FOREWORD FROM BRUCE LABRUCE FOR "FAILURE’S ART "

According to the belief system of Santeria, every person has a destiny, a preordained path, that he or she must strive to find and follow. Life is composed of energy that compels us forward, but there are often obstacles placed in front of us that we must navigate around or remove in order to fulfill our destiny. Darin Wixon's path has been strewn with more obstacles than most of us could ever fathom overcoming in one lifetime, a series of unanticipated events full of pain and suffering that many of us would be ill-prepared to face, let alone conquer. But Darin continues not only to move forward, but also to make sense of and share his experiences, in the form of art, to give strength and guidance to others whose paths are likewise not destined to be easy. Darin Wixon Failure's Art 2012 presents a series of highly personal photographs and one video that provide a glimpse into the kind of hardships that he has endured: exile, illness in a foreign country, the loss of his legs, and a constant struggle against the relentless visitations of death. We all know how difficult it is to be a stranger in a strange land, but to have to go through the ordeal of extreme illness alone in an unfamiliar country takes enormous courage and a fierce will to live. Darin's art manifestly reveals his strong spirit, but by putting it in a social-realist context - recreating in the gallery the somewhat sordid hospital conditions under which he was forced to go through his torturous experience - he also strives to draw attention to and perhaps change the dire circumstances that people with no money or family support find themselves in when they become gravely ill. As the world becomes more precarious, and the gap between the wealthy and the poor continues to widen, the health care system has become increasingly unstable and subject to exploitation by corporate and governmental interests. Darin's experience of finding brilliant and dedicated doctors in public hospitals in Buenos Aires gives us some hope, but his ordeal also reminds us of how fragile the system is, and how easily it could turn into a situation where only the wealthy can afford to survive a health crisis. Darin Wixon's Failure Art 2012 is both a frank documentation of a personal catastrophe and a cautionary tale that reminds us how we must fight against an increasingly hostile world that abandons and forsakes the weak and the ill among us."

Bruce LaBruce, Berlin, 2012