About the Artist

Mi obra aborda aspectos relacionados con estereotipos culturales y de género, la insularidad, los contrastes sociales y la estética popular en espacios urbanos y rurales, así como nociones preconcebidas que operan en el imaginario universal sobre la región del Caribe.

Trabajo desde el campo de la interdisciplinariedad, basándome en ideas e investigaciones sobre mi entorno socio-cultural y como estas se relacionan con la historia del arte occidental, el internet, y la globalización.

Me interesa cuestionar la permanencia de categorías obsoletas y las fronteras innecesarias, no solo en el proceso de creación, si no también en la dimensión social de la obra que proviene principalmente de la descontextualización y recontextualización de materiales, objetos y experiencias que uso en mi práctica artística.

Desarrollo varios cuerpos de obra de forma simultánea a través de procedimientos conceptuales como la apropiación de obras de arte y de imágenes de obras de arte, así como también imágenes de consumo masivo, en el carácter de levedad que le otorgan a estas las nuevas formas de circulación en plataformas de tecnología digital, paralelo a desmitificación de la autoría.

A través de la mezcla de recursos y disciplinas como el collage, el video, la acción, la impresión en soportes no convencionales, y la exhibición de proyectos -mucho de ellos efímeros- fuera de los espacios institucionales, mi trabajo examina lo cotidiano y lo histórico usando diversos lenguajes del quehacer artístico actual.

Selected Biographical Information

Education / Training

• 1987-1992: Licenciatura, Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA), Havana, Cuba.

Prizes / Fellowships

• 2004: Concurso Eduardo León Jimenes, Centro León, Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic.
• 1998: Cintas Fellowship, Cintas Foundation, Miami, United States.
• 1996: South Florida Cultural Consortium Visual And Media Art Fellowship, South Florida Cultural Consortium, Miami, United States.

Solo Exhibitions

• 2015: “Maleza. Multiple Bodies Of Work”, Centro Cultural de España Santo Domingo (CCESD), Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
• 2015: “Doble Doble, Framed And Framed”, Lynch Tham, New York, United States.
• 2012: “After Some Twisted Lines”, David Castillo Gallery, Miami Beach, United States.
• 2008: “The World Outside”, Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, United States.
• 2007: “A Heap of Paradise”, David Castillo Gallery, Miami, United States.
• 2000: “Quisqueya Henríquez. Sala 7 Proyecto de Arte Contemporáneo”, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico.
• 1997: “Xsite”, Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, United States.

Group Exhibitions

• 2016: “Prompt”, McColl Center for Visual Arts+Innovation, Charlotte, NC, United States.
• 2016: “Resonance/Dissonance. Works from De la Cruz Collection”, Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami, Fl , United States.
• 2015: “High And Local Villa Consuelo”, Sindicato, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
• 2015: “Global Positioning System “, Perez Art Museum of Miami (PAMM), Miami,  Fl, United States.
• 2014: “Beyond The Super Square”, Bronx Museum of the Art, Bronx, New York, United States.
• 2014: “Image Search”, Perez Art Museum of Miami 9PAMM), Miami, FL, United States.
• 2013: “El Ojo En El Tiempo. Obras de la Colección Adrastus”, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, Mexico.
• 2012: “Converge”, McColl Center for Visual Arts, Charlotte, NC, United States.
• 2008: “Geografías (In)visibles. Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection”, Centro León, Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic.
• 2007: “Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art”, Brooklyn Museum, New York, United States.
• 2005: “Intertextualidad”, Artist Space, New York, United States.
• 2002: “Inter.Play”, The Moore Space, Miami, United States.
• 2002: “No Place. Kuba”, Ifa Galerie, Bonn, Germany.
• 2001: “Tutto Normale”, Villa Medici, Roma, Italia.
• 2001: “Políticas De La Diferencia. Arte Latinoamericano de fin de siglo”, La Generalitat Valenciana (Travelled), Valencia y Buenos Aires, España y Argentina.
• 1998: “Locus”, Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, United States.

Publications

• Somerstein, Rachel, “25 Trendsetters”, Art News, September 2007, 122-123.
• Genocchio, Benjamin, “Enthusiasm for Rubbish That Avoids Clichés”, New York Times, Oct. 28. 2007.
• Ken Johnson, “Minding the Gap Between Rarefied and Local Art Culture”, New York Times, Oct. 26. 2007.
• Villanueva, Isabela, “Tasting the Caribbean: The Art of Quisqueya Henriquez”, Review 74, May 2007, 106-110.

Collections

• Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, United States.
• Perez Art Museum of Miami (PAMM), Miami, United States.
• Museo del Barrio, New York, United States.
• Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami, United States.
• Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York, United States.
• De la Cruz Collection, Miami, United States.
• RISD Museum, Providence, United States.
• Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM), Oberlin, United States

  

  Quisqueya Henríquez, “LCB306”, 2016, Series: Formal Informal, Tubos metálicos niquelados, tiras engomadas, Variable dimensions. Photo credit: Sindicato.

  

  Quisqueya Henríquez, “Lyubov Popova/Carmen Herrera”, 2014, Collage y fotografía digital montada en Dibond. Marco dentro de otro marco, 91.44 x 160.02 x 5.08 cm. Photo credit: David Castillo Gallery.

  

  Quisqueya Henríquez, “Sangre Congelada”, 2001, Series: Burlas, Fotografía digital, impresión fotográfica., 101.6 x 101.6 cm. Photo credit: Sindicato.

  
  

  

  Quisqueya Henríquez, “The Caribbean Orange ( Obras anaranjadas en la colección del MOMA)”, 2015, Collage digital impreso sobre papel de algodón Hahnemuhle , 27.94 x 35.56 cm. Photo credit: Sindicato.

  

  Quisqueya Henríquez, “50 Libras”, 2016, Series: Formal Informal, Hierro macizo y tiras engomadas, Variable dimensions.

  

  Quisqueya Henríquez, “After Sherrie Levine After Rodchenko”, 2016, pintura esmalte sobre mesas plásticas, 182.88 x 274.32 x 121.92 cm. Photo credit: Sindicato.

  
  

  

  Quisqueya Henríquez, “Comportamiento Moderno (Pieza Arco)”, 2007, Concreto y madera de cedro, Variable dimensions. Photo credit: David Castillo Gallery.

  

  Quisqueya Henríquez, “Dorothea Rockburne/Auguste Macke”, 2015, Collage y fotografía digital montada en Dibond. Marco dentro de otro marco, 92.71 x 139.7 x 5.08 cm. Photo credit: David Castillo Gallery.

  

  Quisqueya Henríquez, “Dos Copias Malas”, 2015, Fieltro, Madera y participación del público, Variable dimensions. Photo credit: Sindicato.

  
  

  

  Quisqueya Henríquez, “Formas Geométricas”, 2007-2015, Series: Formal Informal, Hierro macizo y tiras engomadas, Variable dimensions. Photo credit: Sindicato.

  

  Quisqueya Henríquez, “Helado de Agua de Mar Caribe”, 2002, Series: Burlas, Fotografía digital, impresión fotográfica., 76.2 x 76.2 cm. RISD Museum. Photo credit: David Castillo Gallery.

  

  Quisqueya Henríquez, “LC2 Low On High”, 2015, Series: Formal Informal, Metal. tiras de goma, Variable dimensions. Photo credit: Sindicato.

  
  

  

  Quisqueya Henríquez, “Ropa Congelada”, 2001, Series: Burlas, Fotografía digital, impresión fotográfica., 142.24 x 238.76 cm. Site-specific project. Location: Museo Del Barrio, Nueva York, Estados Unidos. Photo credit: David Castillo Gallery.

  

  Quisqueya Henríquez, “United By Colors”, 2015, Collages con impresiones Offset, plexiglas tintado, 101.6 x 393.7 cm. Private. Photo credit: Sindicato.

  

  Quisqueya Henríquez, “We Can See In Total Darkness”, 2015, MDF, lienzo, pintura acrílica, asiento de vinil encontrado, 111.76 cm x 116.84 cm x 7.62 cm cm. Photo credit: Tiziano de Stefano/ Sindicato.

  
  
• Cintas Foundation, New York/Miami, United States.

• Artists

Development – 2017 

From January 2017 Abstraction in Action will transition to become an independent initiative led by Greg Attaway and Cecilia Fajardo-Hill.

We will continue to develop our mission to promote and research contemporary abstract art from Latin America since the 1990s, seeking to activate the field and foster new perspectives.

The AIA website will continue to operate and after a short pause, it will resume its expansion.

• Happenings

Artist: Ishmael Randall Weeks 

Constructive Resistance
November 17, 2016 – December 23, 2016
Steve Turner 
Los Angeles, USA

• Happenings

Artists: Elena Asins (Spain), Kader Attia (France), Robert Barry (U.S), Pavel Büchler (U.K), Paulo Bruscky (Brazil), Waltercio Caldas (Brazil), Luis Camnitzer (Uruguay), Arturo Cuenca (Cuba), Sandu Darie Romania (Cuba), Antonio Dias (Brazil),  Iran do Espírito Santo (Brazil), Juan Downey (Chile, U.S),  Marcel Duchamp (France),  Juan Francisco Elso (Cuba), Eugenio Espinoza (Venezuela), León Ferrari (Argentina),  Marcius Galan (Brazil) , Flavio Garciandía (Cuba), José Antonio Hernández-Diez (Venezuela), Karlo Andrei Ibarra (Puerto Rico), Joseph Kosuth (U.S), Barbara Kruger (U.S), David Lamelas (Argentina), Judith Lauand (Brazil), Glenda León (Cuba), Carlos Leppe (Chile), Anna Maria Maiolino (Brazil), Antonio Manuel (Brazil), Carlos Martiel (Cuba), Cildo Meireles (Brazil), Marta Minujín (Argentina), Priscilla Monge (Costa Rica), Hélio Oiticica (Brazil) | Lygia Pape (Brazil), Michelangelo Pistoletto (Italy), Liliana Porter (Argentina), Carlos Rodríguez Cárdenas (Cuba), Lázaro Saavedra  (Cuba), Mira Schendel (Brazil), Franz Erhard Walther (Germany), Horacio Zabala (Argentina)

Toda percepción es una interpretación: YOU ARE PART OF IT
November 30, 2016 – March 12, 2017
CIFO Art Space
Miami, Florida

The exhibition Toda percepción es una interpretación: You are part of it is a retrospective look from the viewpoint of contemporary issues of art, culture, politics and economics. It seeks to reflect on the successive reconfigurations of the art map in the last few decades, on the displacements and relocations of its primary centers, from Paris to New York, from Venice to São Paulo, from Basel to Miami. It speaks of areas that have succeeded in alternating centripetal or centrifugal forces, where art has relocated its meeting points and its observation points. We also pay attention to the effects of redrawing the financial or political map, with the repercussion it has on how one makes and proceeds in art.

• Happenings

Artists: Carlos Arnaiz, Ernesto Deira, Sarah Grilo, KIRIN, Juan Lecuona, Lucía Mara, Georges Nöel, Kvĕta Pacovská, César Paternosto, Fidel Sclavo, Eduardo Stupía, Valeria Traversa, Jan Voss.

The Lines of the Hand
November – December, 2016
Jorge Mara – La Ruche
Buenos Aires, Argentina

• Happenings

Artist: Iván Navarro

Mute Parade
October 26, 2016 – December 23, 2016
Paul Kasmin Gallery
New York, USA.

Upon entering Mute Parade, the viewer is confronted by a towering pyramid of  six drums with the words HIGH, TONE, TUNE, BASS, MUTE, and DEAF embedded in LED lights.  This monumental work, titled TUNING, 2015, produces a visual representation of sound while simultaneously removing and negating the original function of the instruments; ‘playing a song,’ in the absence of sound. In the center of the adjacent room, two freestanding drums– each six-feet in diameter– incorporate neon, LED, mirrors, and electricity to produce Navarro’s iconic infinite vanishing points. Circular texts, written in light, repeat the words KICKBACKand KNOCKNOCKNOCK in a seemingly boundless loop. The inherent silence and stillness of the artworks creates an uncanny perception of audio and movement, probing the relationship between sight and sound.

A final installation consists of four 6 x 6 foot structures that make up the Impenetrable Room (2016). This new compositional innovation co-opts the materials and format of portable “road cases,” which are customarily used to transport and protect musical instruments. Refitting the cases with mirrors and neon light, Navarro transforms these static objects into deep spaces that appear to reverberate in perpetuity. Silent and monolithic, these self-contained rooms resonate with unspoken narrative power.

Throughout the exhibition, black and white paper squares are scattered across the floors of all three galleries. The words “Read You” and “Loud Unclear,” printed on opposite sides of the cards, call attention to the disjunction between the visual and auditory aspects of communication. Informed by the aesthetics and rhythms of military parades, Mute Parade contemplates the juxtaposed feelings of celebration and intimidation that martial music begets.

• Happenings

Pop & Post Pop
December 6, 2016
María Calcaterra Moderno & Contemporáneo
Buenos Aires, Argentina

• Happenings

Artists: Olga de Amaral, Emilio Chapela, Jaime Davidovich, Wilson Díaz, Monir Farmanfarmaian, José Gabriel Fernández, Rafael Ferrer, Mathias Goeritz, Fernanda Gomes, José Antonio Hernández-Diez, Ana Mercedes Hoyos, Jesús (Bubu) Negrón, Karina Peisajovich, Horacio Zabala.

Illuminations II
December 3, 2016 – February 10, 2017
Henrique Faria and Miami Biennale
The Historic Dorissa of Miami Building
Miami, Florida

• Happenings

XIII Bienal de Cuenca
“Impermanencia”
Curated by: Dan Cameron
Curator educational program: Cristián G. Gallegos
November 26, 2016 – February 5, 2017
Cuenca, Ecuador

• Happenings

About the Artist

—

Dos ejes conceptuales atraviesan mi obra. Por un lado, la exploración de las condiciones y los límites de la fotografía. Las cuestiones de física y química en los materiales sensibles a luz, las citas a la historia de la representación fotográfica, las trampas del aparato monocular y, más recientemente, la migración de las imágenes desde el papel fotográfico a la pantalla, componen una trama sobre la que se ha desarrollado gran parte de mi trabajo.

Por el otro, la experimentación con cuestiones de representación y traducción entre un medio y otro. La mediación, esa operación siempre imperfecta, ha sido en mi obra un terreno de juego y manipulación. La aparición de objetos cotidianos en mi trabajo no es más que un pretexto para mi obra. La utilización de objetos banales responde a la necesidad de un hacer con lo disponible: material “a mano”, fácil de conseguir y listo para ser usado. La casa, el vecindario son el escenario donde sucede la obra; los objetos, actores necesarios, cómplices inevitables, condición de posibilidad de estas imágenes.

Selected Biographical Information

Education / Training

• 1999-2001: MFA – Maestría en Bellas Artes, Universidad de Nueva York, Nueva York, Estados Unidos.
• 1997-1998: Certificado. Estética en el Arte Contemporánea – Seminario con Lucas Fragasso. Programa de Becas Para Artistas Jóvenes, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1995: Certificado. Seminario de Crítica e Historia de la Fotografía con Juan Travnik, Estudio Juan Travnik, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1992-1993: Certificado – Estudios Generales en Fotografía, Centro Internacional de Fotografía (ICP), Nueva York, Estados Unidos.
• 1986-1991: Licenciatura en Análisis Político, Facultad de Ciencia Política y Relaciones Internacionales, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Rosario, Argentina.

Prizes / Fellowships

• 2002: Diploma al Mérito, Fundación Kónex, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2000: Premio Leonardo – Sección Arte Digital, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1999: Mención – Premio Prodaltec de Arte Digital, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1999-2001: Beca Fulbright – Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Fundación Fulbright – Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Nueva York, Estados Unidos.
• 1997: Premio Braque – Primera Mención, Fundación Banco Patricios, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1997: Programa de Becas para Artistas Jóvenes – Beca Kuitca, Secretaría de Cultura del Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, ICI, PROA y Centro Cultural Borges, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1997: Subsidio a la Creación, Fundación Antorchas, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1997: Subsidio a la Creación, Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1995: Beca para estudios de perfeccionamiento , Subsecretaría de Cultura de la Provincia de Santa Fe, Rosario, Argentina.

Solo Exhibitions

• 2016: “Capturas de pantalla“, Mal de Archivo – Espacio de Arte, Rosario, Argentina.
• 2016: “+room“, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario, Rosario, Argentina.
• 2015: “Ostera en Oliva”, Librería Oliva, Rosario, Argentina.
• 2006: “Fin de fiesta”,  Ex P.A.C.I.O – Cultura Pasajera, Rosario, Argentina.
• 2004: “Andrea Ostera”, Galería de la Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo de la Univerdad de Buenos Aires (UBA), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1998: “Fotogramas”, Fotogalería del Teatro Municipal Gral. San Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1998: “Conciso, sucinto, preciso “, Centro Cultural Bernardino Rivadavia, Rosario, Argentina.
• 1996: “The dream evening”, Encuentros Internacionales de Fotografía, Arles, Francia.

