create the mythical world of Grumildos. This highly-personal artwork has been described by the international press as one of the most innovative and difficult works to classify in the contemporary art scene.
This exhibition is currently based in Barcelona and it is brought to NYC with a grant of the Institut Ramon Llull of Catalonia. For more information visit: www.grumildos.com.
Los Grumildos runs Tue., July 28 from 7-11pm, Wed., July 29 through Sat., Aug. 1 from 4-11pm, and Sun., Aug. 2 from 1-6pm. The experience lasts approximately 15 minutes, but audience members are invited to stay as long as they wish. Admission is $7.00. Tickets can be purchased online at www.here.org, by phone at (212) 352-3101 or in person at HERE Arts Center upon arrival.
Watch this clip of Los Grumildos, by the way. Wow.