Group Exhibitions

• 2016: “Presentación”, Diego Obligado Galería de Arte, Rosario, Argentina.
• 2014: “In fraganti”, Galería Arte x Arte, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2013: “Premio Petrobrás”, BA-Photo, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2013: “Fundar. 30 años. 3 miradas“, Museo de Bellas Artes J. B. Castagnino, Rosario, Argentina.
• 2012: “Pinta bien. Arte de Santa FE”, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2012: “Allí, allá, desde Argentina”, Plataforma Bogotá, Bogotá, Colombia.
• 2011: “About Change”, Main Complex – Banco Mundial, Washington, Estados Unidos.
• 2010: “La naturaleza de las mujeres”, Fundación Osde, Rosario, Argentina.
• 2010: “Fotografía en la Argentina (1840-20110)”, Galería Arte x Arte, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2009: “Modos de ver en la noche”, Centro Cultural Parque de España, Rosario, Argentina.
• 2009: “Experimentaciones. Dos muestras, dos contextos”, Espacio Cultural Embajada de Brasil, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2008: “Ver en la oscuridad”, Fundación Klem, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2008: “La mirada ubicua”, Fundación Osde, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2007: “Bajo la lluvia ajena”, Museo de la Memoria, Rosario, Argentina.
• 2007: “Los pintores amigos”, Museo del Diario La Capital, Rosario, Argentina.

Publications

• Beatriz Vignoli, “Como fotografiar el tiempo”, Página 12 – Suplemento Rosario 12, 9 de agosto de 2016.
• Andrea Ostera, “Fragmentos de un cuerpo invisible”, Luna Córnea, 2001, 49-51.
• Eva Gristeni, “Hacia el siglo XXI: destellos de insubordinación”, Lápiz, Enero 2000, 115-122.

Collections

• Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• Museo de Bellas Artes J. B. Castagnino, Rosario, Argentina.
• Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Bahía Blanca, Argentina.

Links

• Andrea Ostera 

• Artists

Artist: Magdalena Fernández

CLIMAS
Opening November 17, 2016
Saludarte Foundation / Ideobox Artspace
Miami, Florida

• Happenings

Artist: José Luis Landet

Doma
Opening November 15, 2016
Arroniz Arte Contemporáneo
Ciudad de México, D.F., Mexico

José Luis Landet*’s work involves a wide range of operating and assimilating cultural processes crossed by social, political and ideological actions, through which he explores cultural remnants.

In Doma, Landet presents the work of South American artist Carlos Gómez (1945-2014), from his epistolary communication with poet Zé Braulio, until his exile to Mexico in 1977. The restoration and presentation of Gomez’s work represents an ideal starting point for Landet’s objectives: to recover, document and innovate.

Doma (Tame):
1 The process of domestication of a wild animal through the repetition of exercises.
2 To deprive a passion or conduct.

• Happenings

Artists: August Muth, Regine Schumann, Soledad Arias, Ariane Roesch, and Myke Venable.

Luminous
November 12 – December 31, 2016
Gallery Sonja Roesch
Houston, TX

The show consists of five artists whose work collectively examines phenomenological experience through the use of luminescent light and color. The gallery is overcome by a strong luminous presence, shifting perceptions of space and enhancing sensory experience through the use of minimally reductive materials. Objects in space recede and advance while colored fluorescent light mixes to create visual reflections and overlays.

The minimally reductive nature of each artwork leads to infinite possibilities of thought, evoking memory and familiarity while linking past to present. “Luminous” embodies the mystic creation of light and color; the varied results of each work push our perceptions and bring the fundamental act of seeing into the limelight.

• Happenings

Artist: Eduardo Stupía

Fossils and Sediments
September 20 – November 10, 2016
Jorge Mara . La Ruche
Buenos Aires, Argentina

The series Fossils consists of eleven pieces of acrylic paintings on medium sized paper. Here, the fold of the paper embedded in the porous material of acrylic produces an inspired and spectral imitation of the work of nature on itself, with the carbon effect of mono – copy.

The series Sediments displays graphic territories, in the way of a stratification of crystallized moments unfolded in the same plane as islets of representation derived from the various uses of graphite, pencil, charcoal, chalk pastel. The amphibious reality of this mixed universe once again puts into action the back and forth progression, from the spectral to calcareous, from the stony to smoky.

• Happenings

Artists: María José Arjona, Emilia Azcárate, Adrián Balseca, Pablo Cardoso, Matías Duville, Florencia Guillén, Manuela Ribadeneira, Paula de Solminihac.

LARA, Latin American Roaming Art
September 15 – November 13, 2016
Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Quito
Quito, Ecuador

Esta exposición reúne el trabajo resultante de la cuarta edición de la residencia LARA (Latin American Roaming Art) llevada a cabo en las Islas Galápagos en marzo de este año. El proyecto consiste en reunir a un grupo artistas en un lugar de la región por dos semanas, tiempo durante el cual se informan lo más posible de los alrededores para luego iniciar un proceso individual de producción donde se traduce su experiencia del sitio.

Las ciudades de Honda en Colombia, Ollantaytambo en Perú y Oaxaca en México han servido como locaciones en anteriores ediciones, aparejadas de sus respectivas muestras en las ciudades capitales. Para la itinerancia del proyecto en Ecuador se propuso el ambiente privilegiado del archipiélago, relativamente inexplorado desde el arte contemporáneo.

Galápagos, siendo patrimonio de la humanidad por su biodiversidad, suele evocar imágenes idílicas de la naturaleza y de un universo lo menos posible tocado por la mano del hombre. Sin embargo, quienes hacen su vida allí -sean estos colonos, científicos o agentes vinculados al entramado estatal- configuran imágenes conflictivas y muchas veces contrapuestas sobre este territorio que luce atravesado por varios dilemas. Las mayores tensiones surgen sin duda de la contradicción entre los afanes conservacionistas y las lógicas del desarrollo urbano y crecimiento demográfico, en cuyos entresijos habita una industria turística en permanente expansión. Estas islas, que sirvieron de inspiración clave para modelar el paradigma evolucionista, también poseen una azarosa historia humana que revela, a nivel simbólico, curiosas paradojas: desde crónicas pobladas de crueldad y violencia, hasta las representaciones visuales que producen las misiones religiosas de hoy donde se conjugan evocaciones del pensamiento de Darwin con el creacionismo más dogmático.

Pero con su dramático origen volcánico delatado por doquier el archipiélago se muestra, ante todo, como un gran laboratorio natural donde fauna y flora se manifiestan en todo su esplendor. Matices de este encanto que ejerce el lugar adquieren mayor presencia en las obras de los artistas extranjeros, las cuales responden menos a “temas” y se perfilan más como memorias residuales, donde se incorporan ecos de imágenes que habitan ahora un territorio más evocativo y etéreo. Resuenan en ellas diversas maneras de asir el paisaje, recodificar la información recibida y devolver una mirada más subjetiva a partir de observaciones varias. La producción de los artistas locales se percibe, en cambio, como una lóbrega contrapostal donde se invocan indicios de un presente discordante ligado a rastros de un pasado que tiene su propia leyenda negra.

Asunto clave en la dinámica de la residencia fue propiciar la creación de una atmósfera de intercambio donde se potenciara la convergencia de disímiles intereses y personalidades. Aquello es lo que en conjunto reflejan las obras resultantes, las cuales configuran un variopinto muestrario de impresiones que revelan múltiples maneras de responder a un contexto, a la vez que enfatizan aspectos del lado humano de quienes participaron en este experimento.

• Happenings

Artists: Sandra Gamarra, Marco Maggi.

3rd Bienal de Montevideo
September 29 – December 4, 2016
Palacio Legislativo, Salón de los Pasos Perdidos
Montevideo, Uruguay

• Happenings

Artists: Sigfredo Chacón, Carlos Cruz-Diez, José Gabriel Fernández, Héctor Fuenmayor, Jaime Gili, Arturo Herrera, Pepe López and Lucía Pizzani.

Contralapared
September 18 – December 18, 2016
Espacio Monitor
Caracas, Venezuela

Contralapared es una muestra conformada por 8 sobresalientes artistas venezolanos activos de tres generaciones claramente definidas: Sigfredo Chacón, Carlos Cruz-Diez, José Gabriel Fernández, Héctor Fuenmayor, Jaime Gili, Arturo Herrera, Pepe López y Lucía Pizzani. Proyecto propuesto por Sigfredo Chacón y Héctor Fuenmayor, la idea se fundamenta en que los creadores visuales participantes realizaran obras ambientales, in situ, que si bien sostienen su independencia autoral funcionan, en su conjunto, como una gran instalación espacial interactuando entre ellas. Es de hacer notar que todas y cada una de las obras fueron creadas durante este año 2016 y pensadas especialmente para los espacios de la galería. Estructuras ambientales que van desde el piso hasta el techo de la sala, diseñadas por la arquitecto Lillian Malavé, sirven como soporte a las monumentales piezas.

• Happenings

Artist: Alberto Casari

Verba Volant (Never Write Bullshit)
October 4, 2016 – November 19, 2016
Galeria Pilar 
São Paulo, Brazil

Tú tienes que desaparecer aunque no lo quieras y puedes contar solo contigo. Te dicen consume produce revienta y nadie los para; dicen, golpéate consume y revienta, muere y te dan duro. Pero uno que se alce, uno que se oponga uno que se levante y los mire de frente a los ojos, así de frente y a los ojos, sin cerrarlos ni parpadear y de pronto ruja fuerte como un león y les diga que vió chicos de Camboya trasplantados sobre los cielos de Paris, chicas peruanas en el infierno. Es que tú que crees que vienes a ver arte te has pasado la vida buscando un un un centro de gravedad permanente. No soy como tú me quieres, yo no soy como tú quieres que sea para detener el genocidio infame de especies salvajes, fauna flora humanos por doquier que gimen se golpean mueren resucitan languidecen, caminan impávidos, bailan y gozan sin saber que por ahí vaga la luz azul, azul es la luz y durará durará pero también se desvanecerá si es que no logramos escapar de la alienación cotidiana en los parques, autobuses, tú en tu casa querido amigo que crees que el arte es algo así, algo extraño. Hay gente diferente del otro mundo menos mal omnipresente, que se une y baila, camina con nosotros. Oigo una música y me da la clave, azul la música y me da la clave, tal vez encuentre algo con esta clave y salga de la estrecha vía, de este inmenso túnel. Uno no sabe, la luz puede que sea la clave, la clave improvisada por algún genio. Todos somos genios todos somos artistas todos vivimos buscando una emoción siempre más indefinible y es por eso que el silencio es vital, el grito es vital, la música azul es vital, el río de lana también va a parar al mar y allí llegaremos los dos cuando reventemos a menos que entres mi hermano conmigo al ciclo y comprendas que tú tienes que desaparecer aunque no lo quieras y puedes contar solo contigo. Te dicen consume produce revienta y nadie los para; dicen, golpéate consume y revienta, muere y te dan duro. Pero uno que se alce, uno que se oponga uno que se levante y los mire de frente a los ojos, así de frente y a los ojos, sin cerrarlos ni parpadear y de pronto ruja fuerte como un león y les diga que vio chicos de Camboya trasplantados sobre los cielos de Paris, chicas peruanas en el infierno. Es que tú que crees que vienes a ver arte te has pasado la vida buscando un un un centro de gravedad permanente. No soy como tú me quieres, yo no soy como tú quieres que sea para detener el genocidio infame de especies salvajes, fauna flora humanos por doquier que gimen se golpean mueren resucitan languidecen, caminan impávidos, bailan y gozan sin saber que por ahí vaga la luz azul, azul es la luz y durará durará pero también se desvanecerá si es que no logramos escapar de la alienación cotidiana en los parques, autobuses, tu en tu casa querido amigo que crees que el arte es algo así, algo extraño. Hay gente diferente del otro mundo menos mal omnipresente, que se une y baila, camina con nosotros. Oigo una música y me da la clave, azul la música y me da la clave, tal vez encuentre algo con esta clave y salga de la estrecha vía, de este inmenso túnel. Uno no sabe, la luz puede que sea la clave, la clave improvisada por algún genio. Todos somos genios todos somos artistas todos vivimos buscando una emoción siempre más indefinible y es por eso que el silencio es vital, el grito es vital, la música azul es vital, el río de lana también va a parar al mar y allí llegaremos los dos cuando reventemos a menos que entres mi hermano conmigo al ciclo y comprendas que tú.

• Happenings

Artists: Laura Barrón, Dianna Frid, Alexandra Gelis, Pablo Helguera, Manolo Lugo, Juan Ortiz-Apuy, Eugenio Salas, José Seoane, José Luis Torres, and Clarissa Tossin.

Clarissa Tossin: TransAMERICAS: a sign, a situation, a concept
September 10, 2016 – December 11, 2016
Museum London
Ontario, Canada

In TransAMERICAS: a sign, a situation, a concept, artists examine relationships formed between people and places, including resonant and often overlapping themes of community, travel, bridges and language. The contemporary practices featured in the exhibition go beyond Eurocentric conceptions of Latin American culture, transcending stereotypical and reductive views of the fantastic or exotic. The artists live and work in Canada, the United States, and Southwestern Ontario, which have diverse communities of people of Latin American heritage. This presence is increasing, contributing narratives to the national and continental experience.

• Happenings

Artist: Pablo Siquier 

Hostile
September 15 – November 3, 2016
Sicardi Gallery
Houston, Texas

• Happenings

Artists: Adán Vallecillo, Bruno Baptistelli, Elena Damiani, Engel Leonardo, Johanna Unzueta, Michael Gunzburger, Monika Bravo, Montez Magno, Omar Barquet, Otto Berchem

• Happenings

Artist: Nuno Ramos 

O Globo da morte de tudo
September 3, 2016 – November 6, 2016
Sesc Pompeia
São Paulo, Brazil

• Happenings

Artist: Felipe Mujica

32nd Bienal de São Paulo – INCERTEZA VIVA
September 7, 2016 – December 11, 2016
Fundação Bienal de São Paulo
São Paulo, Brazil

Mujica presents the work Las Universidades Desconocidas [The Unknown Universities], constituted of a group of 30 curtains made by two different teams: half of them in the center of São Paulo and the other half in the outskirts of the city. The title comes from a book of poems by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño, which proposes something like an abstract place where we can all relate to, it alludes to autonomy, suggests how one person is basically its own best guide. The artist reports that during his stay in São Paulo the trips between the center and the outskirts became his Unknown University, just like making the work on a horizontal dialogue with the fabricators and all the experience lived throughout this process.

The public also brings its own unknown universities that end up projected onto the work: the curtains are manipulable, the public can touch them and move them in the space making various combinations between them. Interacting with the work is in it self an act of learning and an opportunity. In 3 months, by the end of the show, the curtains will possibly be used and dirty after a period of multiple configurations created and lived by the public.

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Mujica apresenta o trabalho Las Universidades Desconocidas [As Universidades Desconhecidas], constituído por um grupo de 30 cortinas feitas por duas equipes diferentes: metade no centro de São Paulo e a outra metade na periferia da cidade. O título vem de um livro de poemas do escritor chileno Roberto Bolaño, que propõe algo como um lugar abstrato com o qual todos podem se relacionar, nos remete à autonomia, sugere como uma pessoa é basicamente sua própria guia. O artista relata que na sua estadia em São Paulo as viagens entre o centro e a periferia foram a sua Universidade Desconhecida, assim como construir o trabalho num diálogo horizontal com os fabricantes e toda a experiência vivida durante esse processo.

O público também traz as suas próprias universidades desconhecidas que acabam projetadas no trabalho: as cortinas são manipuláveis, o público pode tocá-las e move-las no espaço formando diversas combinações entre elas. Esse próprio gesto de interagir com a obra é por si só um ato de aprendizagem, uma oportunidade. Ao final dos 3 meses de exposição, as cortinas estarão possivelmente gastas e sujas, após um período de múltiplas configurações criadas e vivenciadas pelo público.

• Happenings

Artists: Amelia Toledo, Angélica Teuta, Antonio Manuel, Arnaldo Antunes, assume vivid astro focus, Carlito Carvalhosa, Carlos Fajardo, Damián Ortega, Débora Bolsoni, Iole de Freitas, Iran do Espírito Santo, Iván Navarro, Jac Leirner, José Bechara, José Resende, Laura Belém, Lea Van Steen e Raquel Kogan, Lucia Koch, Marcia Xavier, Marcius Galan, Nuno Ramos, Rodrigo Bueno, Túlio Pinto, Vanderlei Lopes, Waltercio Caldas

Transparência e Reflexo
September 7, 2016 – October 30, 2016
Museo Brasileiro da Escultura (MuBE)
São Paulo, Brazil

• Happenings

Artist: Clarissa Tossin

Clarissa Tossin: Encontro Das Águas (Meeting of Waters)
October 8, 2016 – November 20, 2016
JOAN
Los Angeles, CA, USA

• Happenings

Artist: Clemencia Labin 

LA EXTRANJERA – DIE FREMDE – THE FOREIGNER
September 9, 2016 – October 15, 2016
Galerie Renate Kammer
Hamburg, Germany

• Happenings

Artists: Alexander Apóstol, Bob and Roberta Smith, Camila Botero, Monika Bravo, Lisa Castagner, Jaime Gili, Lothar Goetz, Justin Hibbs, Polonca Lovšin with Tomaz Tomažin, Adriana Minoliti, Santiago Reyes Villaveces, Engel Leonardo, Lucía Pizzani, Lizi Sánchez, Paul Jones, Manuel Saiz and Annalisa Sonzogni.

CONCRETE
CONCRETE is curated by Jaime Gili in conjunction with the PC80 committee
September 17 –  25, 2016
Pullman Court
London, UK

In the 80th anniversary of the building, its residents are organising a series of events throughout the year to celebrate Pullman Court’s architecture and raise awareness of what it means universally, for the country, for the city and also locally, for the residents themselves. Events include talks, workshops, tours, an exhibition of historic photographs from the RIBA archive, and CONCRETE, an exhibition showcasing 17 international contemporary artists invited to work within the building.

Eleven years ago, under the umbrella of the 2005 London Open House, an exhibition entitled nineteenthirtysix took place across Pullman Court. On that occasion, three artists celebrated its uniqueness and the historical spaces of the building. In 2016, CONCRETE, will show some of the original works from the first show, alongside new site-specific commissions by artists who are resident or familiar with Pullman Court, and by some who are new to it but who deal with modern heritage and/or the city in their works. Back in 2005, the main issue was to raise awareness of modern heritage in Britain with one fine example, helping to confront a tendency to blame certain modern architecture for many social ills, overlooking issues like maintenance and investment. The artists exhibiting in CONCRETE will reflect on this, on the Modernist forms and elegance, and on the city as a whole, on the way people live in its spaces, and the way politics and the economy force changes on the city and its inhabitants.

Artists and audience will be able to see Pullman Court as an early example of high rise living that has influenced later housing developments, with its apartments set around services and amenities that organise life in a way that has become common nowadays.

• Happenings

Artists: Jin-me Yoon, Faye HeavyShield, Terry Frost, T. R. Uthco and Ant Farm, Shelley Niro, Soledad Arias, Laura Vickerson.

Soledad Arias: Some more or less distant realities
July 11-September 5, 2016
Walter Phillips Gallery, Satellite Space
Alberta, Canada

The exhibition comprises works from the Walter Phillips Gallery permanent collection, which was founded in 1977. Echoing the logic of Breton’s idea of the image, Some more or less distant realities is curated using the exquisite corpse method—a Surrealist technique employed to create (poems, images) collectively. Multiple individuals such as curators, artists and arts workers have selected the works in this exhibition through a process of sequential choices.

• Happenings

Artist: Elena Damiani 

Impact Structures
August 18, 2016 – September 24, 2016
Galerie Nordenhake Stockholm
Stockholm, Sweden

Working with collage, sculpture, video and installations Peruvian artist Elena Damiani employs the disciplines of geology, geography, cartography, archaeology and astronomy to reinterpret such categorisations and the way we understand the world around us. Her fictional and constructed landscapes propose alternative readings of geological time, history and humankind’s classifications of evidence. For her first exhibition at Galerie Nordenhake Damiani uses sources such as NASA, the Lunar and Planetary Institute and the U.S. Geological Survey repository to present a framework of quasi-evidence on celestial bodies like meteorites and comets and their landfalls. The works in the exhibition comprise documentation of traces of surface impacts, celestial transits, and cosmic debris left by impact events. Scientific evidence merges with fiction revealing how technology informs our representations of nature, and examining what we actually know about the natural world and how that knowledge is produced.

• Happenings

Public Abstraction
By Vlado Velkov (Author, Editor), Stefan Heidenreich (Author), Ana Teixeira Pinto (Author), Marcus Steinweg (Author), Petra Reichensperger (Author), Alexander Koch (Author), Gerrit Gohlke (Author), Raimar Stange (Author), Johannes Teiser (Foreword)
Published by Walther Koenig, 2015
300 pages

Could it be that fundamental aspects of abstraction remain to be discovered? Abstraction is usually conceived of formally and pictorially, whereby its underlying thought patterns often recede into the background. This book attempts to question the notion of abstraction and art history’s use of it by opening the term up to new interpretations in relation to the public and social spheres of activity. Numerous artistic contributions as well as essays by Gerrit Gohlke, Stefan Heidenreich, Alexander Koch, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Petra Reichensperger, Raimar Stange, Marcus Steinweg, and Vlado Velkov indicate various ways of reconsidering abstraction as a process and a method of artistic production.

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• Contemporary Contexts

Abstract Video: The Moving Image in Contemporary Art
Edited by Gabrielle Jennings, Foreword by Kate Mondloch
Published by University of California Press, 2015
304 pages

Offering historical and theoretical positions from a variety of art historians, artists, curators, and writers, this groundbreaking collection is the first substantive sourcebook on abstraction in moving-image media. With a particular focus on art since 2000, Abstract Video addresses a longer history of experimentation in video, net art, installation, new media, expanded cinema, visual music, and experimental film. Editor Gabrielle Jennings—a video artist herself—reveals as never before how works of abstract video are not merely, as the renowned curator Kirk Varnedoe once put it, “pictures of nothing,” but rather amorphous, ungovernable spaces that encourage contemplation and innovation. In explorations of the work of celebrated artists such as Jeremy Blake, Mona Hatoum, Pierre Huyghe, Ryoji Ikeda, Takeshi Murata, Diana Thater, and Jennifer West, alongside emerging artists, this volume presents fresh and vigorous perspectives on a burgeoning and ever-changing arena of contemporary art.

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Ofreciendo posiciones históricas y teóricas de una gama de historiadores del arte, curadores, y escritores, esta colección innovadora es la primera fuente sustantiva sobre abstracción en la imagen en movimiento. Con un enfoque particular en arte a partir del 2000, Abstract Video aborda una larga historia de experimentación en video, net art, instalación, nuevos medios, cinema expandido, música visual, y film experimental. La editora, Gabrielle Jennings, ella misma una video artista – revela como nunca antes, como obras de video arte abstracto no son meramente, como el renombrado curador Kirk Varnedoe una vez describió, “pinturas de nada”, pero mas bien espacios amorfos y no governables  que estimulan la contemplación y la innovación. En exploraciones de artistas celebrados tales como Jeremy Blake, Mona Hatoum, Pierre Huyghe, Ryoji Ikeda, Takeshi Murata, Diana Thater, y Jennifer West, junto a otros artistas emergentes, este volumen presenta perspectivas frescas y vigorosas sobre una arena del arte contemporáneo floreciente y siempre cambiante.

• Contemporary Contexts

The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1980-1985
Organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, by Maurice Tuchman with the assistance of Judi Freeman.
Published by Abbeville Press Publishers, New York, 1989
435 pages

The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1980-1985  was published by Abbeville Press Publishers, New York  in conjunction with the exhibition with the same name organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, by Maurice Tuchman with the assistance of Judi Freeman. This collection of essays by over a dozen distinguished art historians reveals the many aspects of this profound undercurrent of abstract art.

From the 1890s through the present day, various forms of spirituality have influenced artists and inspired many important transitions from representational art to abstraction. Mystical and speculative philosophies with origins in both eastern and western cultures, as well as other utopian ideas, have been at the heart of the groundbreaking work of Paul Gauguin, Vasily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Joseph Beuys and many others. The seventeen essays in this provocative book provide a radical rethinking of abstraction, from the Symbolism that prefigured abstract art through the current manifestations of spiritual content in American and European painting.

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The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1980-1985  (Lo espiritual en el arte: pintura abstracta 1980-1985) fue publicado por Abbeville Press Publishers, Nueva York  para la exhibición con el mismo título organizada por el  Los Angeles County Museum of Art, por Maurice Tuchman con la asistencia de Judi Freeman. Esta colección de ensayos de mas de doce distinguidos historiadores del arte revela  muchos aspectos de esta profunda tendencia subyacente del arte abstracto.

Desde 1890 al presente, varias formas de espiritualidad han influenciado artistas e inspirado muchas transiciones importantes del arte representativo hacia la abstracción. Filosofías místicas y especulativas con orígenes tanto en las culturas orientales como occidentales, como también otras ideas utópicas, se encuentran en el centro de la obra innovadora de Paul Gauguin, Vasily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Joseph Beuys y muchos otros artistas. Los diecisiete ensayos en este provocador libre provee una forma radical de repensar la abstracción, desde el Simbolismo que prefiguró el arte abstracto hasta las manifestaciones actuales de contenido espiritual en la pintura americana y europea.

• Modern Contexts

The Stone & The Thread: Andean Roots of Abstract Art
By Cesar Paternosto and translated by Esther Allen
Published by University of Texas Press, Austin,1996
296 pages

The ancient art of the Andes achieved its most sophisticated expression in weaving and painted pottery, as well as stone sculpture. Yet these objects have long been dismissed as craft items by observers for whom art means paintings on canvas and other manifestations of the European art tradition. In this major, paradigm-shifting book, first published in Buenos Aires in 1989 as Piedra abstracta, Cesar Paternosto offers the first comprehensive analysis of ancient Andean art in its own terms. Drawing all manifestations of Andean art–textiles, pottery, stone sculpture, carved rock outcrops, and the famous lines in the Nazca desert–into one coherent whole, he persuasively argues that these were the art media that fulfilled the symbol-making needs of a society that made no distinction between art and craft. Challenging the notion that abstraction is a development of the modern West, Paternosto reveals its deep roots as an indigenous American tradition and shows how that tradition reverberates in the work of twentieth-century artists such as Joaquin Torres Garcia, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, and Josef Albers. This section of the book, significantly expanded from the Spanish original, adds an important new chapter to the art history of the Americas. Engagingly written and beautifully illustrated, The Stone and the Thread unveils the masterpieces of ancient Andean art that have been long secluded in anthropological and natural history museums. It will open up new ways of seeing indigenous American art for a wide readership. A resident of New York City, Cesar Paternosto is a leading abstract artist who has exhibited widely in the Americas, Europe, and Japan.

PIEDRA ABSTRACTA
La escultura inca: Una visión contemporánea César Paternosto
Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 1989

Olvidada durante largos siglos por los prejuicios que, bajo la máscara de la razón, alentaron la mirada occidental, la escultura lítica incaica fue despojada de los rasgos que le conferían singularidad estética y simbólica. Prácticamente ignorada por los primeros cronistas, despreciada por los antropólogos, expulsada, en fin, de la historia del arte, la escultura monumental de los Andes no había recibido, hasta el presente, la escrupulosa dedicación que se merecía.

En esta obra, César Paternosto, pintor y teórico del arte, indaga la materia desde perspectivas múltiples que, sin desdeñar los conocimientos que ofrecen las ciencias del hombre y de la cultura, rescata ante todo su dimensión estética. Apoyada en modelos interpretativos que no desconocen la evolución del arte de nuestro tiempo, la reflexión de Paternosto, no menos alejada de una etnocéntrica búsqueda isomórfica que de dudosas verbalizaciones formales, intenta una aproximación al sentido que las formas abstractas tenían en el pasado.

• Modern Contexts

Pre-Columbian Art and the Post-Columbian World: Ancient American Sources of Modern Art
By Barbara Braun
Published by Harry N. Abrams in 1993
340 pages

• Modern Contexts

Reconditioned Abstraction
November 15, 1996–January 4, 1997
Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
1996

Reconditioned Abstraction is an exhibition catalog published by the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, for the show between November 15, 1996–January 4, 1997, featuring: Charles Clough, Lydia Dona, Moira Dryer, Rochelle Feinstein, Mary Heilmann, Jonathan Lasker, Fabian Marcaccio, David Reed and Philip Taaffe.

Martin Ball, the exhibition curator writes: “The idea of abstraction restored to a usable condition, or “reconditioned,” had its origins in my own practice as a painter, spurred on by a lecture given by artist and critic Saul Ostrow. Ostrow discussed the issue of whether recent abstract painting was new or merely renewed formalism, prompting me to re-evaluate my own views on recent neo-conceptual abstract painting. (…) Current abstraction (…) defamiliarizes historical conventions to express personal experience in the face of commercialized pleasures, by vernacularizing a prior set of rigid, idealized formal concepts, and internalizing the very theories that were presumed to deal a deadly blow to painting. (…)”Reconditioned” abstraction is an irritant in a politically perfect world of ideological piety.”

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Reconditioned Abstraction (Abstracción reacondicionada) es un catálogo de exposición publicado por el Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, para la exposición entre noviembre 15, 1996–enero 4, 1997. Incluye a los artistas: Charles Clough, Lydia Dona, Moira Dryer, Rochelle Feinstein, Mary Heilmann, Jonathan Lasker, Fabian Marcaccio, David Reed y Philip Taaffe.

Martin Ball, el curador de la muestra escribe: “La idea de la abstracción restaurada a una condición usable, o ‘reacondicionada’ tiene sus orígenes en mi propia práctica como pintor, estimulada por una charla del artista y crítico Saul Ostrow. Ostrow  discutió el problema de si la pintura abstracta reciente era nueva o simplemente un formalismo renovado, promoviendo que yo revaluara mis propias perspectivas sobre la reciente pintura abstracta neo conceptual. (…) La abstracción actual (…) desfamiliariza las convenciones históricas para expresar la experiencia personal en cara a los placeres comercializados, al vernacularizar una serie de conceptos formales anteriormente idealizados, e interiorizando las teorías que presumiblemente profirieron un golpe mortal a la pintura.(…) La Abstracción ‘reacondicionada’ is un irritante en un mundo políticamente perfecto de piedad ideológica.

• Contemporary Contexts

Geométricos Hoy. Caminos en Expansión
Colección MACBA  Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires
Desde el 17 de mayo hasta el 29 de junio de 2012
Aldo Rubino: Idea y Dirección
Renata Cervetto: Curadora

Geométricos Hoy. Caminos en Expansión está conformada por parte del acervo patrimonial del MACBA – Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires. La exposición plantea un recorte de la escena artística rioplatense contemporánea, que tiene como protagonistas a varios de sus artistas más relevantes.

La exhibición se propone como un punto de confluencia, uno entre los posibles, para observar y pensar la producción de artistas que trabajan bajo el lenguaje de la abstracción geométrica, y busca generar nuevos abordajes de los múltiples caminos que este lenguaje ha adoptado desde la década del 90 hasta la actualidad.

Artists: Cecilia Biagini, Gabriela Böer, Marcelo Boullosa, Fabián Burgos, Natalia Cacchiarelli, Beto de Volder, Verónica Di Toro, Lucio Dorr, Mariano Ferrante, Jimena Fuertes, Silvia Gurfein, Graciela Hasper, Silvana Lacarra, Inés Raiteri, Roberto Scafidi, Pablo Siquier, Andrés Sobrino, Carola Zech y Martín Pelenur.

Itineró a: UADE Art, Buenos Aires Director: Alejandro Cappelletti Fecha: 16 de mayo al 29 de junio Museo Emilio Caraffa, Córdoba Director: Jorge Torres Fecha: 12 de julio al 2 de septiembre Centro Cultural del Bicentenario, Santiago del Estero Directora: Sara Liendo Fecha: 6 de septiembre al 4 de noviembre Museo de Bellas Artes, Salta Directora: Andrea Elías Fecha: 8 de noviembre al 8 de diciembre.

• Contemporary Contexts

Cecilia Fajardo-Hill: Abstractions/Abstracciones Significativas
Published by Art Nexus, n. 92
2014

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• Contemporary Contexts

Jaime Davidovich (1936-2016)

Abstraction in Action is saddened to announce the passing of Jaime Davidovich, who died on August 27 in New York.

My taped projects are about surfaces, context and space.

I first started working with adhesive tape in 1966. Initially I used the tape to hold my paintings to the wall, but starting in 1970 I eliminated the painting and concentrated on the tapes as my primary medium. I wanted to explore the possibilities of using spaces where the viewer does not expect art to be found. This concept brought me to intervene staircases, landing platforms and outdoor walls and objects. Each work was created for a unique space. When covering a surface, the tape creates an additive grid full of amorphous patterns caused by air bubbles. When developing a tape project, sometimes paper or a photograph was the support and framework for the piece, but many times the project was able to become monumental as it seamlessly adapted to the architecture of the space. Also in 1970, I began to incorporate videotape as part of these projects. The taped projects became “Art on tape and tapes as art”.

• Happenings

Artist: Adriana Minoliti 

Aichi Triennale 2016
August 11, 2016 — October 23, 2016
Toyohashi, Okazaki, Nagoya, Japan

Combining elements of architecture, design and visual arts, Minoliti’s works disclose a political and historiographic dialogue between eroticism and abstraction. Informed by queer and feminist theories, the artist’s paintings and installations play with gender pictorially, mixing spiritual values and aesthetics appreciations. The human body and geometric figures alike are charged with porn-erotic desires.

• Happenings

Artists: Carmen Argote, Cirilo Domine, Naotaka Hiro, Owen Driggs, Peter Bo Rappmund, Clarissa Tossin.

Placebound
August 28, 2016 – October 2, 2016
Curated by Bia Gayotto
Nan Rae Gallery, Woodbury University
Burbank, California

• Happenings

Artist: Eduardo Santiere

Multitudes
July 27, 2016 – September 7, 2016
Henrique Faria 
Buenos Aires, Argentina

This is Eduardo Santiere’s medium and matter: surface and volume. With graphite, colored pencils, sharp materials and infinite meticulousness, Santiere composes universes whose scale we cannot be sure of. He constructs a Scenario for an Empty World [Escenario para un mundo vacío] – one of his “scratchings” on exhibit – subjecting the paper’s surface to incisions and tearings that liberate it from the pressure that made it smooth and regular. He brings out sculptural reliefs that lightly dangle from the matter they have been detached from. It is a question of a morphological transformation that moves from the void to abundance.

The paper’s two-dimensionality is just as roughly subjugated in the works in which Santiere uses conventional drawing materials. Light graphite lines surround or connect points of color of various densities, colored ovoid forms – flat or on lacerated paper – are interconnected — the paper erupts and spumes like foam. We lose ourselves in studying the position, shape, movement and mutual relation of the microorganisms or heavenly bodies hovering over the white of the page. We waver between surrendering to arbitrariness or hunting for a system.

• Happenings

Artists: Feliza Bursztyn, Leyla Cárdenas, Johanna Calle, Danilo Dueñas, César González, Rosario López, Maria Fernanda Plata, Alex Rodríguez, Luis Roldán, Rosemberg Sandoval, Bernardo Salcedo e Icaro Zorbar.

Pensamiento escultórico
July 22, 2016 – August 27, 2016
Casas Riegner
Bogotá, Colombia

Nowadays, the term sculpture holds certain ambiguity. Throughout the twentieth century, the artistic category of sculpture remained fragile partly due to the fact that most of the significant accounts of modernist art were articulated in relation to painting. In addition, during the late 1960’s the term sculpture was stretched and made malleable so as to cover highly heterogeneous forms, thus moving away from the so called medium specificity that used to define it. Feeling the need to bring order to the field in which contemporary sculpture operated and attempting to  fight the so-called pluralism that characterized much of the art that was being  produced after 1968, Rosalind Krauss published her seminal essay “Sculpture in the Expanded Field” (1978).

Besides taking inspiration from the precepts and intentions laid out by Krauss in her famous essay, the exhibition Pensamiento Escultórico  is put forward as a space for reflecting about sculpture.  By questioning the extent to which sculpture has changed as a result of this transformation from object like to installation-oriented work, the exhibition seeks, among other things, to highlight the body’s experience in relation to the three-dimensional work. The absence of some of the traditional ways of producing sculpture such as carving, casting and modelling, the occasional elimination or renewal of the pedestal, the use of highly charged materials and the act of undoing the substance from which the work is made of, are all strategies that while going beyond the limits of traditional artistic canons, point to a constant rethinking of  the artists’ sculptural perspectives.

• Happenings

Artists: Ricardo Alcaide, Abdulaziz Ashour, Ernesto Caivano, Darío Escobar, Fernanda Fragateiro, Simryn Gill, Anne Lindberg, Yuri Masnyj, Julianne Swartz, Yuken Teruya, Rirkrit Tiravanija & Tomas Vu, Adam Winner.

good news.
July 28 – August 29, 2016
Josée Bienvenu Gallery 
New York, USA

good news., an exhibition of international artists working on and off paper to deconstruct and reconfigure information. With the daily deluge of bad news at our fingertips, we become disoriented in our distanced yet simultaneously intimate sense of connectedness to the world.

• Happenings

Artist: Luis Roldán

Periplo
July 13, 2016 – October 10, 2016
Museo de Arte del Banco de la República
Bogotá, Colombia

La obra de Luis Roldán está determinada por un claro interés hacía la pintura, ya sea por las posibilidades de representación o por la expresividad de sus cualidades; la suya ha sido una trayectoria prolífica de más de treinta años, que lo han posicionado como uno de los artistas contemporáneos de Colombia con mayor reconocimiento a nivel internacional. En Luis Roldán. Periplo, la retrospectiva que presenta desde el 13 de julio hasta el 10 de octubre el Museo de Arte del Banco de la República de Bogotá, se exhiben 60 obras que, más allá de hacer una revisión cronológica, indagan la manera como el artista presenta y representa el acontecer del tiempo íntimo, el tiempo del viaje, el tiempo de la ficción y el tiempo de la creación artística.

• Happenings

Artist: Sigfredo Chacón

Pinturasparadaltónicos
July 17, 2016 – September 18, 2016
Trasnocho Cultural
Caracas, Venezuela

La exposición Pinturasparadaltónicos del artista venezolano Sigfredo Chacón (Caracas, 1950), presenta una selección de obras sobre tela y papel realizadas entre 2011 y 2016, donde el autor propone un alfabeto cromático diferente al que se maneja convencionalmente, basado en la percepción de sus dos hijos daltónicos. Aquí, como en parte de su obra precedente, establece un contrapunto entre lo visual y lo textual, poniendo al descubierto la no coincidencia entre el color estándar y sus equivalentes daltonianos.

• Happenings

Artists: Richard Garet and Crystal Z. Campbell

Sound One
July 19, 2016 — August 12, 2016
Cindy Rucker Gallery
New York, USA

• Happenings

Artists: Augusto Ballardo, José Ignacio Iturburu, Valentino Sibadon, Carlos Zevallos and Danilo Filtrof

VEJIGA DE PEZ VoL. IV – INMERSIÓN
June 16, 2016 – September 11, 2016
MUSEO DE ARTE CONTEMPORANEO / MAC-Lima
Lima, Perú

Vejiga de Pez (Fish Bladder) is a group of visual artists dedicated to exploring the relationships between geometry, space, and natural processes. Each artist focuses on a personal concern, addressed by materializing certain reference points in architecture, archaeology, and biology. The result is a series of interventions—site specific art—where interaction with the visitor forms part of the creative process. Despite the differences that one may note among the works, the underlying artistic language is the same in each case: geometry.

• Happenings

Artists: Claudia Andujar, Margarita Azurdia, Nicolás Bacal, Manuel Casanueva, Gregorio Cuartas, Magdalena Fernández, Marcius Galan, Mónica Giron, César González, Gertrude “Gego” Goldschmidt, Ariel Guzik, Mateo López, Anna Maria Maiolino, Felipe Mujica, Gabriel Orozco, John Mario Ortiz, Nicolás París, Carlos Rojas, Bispo do Rosario, Armando Reverón, Xul Solar, Juan Diego Tobalina.

De lo Espiritual en el Arte. Obertura
July 14th, 2016 – September 11, 2016
Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín
Medellín, Colombia

Es probable que la noción de lo integral sea tan decisiva a esta centuria como la de relatividad lo fue para el siglo XX.

Las ideas que se han trazado hasta el momento con el fin de superar la emergencia ecológica demandan con urgencia el reemplazo de los modelos que amenazan la continuidad de la existencia en el planeta, por prácticas integrales que van de la mano de comprensiones sistémicas y holísticas.

Los desarrollos alcanzados hasta el momento por las ciencias naturales y humanas ofrecen oportunidades ideales para llegar a esas metas. A ellos se debe la existencia de herramientas de conocimiento, investigación, educación, conexión y difusión como no hubo antes en la historia y, también, la claridad de que las actitudes integrales son inconcebibles sin el desarrollo de la consciencia espiritual y sin una educación diseñada con ese propósito.

Los análisis sistémicos revelan el desequilibrio que conlleva el favorecimiento de la razón sobre otros ámbitos de la vida y fortalecen el interés en formas de conocimiento generadas en la órbita del espíritu. Estas formas advierten que desde el territorio del espíritu se ingresa con respeto hacia otra ciencia que es exigente, compleja, complementaria a la empírica, y que emerge en un espacio distinto: el interior.

A ese respecto, el arte representa un invaluable campo vivo de observación y entendimiento en tanto que es uno de los medios que le da rostros al espíritu. En esa medida, su historia guarda una herencia apreciable cuya investigación y reinterpretación contribuye a recuperar lo que largos años de materialismo y dominio de la razón ensombrecieron. A causa de la inmensidad y variedad de su riqueza, sin embargo, esta herencia tomará años de estudio y recuperaciones.

Con esa consciencia, esta exhibición fue concebida como una obertura, como el ingreso desde distintas sendas a un universo enorme, múltiple y en eterna y necesaria construcción. De allí que los artistas contemporáneos, cuyas obras representan caminos de exploración necesarios para las comprensiones a que se ha abierto el presente, compartan estas salas con grandes maestros de la historia del arte que los han influido directa o indirectamente, ya sea como pilares de su gramática visual o como intérpretes que abarcan el mundo al que pertenecen y que con su contribución descubren de modo continuo.

El común denominador que une a estos artistas, que trabajan desde distintos lugares e intereses, es el desarrollo lúcido de las visiones complejas y unitarias que se requieren hoy, las cuales reclaman un lugar importante en el diálogo en el que se definen las nuevas convenciones que representarán al ser y al universo.

Sin que necesariamente pertenezcan a una religión, algunos de los artistas aquí convocados se alimentaron de los saberes codificados en ellas, o en las herencias ancestrales, con la idea de desentrañar las lecciones que nos dan sobre luz, geometría, matemática, y sobre la manera en que éstas estructuran la forma o la materia. De este modo, rescataron culturas y filosofías arcanas que en la actualidad son de gran interés y mantuvieron vibrando para nosotros el espacio de la sabiduría milenaria.

• Happenings

Artists: José Carlos Martinat, Iosu Aramburu, Jaime Gili, Asger Dybvad Larsen, Ricardo Rendón, Saul Sánchez, Fernando Carabajal, Wolfram Ullrich, Emilio Chapela, Justin Hibbs,Károly Keserü, Dannielle Tegeder, Martín Pelenur, G.T. Pellizzi, Mario Palacios Kaim.

Abstraction 2
July 9, 2016 – September 10, 2016
Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo
Mexico City, Mexico

Abstraction 2 aims to capture the current state of contemporary abstraction, highlighting the differences and similarities displayed in the artistic practice of fifteen national and international artists.

• Happenings

Artist: Guido Ignatti 

Guido Ignatti: Setup
July 1, 2016 – September 11, 2016
Museum of Contemporary Art Denver
Denver, USA

Trained as a sculptor and set designer, Guido Ignatti uses simple materials to stage situations that transform everyday urban life. Ignatti’s four installations on view at MCA Denver will form a trajectory, beginning with an intimate gallery of abstract paintings, moving through an arrangement of modified plants, and culminating with a room-sized sculpture and a mural that combines poetry and political graffiti.

By setting up environments that oscillate between the ordinary and the enigmatic, he invites reflection on art’s pleasures and pitfalls – on what art can offer and withhold. Guido Ignatti: Setup is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in the US.

• Happenings

Everyday Reflections in Abstraction
SPACE Collection

Curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Greg Attaway
July 29th, 2016 – January 1, 2017
SPACE, Irvine, CA

Artists: Esvin Alarcón Lam, Jaime Ávila, Omar Barquet, Pia Camil, Casari & PPPP, Gabriel de la Mora, Marcius Galan, Guido Ignatti, Jorge Méndez Blake, Felipe Mujíca, Mario Navarro, Ricardo Rendón, Clarissa Tossin, Adán Vallecillo

We can find echoes of our daily experience in the world, ranging from the intimacy of our homes to the expansive arena of the outer world in Latin American contemporary abstraction. Everyday Reflections in Abstraction is divided into two sections: Interior and Exterior. Interior includes Esvin Alarcón Lam, Omar Barquet, Guido Ignatti, Jorge Méndez Blake, Gabriel de la Mora, Felipe Mujica, Mario Navarro and Ricardo Rendón, all dealing with the transformation of unpretentious elements of a domestic setting such as chairs, cots, mirrors, copper tubes, curtains, and a window. Exterior encompasses Jaime Ávila, Pia Camil, Alberto Casari, Marcius Galan, Clarissa Tossin, and Adán Vallecillo, focusing on the paradoxical structures that shape the urban environment and our interactions with it.

Everyday Reflections in Abstraction is an Abstraction in Action initiative to promote new ways of thinking and experiencing Latin American contemporary abstraction through art works from the holdings of the SPACE Collection. The show is curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Greg Attaway.

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Interior 

Abstraction may allow us to reimagine daily objects and thus the routines that unknowingly revolve around them. The artists in this section deconstruct and rethink the daily. Esvin Alarcón Lam Variation with Cots (Variation No.1), 2014 is a large installation made with old and rusty found cots, that rearticulate the very syntax of one of the most elemental icons of human existence: the cot, to become a sort of imaginary text or musical composition. Omar Barquet Astillas, 2012 displays small fragments of legs from chairs, thus displacing the chair from its use to a ghostly presence on the wall. This work is part of the artists ongoing research on the language of design combined with the daily, which implodes conventions to create open situations. By the artist Gabriel de la Mora is Pomona 36 II D, 2012, composed of a 1904 detached ceiling. According to the artist this is, “a painting done over the course of 108 years”, thus the traditional idea of decorative painting on the wall is replaced by a large ready-made of a ceiling. Felipe Mujica, Untitled (Curtain #3), 2013 is an example of installations Mujica has produced with fabric panels. According to the artist these “aim to be drawings that occupy space and also curtains that function as space organizers, as temporary walls that canalize the public’s circulation and perception of space as well as the perception of other possible art works in space. In this sense these installations are both an object of contemplation as well as a functional device, they become exhibition design and flexible temporary architecture.”

Guido Ignatti, Pintura y tapiado para una ventana inexistente, (Boarded Up Painting for an Inexistent Window), 2012 offers the illusion of a window and exterior light when none exists. The artist writes that “another place becomes possible if we open the windows.” For Ignatti, light during the day reveals the passing of time and how we are subjected to it. At night when the light is absent, artificial light, does the opposite. Perhaps this work offers just that, the illusion that neither separation between the outside and the inside exists, nor between day and night, or natural and artificial.

Mario Navarro The Original Accident (Section IV), 2015 is a large scale installation with mirrors which instead of reflecting the organic form of the spectator, it atomizes the wall in a geometric composition with multiple reflections of the mirrors themselves.  This work is part of an ongoing investigation by the artist on the relationship between the principles of architecture and forms through sculpture and installation, with the aim of pushing the boundaries of composition, space and perception. Ricardo Rendón, Circuitos de Iluminaciíon (D’Alembert), 2015 and Circuitos de Iluminaciíon (Voltaire), 2015 are sculptures in copper and felt, associated with labors  executed by plumbers and electricians. Rendón produces unexpected sculptural compositions which contrast the soft texture and bright color of the felt with copper tubes. A further reference in the piece are the names of d’Alembert and Voltaire, alluding to ‘Enlightenment’, thus bringing together the lighting as a practical element and the more philosophical allusion to knowledge. Espacio de concentración (fricción y contacto 8), 2010 by Ricardo Rendón materializes the beauty of basic materials of construction such as sand paper, copper pipes, industrial felt, and wood. What may seem excessively humble and common materials become the structural elements for sculptures that are highly pictorial with their large planes of yellow felt or colored sandpaper.

Jorge Méndez Blake, Monumento a James Joyce, 2011 bridges both the indoor and the outdoor sections of the exhibition. The artist relates classic literature with contemporary architecture and visual arts to create art based on the notion of the “library”. This work refers to Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce which recounts in 600 pages the events in Leopold Bloom during one day, therefore turning a day into something incalculably complex. “The Library/monument has a simple exterior form, a cube (the day), but inside is a complex and infinite number of shapes and reflections. The possibility of infinity in a day.” This work by Mendez-Blake symbolizes how the daily may be expanded immeasurably through art.

Exterior 

This section highlights artists’ unconventional relationship with the urban environment and their capacity to transform and highlight both the visible and the invisible, the common and the extraordinary. Jaime Ávila’s installation Untitled from the series Talento Pirata, 2013, speaks of how piracy in the form of illegal copying of movies and music through technology has become a widespread type of informal economy, especially for unemployed people that sell them in the streets. The artist, in the same way that a movie can be reproduced hundreds of times, has created 546 CD boxes which replicate this form of illegal economy and urban landscape, by combining photographs and cut outs of colorful geometric shopping bags. Pia Camil Espectacular Telón, 2013, is a large backdrop curtain with images appropriated or copied directly from billboards that have been transformed due to abandonment and the passing of time, speaking this way of the failures of mass culture. For the artist this work being a curtain -a domestic element- it creates a relationship with the culture of spectacle. Alberto Casari, EM.SB.13.2, 2013 is a work made with a waxed canvas with holes. The canvas was once a truck tarpaulin that the artist cut, intervened horizontally with dark paint on the lower section and hung from a strip of wood, paradoxically invoking a sort of meditative landscape, grounded on the materiality of the work.  Marcius Galan Irregular Division, 2014, is a concrete geometric floor installation which configuration may bring to mind sidewalks while creating a division of the gallery space. Thus, in the artist’s words “exploring the metaphorical capacities of space and our relation to it (… and) interrogating the functions, limits and frontiers of space and by extension, the socio-political systems which reside therein”. Clarissa Tossin Brasília by Foot, 2009-2013 presents the footpaths made by pedestrians within the Monumental Axis, a modernist urban structure in the city of Brasília, consisting of six lane roads with no traffic lights or sidewalks. The complex networks of organic geometric paths created by pedestrians, contrasts with the modern urban structure that excluded them in the first place. Adán Vallecillo’s Pantones, 2013 displays a series of brightly colored sheets of plastic in space, that when seen in close proximity we observe dirt and wear of the material.  For this work the artist reflects on the resourcefulness of the people in the jungle town of Iquitos, Peru, in deploying the sheet of cheap colorful plastic to protect their motorcycle taxis, thus creating a popular and unselfconscious form of live abstraction.

• Projects

Artist: Elias Crespin

Hommage au Carré
July 10, 2016 – September 11, 2016
Galerie Wagner
Paris, France

Résolument engagée dans la présentation et la promotion de l’abstraction géométrique, la Galerie Wagner propose une présentation d’œuvres de 25 artistes sur le thème du carré. Cet accrochage fait écho à la donation André Le Bozec au Musée du Touquet. Cette donation comporte quatre vingt dix œuvres d’artistes qui sont, pour une dizaine d’entre eux, représentés par la galerie Wagner, dont Guy de Lussigny pour qui le carré est « la forme la plus stable qu’ait inventé l’esprit humain ».

• Happenings

Artists: Miguel Acosta, Alfredo Alvarez Plagaro, Ana Isabel Diez, Florencio Gelabert, Sonia Falcone, Mabel Poblet, Martin Pelenur, Viviana Zargon.

Fragmentations and other Parables
June 16, 2016 – August 6, 2016
Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Curated by: Aluna Curatorial Collective
Miami, Florida

Fragmentation and other parables, curated by Aluna Curatorial Collective (Adriana Herrera and Willy Castellanos) at Alejandra von Hartz Gallery is an approximation to the recurrence, meaning, and the logic of fragmentation in contemporary artistic practices: Is it true that it disrupts the threads of connection with history or could it suggest other types of relations to the past and the present? What are the contemporary parables that suggest fragmentation in art?

• Happenings

Beyond the Supersquare: Art and Architecture in Latin America after Modernism
This exhibition is co-organized by Holly Block (New York City) and María Inés Rodríguez (Colombia), and designed by Benedeta Monteverde (Mexico).
May 1, 2014 to January 11, 2015
The Bronx Museum of the Arts 
New York, USA

Beyond the Supersquare explores the indelible influence of Latin American and Caribbean modernist architecture on contemporary art. The exhibition features over 30 artists and more than 60 artworks, including photography, video, sculpture, installation, and drawing, that respond to major Modernist architectural projects constructed in Latin America and the Caribbean from the 1920s through the 1960s. Beyond the Supersquare examines the complicated legacies of modernism through architecture and thought—as embodied by the political, economic, environmental, and social challenges faced by countries throughout Latin America—through the unique perspective of artists working today. This exhibition is co-organized by Holly Block (New York City) and María Inés Rodríguez (Colombia), and designed by Benedeta Monteverde (Mexico).

Artists in the exhibition include: Leonor Antunes (Portugal), Alexander Apóstol (Venezuela), Alexandre Arrechea (Cuba), Felipe Arturo (Colombia), Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck (Venezuela) and Media Farzin (USA), Alberto Baraya (Colombia), Carlos Bunga (Portugal), Los Carpinteros (Cuba), Jordi Colomer (Spain), Livia Corona Benjamin (Mexico), Felipe Dulzaides (Cuba), Fernanda Fragateiro (Portugal), Magdalena Fernández (Venezuela), Carlos Garaicoa (Cuba), Mario Garcia Torres (Mexico), Terence Gower (Canada), Patrick Hamilton (Belgium/Chile), Diango Hernández (Cuba), Quisqueya Henriquez (Cuba), Andre Komatsu (Brazil), Runo Lagomarsino (Argentina), Pablo Leon de la Barra (Mexico), Maria Martinez-Cañas (Cuba) and Rafael Domenech (Cuba), Daniela Ortiz (Peru), Jorge Pardo (Cuba), Manuel Piña (Cuba), Ishmael Randall-Weeks (Peru), Mauro Restiffe (Brazil), Pedro Reyes (Mexico), and Chemi Rosado-Seijo (Puerto Rico) and Roberto ‘Boly’ Cortéz (Puerto Rico).

A catalogue was produced for the show. Beyond the Supersquare: Art and Architecture in Latin America after Modernism, Edited by Antonio Sergio Bessa with additional research by Mario Torres. Published by Fordham University Press and The Bronx Museum, New York, 2014

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Beyond the Supersquare (Mas allá del supercubo) explora la indeleble influencia de la arquitectura modernista de America Latina y el Caribe en el arte contemporáneo.  La exhibición presenta mas de 30 artistas y mas de 60 obras, incluyendo fotografía, video, escultura, instalación, y dibujo, que responde a proyectos arquitectónicos modernistas importantes, construidos en América Latina y el Caribe desde los 20 hasta los años 60. Beyond the Supersquare examina los complejos legados modernistas a través de arquitectura y pensamiento – ejemplificado en en los retos políticos, económicos, ambientales que enfrentan los países de América Latina- a través de la perspectiva única de artistas hoy día. La exhibición fue co-organizada por: Holly Block (New York City) y María Inés Rodríguez (Colombia),  y diseñada por Benedeta Monteverde (Mexico).

Los artistas incluidos en la exhibición son: Leonor Antunes (Portugal), Alexander Apóstol (Venezuela), Alexandre Arrechea (Cuba), Felipe Arturo (Colombia), Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck (Venezuela) and Media Farzin (USA), Alberto Baraya (Colombia), Carlos Bunga (Portugal), Los Carpinteros (Cuba), Jordi Colomer (Spain), Livia Corona Benjamin (Mexico), Felipe Dulzaides (Cuba), Fernanda Fragateiro (Portugal), Magdalena Fernández (Venezuela), Carlos Garaicoa (Cuba), Mario Garcia Torres (Mexico), Terence Gower (Canada), Patrick Hamilton (Belgium/Chile), Diango Hernández (Cuba), Quisqueya Henriquez (Cuba), Andre Komatsu (Brazil), Runo Lagomarsino (Argentina), Pablo Leon de la Barra (Mexico), Maria Martinez-Cañas (Cuba) and Rafael Domenech (Cuba), Daniela Ortiz (Peru), Jorge Pardo (Cuba), Manuel Piña (Cuba), Ishmael Randall-Weeks (Peru), Mauro Restiffe (Brazil), Pedro Reyes (Mexico), y Chemi Rosado-Seijo (Puerto Rico) – Roberto ‘Boly’ Cortéz (Puerto Rico).

Un catálogo fue producido para la muestra: Beyond the Supersquare: Art and Architecture in Latin America after Modernism, Editado por Antonio Sergio Bessa con investigación adicional de Mario Torres. Publicado por Fordham University Press y The Bronx Museum, New York, 2014

• Contemporary Contexts
• Contexts

Lo[S] Cinético[S]
Curated by Osbel Suárez
2007
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Madrid, Spain

The exhibition explores the presence of Kineticism from the beginning of modernity to the latest artistic expressions. For this reason, it explores its presence through a transversal perspective throughout more than a century, far from strict periodizations and classifications traditionally established, looking at tendencies such as Futurism, Constructivism, Dada, and Surrealism, which allowed to include artists that are not technically considered Kinetic. This exhibition proposes to reinterpret el reach and meaning of Kineticism in Latin America as their own contribution to the general discourse of modern art.

‘Lo[s] Cinético[s]’ stands, in this sense, in a space that attempts to crack the eurocentric vision of twentieth century art and to highlight the acknowledgment that Latin American artists made an important contribution to universal art.

Amongst the artists that participated in the show are: Alexander Apóstol, Carlos Cruz-Díez, Sandú Darié, Hugo Demarco, Horacio García-Rossi, Gyula Kosice,  Julio Le Parc, Antonio Maluf, Alejandro Otero, Abraham Palatnik, José Patricio, Matilde Pérez, Manera, Carmelo Arden Quin, Francisco Sobrino, Jesús Soto, Luis Tomasello, Víctor Valera, y Gregorio Vardánega.

For the exhibition an important catalogue was produced which includes essays by: Osbel Suárez, William Jeffett, Miguel Ángel García Hernández, Mathieu Poirier, Alexandre Quoi, Orestes Hurtado y Teresa Lanceta Aragonés. The catalogue includes more than 80 works by 45 artists, as well as texts on each one of the artists represented.

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La muestra recorre la presencia del Cinetismo desde los inicios de la modernidad hasta las últimas manifestaciones artísticas. Por ello explora mediante una perspectiva transversal su presencia a lo largo de más de un siglo, lejos de las estrictas periodicidades y clasificaciones tradicionalmente establecidas, deteniéndose en corrientes como el Futurismo, el Constructivismo, el Dadaísmo o el Surrealismo, lo que permite  incorporar artistas no considerados técnicamente como cinéticos.

Por otra parte la exposición desea reinterpretar el alcance y significado del Cinetismo en América Latina como aportación propia al discurso general del arte moderno.

‘Lo[s] Cinético[s]’ se erige, en este sentido, en un espacio que intenta resquebrajar la visión eurocéntrica del arte del siglo XX y destacar el reconocimiento de artistas latinoamericanos que realizaron una importante contribución al arte universal.

Entre los artistas participantes se encuentran: Alexander Apóstol, Carlos Cruz-Díez, Sandú Darié, Hugo Demarco, Horacio García-Rossi, Gyula Kosice,  Julio Le Parc, Antonio Maluf, Alejandro Otero, Abraham Palatnik, José Patricio, Matilde Pérez, Manera, Carmelo Arden Quin, Francisco Sobrino, Jesús Soto, Luis Tomasello, Víctor Valera, y Gregorio Vardánega.

Para la exhibición se publicó un catálogo cuyos autores son: Osbel Suárez, William Jeffett, Miguel Ángel García Hernández, Mathieu Poirier, Alexandre Quoi, Orestes Hurtado y Teresa Lanceta Aragonés. El catálogo reúne más de 80 obras de 45 artistas, además de textos sobre cada artista representado.

• Contexts
• Modern Contexts

América fría : la abstracción geométrica en Latinoamérica (1934 – 1973) 
Curated by Osbel Suárez
2011
Fundación Juan March, Madrid, Spain

Cartografiar la historia —compleja y fragmentada— de la abstracción geométrica en Latinoamérica, para mostrar la renovación y el carácter diferenciado de sus invenciones y construcciones respecto a la abstracción geométrica europea es el propósito de la exposición. América fría. La abstracción geométrica en Latinoamérica (1934-1973). Pintura, fotografía, escultura y arquitectura están representadas en las casi 300 piezas–algunas de ellas nunca vistas fuera de sus países de origen— de más de 60 artistas procedentes de Argentina, Brasil, Colombia, Cuba, Uruguay, Venezuela y México. La muestra abarca un arco temporal definido por dos viajes de retorno de Europa a América: 1934, cuando Joaquín Torres–García regresa a Montevideo, y 1973, año de la vuelta del venezolano Jesús Rafael Soto para la inauguración de su museo en su ciudad natal, Ciudad Bolívar.

Cold America. Geometric Abstractionin Latin America (1934-1973) sets out to reveal the complex and fragmented history of geometric abstraction in Latin America and the way in which it renovated and also differed from European abstraction. Painting, photography, sculpture and architecture are represented through approximately 300 works, some never before viewed outside their country of origin, by 64 artists from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Uruguay, Venezuela and Mexico, in a time frame defined by the dates in which two pivotal figures returned to Latin America from Europe: 1934, the year in which Joaquín Torres-García settled definitely in Montevideo, and 1973, when Venezuelan artist Jesús Rafael Soto traveled back to his native city of Ciudad Bolívar to inaugurate the museum that carries his name.

• Contexts
• Modern Contexts

Geometric Abstraction in Latin America.
Arte en Colombia / ArtNexus, Anthological Texts
Edited by Ivonne Pini
ArtNexus- Spanish edition 
2013
English and Spanish editions. 296 pages

This book groups an anthological selection of texts on geometric abstraction, published in Arte en Colombia/ArtNexus magazine. Abstraction has been present in the magazine since its inception during the 1970´s. The 1950´s represented a key moment for the Constructivist and Concrete Movements in Latin America, which were a starting point for generating an important production that influenced other related fields such as contemporary architecture and design.
From chapter 4 the book focuses of contemporary abstract artists such as: Vicente Antonorsi, Emilia Azcárate, Elías Crespín, Sigfredo Chacón, Marta Chilindrón, Marcolina Dipierro, Danilo Dueñas, Magdalena Fernández, Ricardo Rendón and Pablo Siquier.

• Contexts
• Modern Contexts

Artist: Sigfredo Chacón

Pinturasparadaltónicos / Colorblindpaintings
July 17, 2016
Transnocho Cultural
Caracas, Venezuela

• Happenings

Artist: Ricardo Alcaide 

Down the Line
June 8, 2016 – July 8, 2016
Johannes Vogt Gallery
New York, New York

Alcaide’s site-specific floor installation investigates notions of instability in urban environments as a result of the mistranslation of modernism and its inherent concept of progress to Latin America.

Alcaide has used the gallery’s white cube space as a studio to create a series of sculptural painting-panels in varying sizes that are presented horizontally on the floor. In order to make these works the artist mounts wooden slats onto the surface of the panels whilst applying glossy polyurethane paint regularly used in car shops. The screwed in slats leave marks on the paint underneath once removed, like remnants of the history of its making. Within Alcaide’s installation each work follows its own linear composition while engaging a dialogue with the works in its immediate proximity. In a flow of push-and-pull, the repetitive character of the compositional methods used by the artist alludes to the sometimes monotonous formalistic appeal of modernist architecture.

• Happenings

Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form, 1940s – 1970s 
Lynn Zelevansky (Editor)
June 1, 2004
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
240 pages

The 2004 LACMA-organized, Lynn Zelevansky curated Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form, 1940s-70s exhibition provides a look at the art of an era that pulsated with the excitement of experimentation-when artists still believed in an avant-garde.  It examined the role of radically simplified form and systematic strategies in the evolution of vanguard art across the West; presented these issues art-historically, in a broad international framework which considered South American Concrete art outside of a regional context. Included 200 works by more than 130 artists, including examples of European and South American Concrete Art, Argentine Arte Madi, Brazilian Neo-Concretism, Kinetic and Op Art, U.S. Minimalism, and various forms of Post-Minimalism, including Process and Conceptual Art. Beyond Geometry includes work by such artists as Josef Albers, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Max Bill, Lucio Fontana, Eva Hesse, On Kawara, Sol LeWitt, Helio Oiticica, Blinky Palermo, Bridget Riley, Jesus Rafael Soto, and Victor Vasarely. It contains essays by Lynn Zelevansky, Ines Katzenstein, Valerie Hillings, Miklos Peternak, Peter Frank, and Brandon LaBelle that place the work in the context of art history and the aesthetic and social issues of the time.

La exhibición organizada por LACMA y curada por Lynn Zelevansky, Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form, 1940s-70s, provee una mirada sobre el  arte de una era que pulsó con entusiasmo por la experimentación, cuando los artistas todavía creían en la vanguardia. Examina el rol de la forma radicalmente simplificada y estrategias sistematizadas en la evolución de la vanguardia en el occidente; presentó estos temas dentro de la historia del arte, en un marco amplio internacional que considera el arte concreto de Sur America fuera de su contexto regional. Incluyó mas de 200 obras por mas de 130 artistas, incluyendo ejemplos de arte concreto europeo y de Sur América, arte argentino Madi, neo concretismo brazilero, arte cinético y arte optico, minimalismo norteamericano, y varias formas de post-minimalismo, incluyendo  arte conceptual y procesual. Beyond Geometryincluye la obra de artistas tales como: Josef Albers, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Max Bill, Lucio Fontana, Eva Hesse, On Kawara, Sol LeWitt, Helio Oiticica, Blinky Palermo, Bridget Riley, Jesus Rafael Soto, y Victor Vasarely. El catálogo contiene ensayos de: Lynn Zelevansky, Ines Katzenstein, Valerie Hillings, Miklos Peternak, Peter Frank, and Brandon LaBelle  que colocan la obra en el contexto de la historia del arte y los temas estéticos y sociales de su tiempo.

• Contexts
• Modern Contexts

Artists: Alice Quaresma and Jauyoung Yoon

Threaded
July 5th – July 29th
Flatiron Project Space
New York, USA

An exhibition of work by SVA Summer Residency program alumni Alice Quaresma (Brazil/U.S.) and Jayoung Yoon (Korea/U.S.). “Threaded” investigates the psychic strands and physical sinews connecting an individual to her environment, while acknowledging the complex interaction of time, space and memory. Hailing from geographically opposed corners of the globe, and both currently living and working in the New York area, Quaresma and Yoon each refer back to their origins with intimate and architectural gestures enacted in two- three- and four-dimensional space.

• Happenings

Artist: Bernardo Ortiz 

Borrar
May 18, 2016 – October 9, 2016
Museo de Arte Moderno 
Buenos Aires, Argentina

La obra de Bernardo Ortiz (Bogotá, Colombia, 1972) explora los territorios del dibujo, la escritura y la tipografía, y cruza la delicada frontera entre la obra de arte que se crea escribiendo y el dibujo que forma parte de un texto mayor: el de la práctica cotidiana del artista.

Ortiz es un artista preocupado por el acto de ver y sus dobleces. Con su trabajo, nos invita a agudizar la mirada y a preguntarnos cómo se construye una imagen y qué constituye una obra de arte. Y nos provoca abiertamente al titular su exposición Borrar.

Para esta exhibición en el Moderno, Bernardo Ortiz ha producido una estructura arquitectónica especialmente diseñada para la ocasión, con el objetivo de permitir el despliegue de obras y dibujos. El espectador recorrerá la instalación descubriendo las operaciones poéticas de un artista dedicado obsesivamente a hacer posibles nuevos vínculos entre el texto y la imagen, que dejan de lado toda grandilocuencia para enfatizar la importancia del pequeño gesto artístico cotidiano y su potencial de transformación.

Ortiz se define como “dibujante” y señala: “Siempre he pensado que el dibujo permite mantener viva la potencialidad de lo que no fue hecho. Dibujar es una forma de hacer visible algo que todavía no existe del todo. Una ingeniera diseñando un puente, alguien que dibuja un mapa para otra persona, etc.”.

Sus medios son simples: una hoja de papel, un retazo de seda, una computadora portátil, tinta o un lápiz negro y duro. Esta modestia de recursos impone un ritual riguroso para la creación de ciertos trabajos: el regreso cotidiano a diversas series de obras a través de las cuales el artista se compromete a usar el dibujo para hacer visible el paso del tiempo.

• Happenings

Artist: Emilia Azcárate

Full Emptiness / El vacío lleno
May 27, 2016 – July 30, 2016
Miami Biennale
Miami, Florida

Azcárate’s works on paper, canvas and board, present unique forms of conceptualizing and synthesizing her spirituality and artistic practice. The installations shown in the gallery space highlight color, concentric compositions and forms of calligraphy and serve as a visual counterpoint to the permanent installation of James Turrell’s Coconino (2007). The disciplines of Azcárate’s meditation practice carry her through her art making, providing a structure that allows for the blurring between internal reflection and participation in the frenetic activity of contemporary society.

• Happenings

Artists: Esvin Alarcón Lam, tepeu choc, Diana de Solares, Darío Escobar, Patrick Hamilton.

Overlap/ Traslape
Opens June 1, 2016
The 9.99 Gallery 
Guatemala City, Guatemala

Three dialogues are established with three different processes that relate to the idea of overlapping and superimposing elements, time, generations, and actions:

The first dialogue is a interaction in relation to mostly urban landscape in combination with the materials used.

Alejandro Almanza Pereda presents “Horror Vacui (Escena invernal No.1)” [Winter Scene No.1] (2014). From a snowy landscape, Almanza Pereda builds a cement structure that extends beyond the work’s frame to cover the entire wall. The seemingly accidental look of the quasi-action-painting-type dripping acquires a new connotation due to the material and the space extending beyond the painting.

In the same manner, Esvin Alarcón Lam’s  “Desplazamiento No.9” [Displacement No.9] (2016) also plays with the space outside the frame. Like a passageway leading to another dimension, the work created out of bus parts establishes an  association between the urban landscape and public transportation.

This dialogue ends with tepeu choc’s “Registration No.1” (2016) made out of the plastic material utilized in the informal economy. In it, a series of cut outs call to mind construction tool silhouettes.

The second dialogue is established by the works’s geometric elements such as line, figure, and volume.

Darío Escobar’s “Quetzalcoatl IV” (2004) plays with notions of stability between the undulating bicycle tires, as they surrender their circular shape to gravity laws, and the bronze counterweights.

The piece by Luis Diaz, “The Gukumatz in person” (1971), like Escobar’s work, references the (serpent) deity’s undulating movement: this time in its Quiché appellation, and in a more stable manner derived from flexible wooden sections that adapt to different crawling movements. These sharp forms make a return to verticality in “Chuzo” (2012-2016), a construction-tool-like work by Patrick Hamilton.

In “Sin título” (Untitled) (2015), a drawing by Diana de Solares, assorted color layers generate movement related to air and the kind found in children’s pinwheels. Thus, varying elements of nature come together and overlap in this work.

Finally, the third overlapping dialogue emerges between a spiritual perspective  and the physical body. The indigo and turquoise of Sandra Monterroso’s cotton yarn, “Expoliada III” (Despoiled III) (2016) series, colors associated with water, represent the varying tonalities of rainfall through time.

Meanwhile, in Isabel Ruiz’s “Vuelo de las Mariposas” (Flight of Butterflies) (2016 ), the set of opposing crutches reminds us of the body’s fragility: The before-and-after of a transition between what is natural and what the fire has consumed.

In Diego Sagastume’s photographs, we return to the urban landscape of painted walls and open skies whose tonalities show the passage of time, also found in Christian Lord’s “(Mira)anda IV” ((Look)go IV) (2015), a work that through wordplay, invites us to contemplation and to walk, suggested by the circle’s forward movement.

• Happenings

Artist: Cristina Ghetti

stripe – generators
May 19, 2016 – July 30, 2016
Galería Punto
Valencia, Spain

• Happenings

Artists: Emilia Azcárate, Emilio Chapela, Eduardo Costa, Jaime Davidovich, Diana de Solares, Karina Peisajovich, Osvaldo Romberg, Luis Roldán, Eduardo Santiere, Horacio Zabala.

Imagining Spaces: Constructions in Color and Text
June 23, 2016 – August 19, 2016
Henrique Faria
New York, NY

Imagining Spaces: Constructions in Color and Text, a group exhibition focused on the formal and thematic elements of color and text in Latin American art of the last sixty years. The exhibition framework is based on the premise that color and text are two major building blocks of creative expression, and can therefore be seen as architectural components of a given composition.

• Happenings

Artist: Gabriel de la Mora 

Gabriel de la Mora: Sound Inscriptions on Fabric
July 15, 2016 – September 2, 2016
The Drawing Center
New York, NY

Gabriel de la Mora is best known for constructing visual works from found, discarded, and obsolete objects, such as eggshells and shoe soles. De la Mora describes these objects, which have outlived their usefulness, as caches for historical information about everyday life. In his exhibition at The Drawing Center, De la Mora will present an installation of fifty-five pairs of found speaker screens. Each screen is imprinted with an inscription created by the dust and air that circulated through the speaker during its life, recording the cadence of countless voices, advertisements, news broadcasts, soap operas, football games, and music, as well as noise, interference, and silence.

• Happenings

Artist: Jose Dávila

The Elephant and the Feather
May 6, 2016 – September 4, 2016
Marfa Contemporary
Curated by Dr. Natalie Maria Roncone
Marfa, Texas

Introducing a particular interest in Western culture, the imagery comprised within the artist’s work is based on a deep approach to architecture and art history. This allows him to create tautological games regarding the legacy of the 20th century avant-gardes. Recently, the artist has explored photography and documents as a means of registration, and their possibilities of resignification. These media lets him to appeal to the imagination and generate new perspectives on artistic tradition.

In the same vein, Dávila has recently developed a series of sculptures whose structural work is based on the arrangement and overlapping of material elements such as boulders, glass and marble, kept in balance with industrial ratchet straps. The functional articulation of these materials is a comment on the historical distance between different artistic practices.

Davila’s work addresses the question about the limits of instrumental values through the use of common materials to create sculptures, objects and installation. Frequently, the nature of these materials approaches both, architecture construction as well as formal artistic production, which subscribe his work to principles coined by Minimalism and Arte Povera. Dávila has also manifested a special interest in the use and occupation of space, issues that have been present throughout his career.

• Happenings

Artist: Fernando Uhía

Impresionismo Multinacional
May 19, 2016 – June 28, 2016
Galería Nueveochenta Arte Contemporáneo
Bogotá, Colombia

• Happenings

Artist: Amadeo Azar

Shadowplay
May 11, 2016 – June 25, 2016
Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo
Mexico City, Mexico

“…certain types of perception of the world are poetic themselves. Everything that helps to dissolve the boundaries, making the world a homogeneous and poorly differentiated whole, is impregnated with poetic power (is the case of fog or twilight). Some objects have poetic impact, not as objects alone, but by breaking the delimitation of space and time with their mere presence, they induce a special psychological state. Poetry is not just another language; it’s a whole new beholding. One way to see the world, all objects in the world (both highways and serpents, flowers and parking lots).”¹ 

“… There is a dual operation at work, the desire to recreate a historical piece, on one hand, and to reinterpret geometric abstraction on the other. This dual intent is characteristic of the works Azar has made in recent years, accomplishing a strange association of scale and mood, a peculiar combination of figuration and abstraction, the coexistence of diverse temporalities: we see in them the image of something that once was coupled with new ways presented as a viable artistic path, today.” ²

“An image is an act, not a thing.” ³

“Using modernity as a catapult, as starting point for exploring new landscapes. Scrape the golden aura of modern practice, taking it closer to the imperfection of real societies to expose the corrosive air of today, to loosen the rust of the past and adapt to local hybrids. There is a new facade that makes use of the foundations planted in the quicksands of the tropic, where everything is malleable and voluptuous. An artistic act becomes transcendental when it crosses several layers of reality through its core, that’s when art, sharing the same room with the social and the political, becomes a historical event.  Abstraction builds a bridge to a world of ideas, built with ropes and lumber, where some steps are missing and others are loose or hanging. There is a musical curiosity in all creative processes, intuitive and poetic where we approach to Vanguardism as an extension of tyranny.” ⁴

1 Intervention 2, Michel Houellebecq, Flamitron, 2009.
2 El camino a la Semilla, Alejandra Aguado, 2015.
3 Jean Paul Sartre
4 Amadeo Azar

• Happenings

About the Artist

En mi trabajo, por lo general volumétrico y otras veces gráfico, utilizo preferentemente materiales innobles, comunes o de bajo costo (madera aglomerada, escarcha metálica, polvo doméstico, luz artificial, pintura industrial). Éstos, a través de un tratamiento preciosista, obtienen una apariencia delicada e ilusoria. Muchas veces mis obras son acompañadas por aparatos eléctricos y electromecánicos, dotándolas de una condición móvil que acentúa dicho ilusionismo.

Basándome en una iconografía local popular (arquitectura pastiche, escenografía de televisión, estética de kermés o de pacotilla) y, por otra parte, en referencias artísticas como el arte óptico, cinético, abstracto y constructivista, recurro a diseños y patrones usualmente geométricos y decorativos (cercos, guirnaldas, rúbricas, destellos). Las obras muestran, finalmente, una parquedad y precariedad estructural, pero aún así cierta ostentación ornamental; están completa e irónicamente expuestas y, a su vez, son objeto de seducción y contemplación.

Mi trabajo, pienso, genera en el espectador una mezcla entre quietud y expectación, o lo que llamo “inercia óptica”. Se trata de una apariencia cautivante, hipnótica, “bella” y, a la vez, provocativa o amenazante, en la que se esconde en último término, una crítica paródica a una contingencia tendiente al espectáculo y a la exclusión, manifiesta no solo en el cotidiano y los mass media, sino también en el mismo arte.

_

In my work, usually volumetric and sometimes graphic, I employ preferably ignoble, ordinary, or low cost materials, (chipboard, metallic chipping, domestic dust, artificial light, industrial paint). These, through an embellishing process, achieve a delicate and illusory appearance. Many times my works are accompanied by electric and electro mechanic equipment, which provide mobility, thus stressing the illusionary quality of the works.

Based on the one hand on local popular iconography (architecture, pastiche, television scenography, Kermés or trashy aesthetics) and on the other hand, it carries artistic references such as Op art, Kinetic art, abstract and constructivist art; I turn to designs and patterns which are usually geometric and decorative (wreaths, garlands, signs, glitter). The works show, finally a sparingness, a structural precariousness, though a certain ornamental ostentation. They are totally and ironically exposed, and at the same time, they are objects of seduction and contemplation.

My work, I think, generates in the spectator a combination of calm and expectation, or what I call “optical inertia.” It bears a captivating appearance, hypnotic, “beautiful”; and at the same time, provocative and threatening, in which what is hidden ultimately, is a parodic critique to a contingency which leans towards the spectacle and the exclusion, not only manifest in the daily, the mass media, but in art itself.

Selected Biographical Information

Education / Training

• 1998-1999: Magíster en Artes mención Artes Visuales, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
• 1993-1996: Licenciado en Arte, Universidad Finis Terrae, Santiago, Chile.

Prizes / Fellowships

• 2012-2011: Beca Corporacion Arte+, Galería Patricia Ready, Santiago, Chile.
• 2009: Beca FONDART (Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Cultural y las Artes), Ministerio de Educación, Santiago, Chile.
• 2007: Premio 2º Lugar, 7º Concurso Artistas Siglo XXI, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
• 2005: Premio 1º Lugar, 5º Concurso Artistas Siglo XXI, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
• 2005: Beca FONDART (Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Cultural y las Artes), Ministerio de Educación, Santiago, Chile.
• 2004: Beca FONDART (Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Cultural y las Artes), Ministerio de Educación, Santiago, Chile.
• 2003: Beca FONDART (Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Cultural y las Artes), Ministerio de Educación, Santiago, Chile.
• 2001: Premio Mencion Especial, 23º Concurso Nacional Arte y Poesia, Universidad de Valparaíso, Valparaíso, Chile.
• 2000: Beca FONDART (Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Cultural y las Artes), Ministerio de Educación, Santiago, Chile.
• 1999: Beca FONDART (Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Cultural y las Artes), Ministerio de Educación, Santiago, Chile.
• 1999: Beca Amigos del Arte, Corporación Amigos del Arte, Santiago, Chile.

Solo Exhibitions 

• 2015: “Diseños”, Galería Patricia Ready, Santiago, Chile.
• 2013: “Circus”, Sala Puntángeles (Universidad de Playa Ancha), Valparaíso, Chile.
• 2012: “Deco”, Galería Patricia Ready, Santiago, Chile.
• 2011: “Diamante hueco”, Galería Tajamar, Santiago, Chile.
• 2011: “Señas, bordes, vacíos”, Galería YONO, Santiago, Chile.
• 2011: “Destellos negros”, Galería Centro, Santiago, Chile.
• 2007: “Suite-Patrón”, Galería Die Ecke, Santiago, Chile.
• 2004: “Edén”, Galería Artespacio, Santiago, Chile.
• 1999: “Ejercicio de contrapunto”, Club de Jazz de Santiago, Santiago, Chile.

Group Exhibitions

• 2015: “La misma”, Galería Die Ecke, Santiago, Chile.
• 2013: “Colección Juan Yarur: un relato personal”, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago, Chile.
• 2011: “Indios verdes”, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile.
• 2011: “Traveling light: five artists from Chile”, Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, D.C., Estados Unidos.
• 2011: “La oscura vida radiante”, CeAC (Centro de Arte Contemporáneo), Santiago, Chile.
• 2010: “Contaminaciones contemporáneas”, Museu de Arte Contemporánea da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil.
• 2009: “Material ligero: five artists from Santiago, Chile travelling light”, VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery (The University of Melbourne), Melbourne, Australia.
• 2007: “Stgo/Bog/Stgo. Envío de arte contemporáneo chileno”, Galería Valenzuela Klenner , Bogotá, Colombia.
• 2007: “If I can make it here, I’ll make it anywhere (Proyecto Hoffmann’s House) “, White Box, Nueva York, Estados Unidos.
• 2006: “5a Bienal de artes visuales. Utopías de bolsillo”, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile.
• 2005: “Arte contemporáneo chileno. Desde el otro sitio/lugar”, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seúl, Corea.
• 2004: “Falso”, Centro Cultural de España , Santiago , Chile.
• 2002: “Frutos del país”, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago, Chile.
• 2002: “Sentido común”, Galería Balmaceda 1215, Santiago, Chile.
• 2000: “ESC.1:6”, Galería Animal, Santiago, Chile.
• 1998: “Material dispuesto”, Galería Posada del Corregidor, Santiago, Chile.

Links

• BLOC
• Rodrigo Canala

• Artists

Artist: Emilio Chapela

No Pain, No Brain
April 28, 2016 – June 18, 2016
Henrique Faria Fine Art
New York, NY

• Happenings

Artist: Bernardo Ortiz

Borrar
Solo show curated by Victoria Noorthoorn
May 14, 2016 – October 9, 2016
MAMBA Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, Argentina

The work of Bernardo Ortiz (Bogota, 1972) explores the territories of drawing, writing and typography, and crosses the delicate boundary between the work of art that is created by writing and the drawing that is part of a larger narrative: the daily practice of an artist.

For this exhibition at MAMBA, Ortiz produced an architectural structure specially for the occasion, in order to enable the development of works and drawings. The visitor will go through the installation discovering the poetic operations of an artist obsessively dedicated to making possible new links between text and image, leaving aside all grandiloquence to emphasize the importance of small daily artistic gestures and its potential for transformation.

• Happenings

About the Artist

Trabajo en la realización de objetos,  instalaciones, videos, fotografías, acciones etc. A través de estos medios investigo y experimento con la intención de generar nuevas imágenes, en las cuales se produzca un encuentro entre las ideas,  formas y materiales y que éstas se fusionen y se pertenezcan.

Me motivan los lugares de contención, de pertenencia, de identificación, de protección, de construcción, y en ese sentido la PIEL es el concepto, el material, la representación, y la metáfora que me interesa.

Creo que es allí, en la piel como gran órgano sensor, donde está el registro de nuestra experiencia.

Ampliando su sentido, pienso que tenemos otras pieles: la ropa, la casa, la ciudad, el universo y,  este imaginario forma parte de mi práctica artística.

Valoro el poder de las imágenes cuando contienen la fuerza para despertarnos y en mi trabajo intento que sean las protagonistas.

_

I work in the production of objects, installations, videos, photography, actions, etc. Through these mediums I research and experiment with the objective to generate new images, where the encounter between ideas, forms and materials merge and permeate with each other.

I’m motivated by places of contention, belonging, identification, protection and construction. In this way the SKIN is the concept, the material, the representation, and the metaphor that interests me.

I believe that the skin is the great organ- sensor where experience is registered.

Broadening its meaning, I think that we have other skins such as our clothes, the house, the city, the universe, and that this imaginary is part of my artistic practice.

I value the power of images when these contain the strength to awaken us, and in my work I attempt for these to be the protagonists.

Selected Biographical Information

Education / Training

• 2001-2002: Beca de experimentación escénica, Fundación Antorchas, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1986-1990: Taller Diana Dowek, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1985: Universidad de Buenos Aires Facultad de arquitectura y diseño, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Prizes / Fellowships

• 2015: 3 premio adquisición Concurso Nacional UADE, UADE Universidad Argentina de la empresa, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2012: Residencia de artistas, URRA, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2010: Beca a la Creación Artística, Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2005: Mención especial del jurado, Premio Cultural Chandon Museo Timoteo Navarro, Tucumán, Argentina.
• 2005: Invitada VIII Salón CANTV jóvenes con FIA, Caracas, Venezuela.
• 2002: Invitada. Madinina Workshop, Triangle arts trust, Martinica, Francia.
• 2001: Subsidio a la creación artística, Fundación Antorchas, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2001: Mención Bienal Nacional de Bahía Blanca, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Bahía Blanca, Argentina.
• 1997: Invitada Premio Braque (Sin Título), Embajada de Francia y Fundación Banco Patricios, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1996: Mención Concurso Mural Defensa de la Universidad Pública, Facultad de Arquitectura Diseño y Urbanismo Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Solo Exhibitions

• 2014: “Margen Corrido”, Galería Zavaleta Lab Arte Contemporáneo, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2012: “Fronteras Porosas”, Galería GC Arte contemporáneo, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2012: “Óculo ceres  Acción”, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2011: “Óculo libra Acción”, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2010: “Óculo en mi casa Acción”, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2009: “Óculo Acción”, Demolición/Construcción colectivo de artistas Asesor Gerardo Mosquera, Córdoba, Argentina.
• 2008: “Marcela Astorga”, Galería Dabbah Torrejón, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2007: “Territorio salvaje”, ED espacio de Arte y Diseño contemporáneo, Mendoza, Argentina.
• 2006: “Qué cazador”, Galería KBK arte contemporáneo, México DF, México.
• 2005: “Intervención”, Centro Cultural de España , Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2004: “Marcela Astorga”,  Baltar contemporáneo, Mar del Plata, Argentina.
• 2002: “Cuestión de Piel”, Galería Luisa Pedrouzo, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2000: “Sacando el cuero”, Juana de Arco Espacio de arte, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1998: “Algo huele a podrido”, Espacio Giesso Reich, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1997: “Navidad Criolla  Instalación”, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Group Exhibitions

• 2015: “My Buenos Aires Curadoras Albertine de Galbert y Paula Aisemberg”, La maison Rouge, París, Francia.
• 2013: “Raw Material Prospectif Cinema Curadora Albertine de Galbert”, Centre Pompidou, París, Francia.
• 2012: “Revividos Curadora Victoria Verlichack”,  Galería Praxis Internacional, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2011: “How to philosophize with a hammer Curador Raúl Zamudio”, White Box , New York , USA.
• 2010: “Arte por los derechos Humanos CELS 30 años”, Casa del Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2010: “Macro incorporaciones 2010 La crisis como prospecto Curadora Nancy Rojas”, Museo Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario, Rosario, Argentina.
• 2010: “Contando pensamientos Curadora Mayssa Fattouh”, The Running Horse Contemporary Art Space, Beirut, Líbano.
• 2009: “Interstices Works from the Júmex Collection México Curadores Edelbert Köb y  Victor Zamudio Taylor”, MUMOK Museum moderner kunst, Vienna, Austria.
• 2009: “VAD 2009 Festival Internacional de video y artes digitales”, Girona, España.
• 2009: “MIP2 Manifestación Internacional de Performance Con Demolición Construcción”, Belo Horizonte, Brasil.
• 2008: “Las entrañas del arte un relato material (S XVII  XXI) Curadora Gabriela Siracusano”, Fundación Osde, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2008: “GARDEN OF DELIGHTS curador Raúl Zamudio”, Yeosu Art Festival , Corea.
• 2008: “DOMUS Curador Jorge López Anaya”, Fundación Klemm , Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2007: “Fortunate Objects curadora Cecilia Fajardo Hill”, CIFO Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, USA.
• 2007: “An Archaeology Curadora Elizabeth Neilson”, Colección  Zabludowicz Project Space, Londres, Inglaterra.
• 2005: “Relectura de la colección del MAMBA Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires”, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2004: “FUTURIBLES Curador Gustavo Buntinx”, Feria ARCO, Madrid, España.

Publications

• Ana Martínez Quijano, “La belleza de la arquitectura y la atracción de las ruinas”, Ambito Financiero, Febrero 2015.
• Ana María Battistozzi , “La piel herida de la arquitectura”, Revista Ñ, Diciembre 2014.
• Fabián Lebenglik, “Antes de que llegue el derrumbe”, Página 12, Junio 2012.
• Victoria Verlichak , “Fronteras porosas”, Arte al día Internacional, Octubre 2012.
• Daniel Molina, “Mapas en la oscuridad”, ADN Cultural , 2008.
• María Teresa Constantín , “Cuestiones de memoria en el arte argentino contemporáneo”, Archivos del presente , 2009.
• Rosa Olivares, Marcela Astorga Espacio Habitado (Buenos Aires: zavaleta lab), 240.
• Fernando Farina Andrés Labaké , Poéticas Contemporáneas Itinerarios en las artes visuales en la Argentina de los 90 al 2010 (Buenos Aires: Fondo Nacional de las Artes y Fundación YPF ).
• Rosa Olivares, Marcela Astorga Espacio Habitado (Buenos Aires: zavaleta lab).
• Jorge López Anaya, Arte Argentino Cuatro siglos de historia 1600 2000 (Buenos Aires: Emece ).
• Mari Carmen Ramírez, Marcelo E Pacheco, Andrea Giunta, Cantos paralelos La parodia en el arte argentino contemporáneo (Austin: Jack S Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin and the Fondo Nacional de las Artes Argentina).

Collections

• Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires  MAMBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• Museo Castagnino MACRO Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Rosario, Argentina.
• Fundación Júmex arte Contemporáneo de México, México Df, México.
• CIFO Cisneros Fontanals Arts Foundation, Miami, USA.
• The Zabludowicz Collection, Londres, Inglaterra.
• APT México City Artist Pension Trust, Nueva York, USA.
• UADE Universidad argentina de la empresa, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• Colecciones privadas Argentina, Venezuela, México, Italia, Costa Rica, Estados Unidos y Holanda.

Links

• Margen Corrido: Marcela Astorga 
• Oculo ceres-video instalación
• Cómo se diseñó el libro de arte de Marcela Astorga

• Artists

Artist: Richard Garet

Screen Memory
April 28, 2016 – June 11, 2016
Galerie Burster
Berlin, Germany

Richard Garet’s artistic approach is characterized by an interdisciplinary interweaving of various media such as sound, moving image, expanded photography and multimedia performance. By activating sensorial, physical and psychological stimuli, his works draw the observer’s attention to the processes of perception and time.

Garet’s work was featured in the first sound art exhibition by the Museum of Modern Art of New York, MoMA; soundings: a contemporary score in 2013, with Garet being selected to join the show as one of the sixteen most innovative artists working with sound as a medium today. Recognizing his work solely in the genre of sound art however will certainly not satisfy to describe his oeuvre on the whole.

In screen memory, his very first solo show at galerie burster – and his first solo show in Europe – Garet‘s selected body of work extracts his interest in experimenting with mixing media and material, shifting borders back and forth within various media and beyond, hovering between digital and analogue – in order to create an aesthetic, sonic, above all immersive perceptual experience.

With installative choreographies such as seen in untitled series painting semiotics or with digital-print series such as activated void, Garet refers to his background in visual art – he studied painting in New York in the nineties – but remaining true to his artistic approach he consequently transfers his pictorial experience into a digital context: The layering buildup and the relationship to malleability and materiality find themselves now translated into various ‚new‘ media such as sound, video art and installation to name a few.

• Happenings

Artists: Johanna Reich (Alemania), Shazia Sikander (Paquistán), Santiago Sierra (España), Claudia del Fierro (Chile), Adel Abidin (Iraq), Karlo Ibarra (Puerto Rico), Rosell Meseguer (España/Chile), Kaoru Katayama (Japón), Jose Angel Toirac (Cuba), Enrique Ramírez (Chile), Maja Bajevic (Bosnia), Pedro Tyler (Chile), Katri Walker (Escocia), Marc Bijl (Paises Bajos) y Krisdy Shindler (Canadá).

Land or Liberty! On Patriotism, Nationalism and Populism
April 14, 2016 – June 12, 2016
M100 – Centro Cultural Matucana 100
Santiago, Chile

Si tuvieras que elegir entre patria o libertad, ¿qué escogerías? Es la invitación que hace la nueva muestra de M100,  que reflexiona de forma crítica y aguda sobre el patriotismo, el nacionalismo y el populismo, que siguen provocando conflictos étnicos, políticos y religiosos. Guerras, refugiados y terrorismo.

Si por un lado el patriotismo es el amor hacia lo propio, las raíces y la tierra, el nacionalismo es una ideología agresiva que rechaza todo lo foráneo.

La exposición, una co-producción con el Museo COBRA de Ámsterdam y el MoCCA de Toronto, tiene a la vez dos puertas. Una de la patria y la otra de la libertad, que harán que cada visitante haga su propio recorrido. Himnos nacionales, banderas, héroes y uniformes son manifestaciones visibles de los sistemas políticos. Estos y otros símbolos son utilizados por los artistas en esta reflexión.

• Happenings

Artist: Martin Pelenur

Ballena
April 12, 2016 – until June
Curated by Martín Craciun
Centro Cultural Dodecá
Montevideo, Uruguay

Martin Pelenur will open his new solo exhibition Ballena (Whale) at Dodecá Cultural Center in Montevideo. Curated by Martín Craciun the exhibition encompasses a new series of painting within a site specific installation. The intervention transforms the exhibition space into a machine to produce and display an exercise about repetition and time.

“Oh, my. So the whale swallowed all of you, too? My goodness. ”
– Geppetto talking to Pinoccio

A sequence of industrial materials and processes are obsessively sorted. The idea that the experience of paying close attention may result in a pleasurable activity in any context is quite relative. The truth is that visual intelligence is very important in the time of accelerated circulation of images. Therefore deceleration, along with the slowdown in time and perception are key strategies to study things in detail. As enunciated by Gustave Flaubert, God is in the details[1]. – a world of original information, graphics and forms, of synchronicity, of veil and reveal arrhythmias.

Pelenur transform the exhibition space into a workshop, a lab. He creates a system of materials, forms and processes. Pelenur´s blue whale is time and form; is it possible to control the outcome on the basis of catalysis? how to become a dabbler of chemicals and repetitive processes, a master of failure and controlled indeterminacy?. Varnish is here a physical medium to mold and shape, a vehicle for content and ideas. The challenges of life in art as its content are introduced by the artist.

The exhibition is an exercise that intends to translate into the exhibition hall Pelenur´s universe, with its timeframes and temporalities. The installation is a machine for producing and thinking. His personal challenge is to generate sufficient and structural thickness – micron varnish, accumulated in countless layers resting for weeks erected in industrial elements.

Pelenur has been dedicated to develop a sustained experiment on painting. He constantly seeks to modify his approach, resisting the comfort of trends and maintaining the freshness of a practice that he is passionate. Every experience nourishes the next to generate inputs for his next move.

[1] The phrase was attributed throughout history to Voltaire, Flaubert, Aby Warburg and Mies Van der Rohe.

• Happenings

Artist: KIRIN

DIDERÓTICA
April 9th, 2016 -May 31st, 2016
Jorge Mara-La Ruche
Buenos Aires, Argentina

• Happenings

Artist: Horacio Zabala

La pureza está en la mezcla/Purity Is in the Mix
March, 2016 – July, 2016
Colección de Arte Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Horacio Zabala: La pureza está en la mezcla / Purity Is in the Mix,  is a retrospective exhibition curated by Rodrigo Alonso for the Colección de Arte Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat in Buenos Aires. It is open to the public until July  and it will travel to the Phoenix art Museum to inaugurate in October and will be on public view until March of 2017.

• Happenings

Artist: Omar Barquet

Syllables
May 11, 2016 – June 25, 2016
Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo
Mexico City, Mexico

V

The passion on the wall, the knot to come, the birth. 

The sunless openings, the illuminated edge and its mourning. 

The battle between the red and the orange, the fresh wind 

of the memory of Greece where living is an experiment 

of atmospheres, of bones, of cuts and sinking.

Syllables is an interdisciplinary show inspired on the 5th melisma for Gunther Gerzso written by Mexican poet Francisco Hernández; conducted by Omar Barquet and integrated as the 6th movement of the Ghost Variations project.

Ghost Variations is an interdisciplinary proposal launched in 2012, composed of a sequence of six projects organized similarly to the movements of a symphony, and as a series of six experimental collaborations understood as fugues.

Together they pose an analogy to the disctint evolutionary phases of a hurricane, emulating its intensity and movements, like the sketch of a spiral shape, mainly reflecting on the perception of time and life through the transformation cycles of a landscape and the chaotic nature of our thoughts, depicting a pulse wich changes in intensity, and thus, the estate of things.

• Happenings

Artist: Nuno Ramos

O DIREITO À PREGUIÇA
April 27, 2016 – June 27, 2016
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil
Belo Horizonte, Brasil

Exposição do multiartista Nuno Ramos que traz a Belo Horizonte trabalhos inéditos, como as instalações Paredes (instalação); Balanças (instalação + performance); O direito à preguiça(órgão-andaime/instalação sonora). Além, de outras obras que ainda não foram vistas na capital mineira: No sé (instalação + performance); Confissões de uma máscara (Desenhos); Choro Negro (instalação escultórica).

Nuno Ramos é um dos mais importantes artistas brasileiros revelados na década de 80 e com contínua produção. Vem desenvolvendo trabalhos para diversas instituições nacionais e internacionais como a Bienal Internacional de São Paulo (1982,198 e 1995), a Latinamerican Art of the Century, o Moma, em Nova Iorque (EUA), entre diversas outros. O trabalho de Nuno vem se diversificando em várias áreas das artes visuais, cênicas, sonoras e poéticas, com uma produção que inclui filmes, livros e letras de música.

Na mostra serão abordadas diversas temáticas da produção do artista, como a mistura entre música e grandes peças. A ocupação do espaço com obras de dimensões elevadas, que poderão ser observadas de diversos ângulos e que causam estranheza aos espectadores, uma das marcas de Nuno Ramos, também estarão presentes.

• Happenings

Artists: Felipe Arturo, Adrián S. Bará, Alberto Borea, Radamés “Juni” Figueroa, Derek Franklin, Ximena Garrido- Lecca, Leor Grady, José Carlos Martinat, PS3* and Slobodan Stosic

DIVAGATION
Curated by Meyken Barreto, Carlos Garcia-Montero, Cecilia Jurado and ghostwriter.
May 6, 2016- May 30, 2016
Y Gallery 
New York, NY

The show brings together a group of international artists whose practice is characterized by a special sensitivity towards the aesthetic and symbolic potential of everyday materials and objects. Their approach to artistic creation is strongly informed by the context in which their work is produced and by the background from which they come. With different points of departure, from performative to space- based concepts, they investigate and generate narratives about contemporaneity. From Mexico, Peru, USA, Israel, Spain and Serbia, the artists gathered here address different topics from social or politics to contemplative or physics, but they are all joined by a peculiar way to transform their reality in poetic ways.

• Happenings

Artists: Ángela Wilson, Andrés Vio, Eugenia Vargas Pereira, Pedro Tyler, Catalina Prado, Francisco Peró, Teresa Ortúzar, Carolina Oltra, Lorenzo Moya, Catalina Mena, Alicia Larraín, Hernán Gana, Amelia Errázuriz y Rodrigo Bruna.

Lo Bello & lo Sublime
April 14, 2016 – May 21, 2016
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Bogotá – MAC
Bogotá, Colombia

El sentimiento más delicado, según Kant, se bifurca en dos especies; una es el sentimiento de lo bello y el otro es el sentimiento de lo sublime. Donde la afección para ambos es agradable, pero de manera muy diferente, así vemos que el día es bello y la astucia es pequeña y bella. Grandes lineamientos para comprender a este filosofo alemán, al expresar que el día es bello y la noche es sublime, esta sensacion tiene varios niveles, que van desde lo melancolico, al horror. Desde lo grande que es sublime a lo bello que es pequeño, pero nada es tan certero, ni tan definido. Asi se traspasan estas  especies provocando  sentimientos que nos llevan desde lo bello a lo sublime.

El entendimiento  es sublime, el ingenio es bello, la audacia es sublime y grandiosa, en esta construcción  arbitraria construida en el año 1765, al año siguiente en un compendio de notas, donde las cuestiones morales  y antropológicas hablan de un mundo eurocentrista, antes de aparecer  la extensión de lo sublime en el nuevo mundo, donde los caracteres asignados a lo europeo y sus diversas  nacionalidades dan paso las mesticismos, donde los aportes de los pueblos originarios unidos a lo europeos, más un nuevo ingrediente, que son las culturas africanas, producen seres con una historia llena de nuevas fuentes.  Las ideas de Kant se enriquecen y al citarlo, nos conduce a un desarrollo nuevo de interés.

Existen espacios inconclusos en el arte latinoamericano, producto de contingencias socio culturales y que son causantes de un desarrollo tardío en el quehacer local. Las peripecias de nuestro arte en lo formal se aprecian en salas donde se atiborran la recepción de proyectos que al final no dieron a la luz.  Lo social y politico, factores inherentes, se agrupan como testigos de los quehaceres de nuestros artistas.  En este plano esta exposición se compone en una revisión de nuestro arte, considerando lo interno, cuyos contenidos aluden a situaciones inherentes a las realidades contingentes.

• Happenings

Artist: Mauro Giaconi

From the Depths of Time
Until July 24, 2016
Museo Universitario Del Chopo
Mexico City, Mexico

The Argentine artist works against the boundaries of a discipline that is conventionally understood as marks on a surface. In his practice, he continually redefines the act of drawing using autobiographical reflection, historical references and his anchoringin a present-day commitment with the awareness of someone who has lived in different latitudes and grew up under a dictatorship.

The exhibition comprises three works that present his working processes: an ephemeral mural that covers the walls of the room, incorporating architectural elements from the museum’s immediate surroundings. The installation Alma (Soul) is made up of a heap of “rocks” formed from empty plastic bags. Finally, the museum’s storage room is used to project the video Línea transversal (Transversal Line), which records an action inspired by an episode from the military dictatorship in Uruguay.

• Happenings

Artist: Horacio Zabala 

Entre líneas
April 8, 2016 – May 9, 2016
Henrique Faria Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, Argentina

La muestra de Horacio Zabala que presenta la galería Henrique Faria y que lleva por título Entre líneas, puede interpretarse a partir del acto de tachar. Si la escritura –como quería su inventor Thot– tiene como fin preservar la memoria, ¿qué sentido tiene la tachadura? ¿Qué es lo que sucede cuando se oculta lo escrito? ¿Se hace una impugnación de lo recordado, se censura un mensaje, se borra un acto de comunicación, se instaura un nuevo tipo de escritura que ya no sirve a la memoria sino al olvido? Horacio Zabala le quita a la tachadura todas las connotaciones negativas que posee para ponerla en un plano de la invención. Tachar y crear son, en su obra, un gesto único e indivisible. Y eso desencadena, por lo menos, tres procesos: la tachadura como manifestación sensorial, como investigación de la censura y como afirmación del monocromo.

La escritura, que en estas obras es el origen o el punto de partida, está escamoteada. Está dentro de los libros, pero son libros que no se pueden abrir. Está en los periódicos, aunque en palabras y números que no se dejan leer. Debería estar en los lomos pero lo único que ellos nos ofrecen son monocromos rojos. A la vez, esa escritura que se oculta es el andamiaje de la obra: regula el juego de líneas, impone sus límites. La primera operación de Zabala es pasar –con sus tachaduras– del orden de lo legible a lo visible, de la escritura al color. La mancha nos hace ver algo y, en ese mismo gesto, ver lo que no se puede pensar: visibiliza lo ininteligible.

Ese juego de borradura y ocultamiento hace pensar en la censura. Más cuando se sabe que Zabala participó en el arte político de los años setenta y vivió fuera del país en tiempos de la última dictadura militar. Mario Perniola, que leyó su obra bajo la noción psicoanalítica de censura, dijo que el artista “suprime todo con una determinación radical” y “opera la negación de la negación” porque en los periódicos ya operan mecanismos de silenciamiento y desinformación. ¿Al evidenciar los mecanismos de la censura –se pregunta el crítico italiano– se trata de regenerar el arte? La respuesta de Zabala es doble: política y existencial.

Por el lado político, sus obras nos extraen del entorno pero no lo olvidan nunca. El entorno siempre está ahí: tachado y por eso mismo visible. Los títulos de algunas obras lo evidencian al reponer las fechas del periódico que le dan origen: La Nación, jueves 14 de julio de 1988 o Le Monde Censurado – Bourse de Paris, 24-11-93. Ahí están como indicaciones de un día determinado. Ese momento nos remite a otros: imposible no pensar las rayas coloridas que tachan los registros de la Bolsa de París en relación con el

predominio de lo económico en la actualidad y con un lenguaje –el de los indicadores financieros– que apenas sabemos leer pero que influye tanto en nuestras vidas. Esa es la lectura contextual y, si se quiere, política: el mecanismo de la censura habla de la memoria pero también de las complejas apariciones del olvido involuntario o deliberado. Exhibe problemas de legibilidad y los resignifica en términos visuales. La máquina de arte debe procesar tanto las memorias como los olvidos, los recuerdos como lo que quedó reprimido o borrado. Al tachar, Zabala exhibe las diversas aristas de la censura.

La respuesta existencial no niega la lectura política sino que la potencia desde otro lugar. En Zabala, la tachadura es también el camino a un desamparo mayor como sus planos de cárceles o sus cálculos matemáticos. La cárcel no es sólo la represión del poder, también remite a la precariedad humana. La biblioteca sin palabras además de la cancelación de la lectura, es también la apertura a otras actividades humanas: mirar, clasificar, archivar, incorporar lo leído. Las obsesiones con la página de un periódico exceden la ironía sobre las jergas financieras para convertirse en una aventura del color y de la invención. En definitiva: el monocromo, en Zabala, es existencial, testimonio extremo en que la tachadura oculta tanto como revela, en el que lo sensible y lo conceptual se unen en el mismo momento en que se separan.

Horacio Zabala hizo sus primeras obras en la década del sesenta: a diferencia de otros artistas que fueron desplazándose hacia el arte conceptual, Zabala nació conceptual. Formado como arquitecto, en Zabala los anteproyectos son tan importantes como la obra misma: son todas transformaciones de una sensibilidad artística que se despliega, un pensamiento que se hace en imágenes. De ahí la importancia de esta muestra: en las bibliotecas monocromáticas, en los trabajos con los periódicos, en los avatares del rojo, el espectador (un lector de signos) puede acompañar los procesos de un arte dinámico que nos lleva a sensibilizarnos, a partir del color y la forma, sobre los actos de escribir, censurar, tachar, dibujar, planificar, componer y agregar un objeto al mundo.

Gonzalo Aguilar

• Happenings

Artist: Emilia Azcarte

Pinturas de Castas
April 7, 2016 – May 30, 2016
Tiempos Modernos
Madrid, Spain

A medidos del siglo XVIII se desarrolló en  la América colonial un fenómeno artístico extraordinario: los pintores locales retrataron los cambios que se estaban produciendo en una sociedad con distintas  razas que se mezclaban. La llamada Pintura de Castas fue un fenómeno artístico-cultural que se dio fundamentalmente en el Virreinato de Nueva España (México) a principios del siglo XVIII  y que surge a raíz de la necesidad de establecer las bases del mestizaje casi sistemático que se daba en América. Estas pinturas eran utilizadas como una herramienta de explicación sobre las consecuencias de la unión entre razas y el resultado de ésta.

Realizados por pintores locales, los propios nombres de los cuadros son reveladores: “De Español, e Yndia, nace Mestiza”, “Español, y Mestiza producen Castiza”, “De Mulato, y Mestiza, nace, Cuarterón”…  Los cuadros, que se realizaban en series de 16 obras, fueron muy populares entre la sociedad ilustrada, pero apenas se conservan como series completas.

A través de la pintura, el color y la abstracción Emilia Azcárate ha querido plasmar una realidad que ya se daba hace trescientos años y reflejar la lucha constante a la que las minorías sociales se han tenido que enfrentar y cómo esa lucha, con el paso del tiempo, ha ido tomando nuevas formas. Antes, sus limitaciones se debían a leyes de segregación racial y hoy en día, después de la abolición de estas, se siguen sufriendo las consecuencias de un orden social que está implícito en el funcionamiento de la sociedad sobre todo en Latinoamérica.

Lo contemporáneo nace de la historia

El desarrollo de la Pintura de Castas coincide en el siglo con un descubrimiento revelador: el establecimiento de los colores primarios (amarillo, azul y rojo) realizado por Isaac Newton en su obra ‘’Opticks’’ publicada en 1702. A partir de esta coincidencia, Emilia Azcárate trabaja con un método casi matemático:

“Aprovechando esta coincidencia significativa asigné a cada una de las principales razas que contribuyeron con el proceso de mestizaje en América uno de los colores primarios. El amarillo a los indígenas, como símbolo de la riqueza; el azul a los africanos como símbolo de la naturaleza; y el rojo a los españoles por la importancia que le daban a la “pureza” de la sangre. A partir de esta disposición combino cada color primario según la raza que le corresponde, utilizando un sistema de porcentaje aproximado. En paralelo, diseñé un alfabeto que se asemeja a los jeroglíficos, escritura cuneiforme o  “códex”, donde el texto y la imagen forman una pareja inseparable. En mi alfabeto las letras no tienen limitaciones. En la pintura de castas el texto dice lo que la imagen esconde”.

• Happenings

About the Artist

QUE PONGAS TU CUERPO, TU TIEMPO

Porque así vivo el arte, como una fuerza vital que se compromete con todo. Un fuego personal que da sentido al concepto hebraico de la realidad.
Me refiero al flujo temporal que derrite las imágenes congeladas, estáticas. Imagenes fijas que nada tienen que ver con el dios único, inefable, total, infinito, fluido, liminal de mis raices.

Para mi lo sustancial pasa de manera ‘diagonal’, como se ubica la mesuzah en el umbral de la puerta, esquivando el obstáculo, contemporizando extremos ortogonales y así creando una síntesis que ‘pase a través’, que fluya.

Se podría también decir que mis esculturas plegables y voladoras se parecen a letras hebreas, palabras, una sintaxis, una semiótica pero que no quedan ahí disciplinadas en la cabeza, sino que son totales por delimitar sus blancos de fondo y hacerlos uno con sus negros. Un ‘continum’ de letra/fondo real de infinitas posibilidades.

Mis obras intentan lo multifacético, lo multidireccional, lo multidimensional. Son eccentricas. No tienen posiciónes únicas. Están creadas para que yo las abra como a un libro. Si no para mi no valen, no tienen gracia. Las quiero totales e infinitas. Totales, absolutas y que comprendan a todas sus transformaciones. Cambios que apunten a mostrar la unidad invisible. No hay dos participantes que puedan ver o configurar lo mismo al mismo tiempo. Ni componerlas totalmente en un instante determinado. Mi tiempo ‘por etapas’ despliega lo invisible. La mitzva ‘azamra’ que me comanda a ‘ser feliz todo el tiempo’ me asiste a crear estos desplegables, y a leerlos también con mi cuerpo.

Soy un continuador de la obra de los artistas Agam y Kosice. Agam fue quien decidió concientemente darle una forma expresiva al concepto de realidad hebraico. Kosice por su obra articulable Royi, su aguas vitales controladas por la alegria genuina y sus ciudades hidro-espaciales de carácter mesiánico.

En el ultimo siglo vimos como la academia fue sobrepasada por la vanguardias. Como su refinamiento elitista sin vida fue suplantado por una fuerza cruda rejuvenecedora que tan bien nos hizo. Luego el ‘dada’ que nacio como rebeldía autentica contra la razón se volvió un comercio banal.  Un dada preciosista.Y por otro lado el arte político-ideologico de izquierda.

Yo entiendo que el arte tiene su origen en lo religioso. Y es allí donde reside su carácter verdaderamente político, porque es movido por una fuerza activa, que es ‘visión’ mesiánica. Trabajar hoy para esta fuerza activa – en contra de lo sin sentido que quiere impedir – demanda una ingeniería sofisticada. Se trata de ‘volver al origen’ a contracorriente de la colosal redundancia. Estamos en una lucha por la supervivencia espiritual.

Quizás siempre ha sido así para todo verdadero artista.
Como lo intento por mi parte? Como hago para escuchar en medio de este ensordecedor ruido? Escuchando a mis amigos de ruta que alcanzaron saber algo de ese origen y me señalan que queda allí, alla adelante!

_

THAT YOU PUT FORWARD YOUR BODY, YOUR TIME

Because this is the way I live art, as a vital force that is committed with everything. It is a personal fire that gives meaning to the Hebraic concept of reality. I refer here to the temporary flux that melts frozen and static images. Fixed images that have nothing to do with the unique God, ineffable, total, infinite, fluid, liminal of my roots.

For me the essential takes place in a ‘diagonal’ manner, as you place the mezuzah on the door threshold, avoiding the obstacle, temporizing  the extremes orthogonal and thus creating a synthesis, that ‘goes through’, that flows.

We could also say that my foldable and flying sculptures look like Hebraic letters, words, that they are a syntax, a semiotic, that are not disciplined in the head, instead are totals to demarcate the white in the background, and create a unity with their blacks. This is a continuum of real letters/background of infinite possibilities.

My works attempt the multifaceted, the multidirectional, the multidimensional. They are eccentric.  They don’t have unique positions. They are created so that I can open them like a book. Otherwise the have no worth, they have no grace. I want them total and infinite. They should be total, absolute, and that they understand all their transformations. Their changes should point to an invisible unit. There are no two participants that can see or configure the same at the same time. They cannot compose them totally in a determined instant. My time ‘in stages’ unfolds the invisible. The Mitzva ‘azamra’ that commands me to ‘be happy all the time’ assists me in creating these foldable works, and also to read them with my body.

I carry on the work of artists Agam and Kosice. Agam was who decided consciously to give an expressive form to the concept of the Hebraic reality. Kosice with his movable Royi, with his controlled vital waters through the genuine happiness and his hydro spatial  cities of messianic character.

This last century we saw how the academy was overtaken by the Avant-gardes. We saw how their lifeless elitist refinement was replaced by a raw rejuvenating strength that did us good. Afterwards ‘Dada’ which was born as an authentic rebellion against reason, became a banal commerce; an affected Dada. We also find the political-ideological art of the left.

I understand that art has its origin in the religious. It is there where we find its true political character, because it is propelled by an active force, which is a messianic ‘vision’. To work today for this active force – against the nonsense which impedes- requires a sophisticated engineering.  It is about ‘returning to the origin’, in countercurrent  to the colossal redundancy. We are in a fight for the spiritual survival.

Perhaps it has always been this way for all true artists.

How do I attempt it on my side? How do I listen in the midst of the deafening noise? By listening to my friends of path,  that have achieved to knowing something of this origin and signal me that it is found there, ahead!

Selected Biographical Information

Education / Training

• 1996-1998: Master in Computer Art MFA, School of Visual Arts NY, New York, USA.

Prizes / Fellowships

• 2016: Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant.
• 1996-1998: Beca Fulbright, Comision Fulbright y Fondo Nacional de las Artes Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Solo Exhibitions

• 2015: “Aleph”, Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, USA.
• 2002: “Tet”, Centro Cultural Recoleta , Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1999: “Kinetic Sculptures”, Argentine Consulate of New York, New York, USA.

Group Exhibitions

• 2016: “Open Studios”, Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, USA.
• 2015: “International Sculpture Day”, Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, USA.
• 2014: “Open Studios”, Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, USA.
• 2008: “Continous Current”, School of Visual Arts, New York, USA.
• 2008: “Current 2008 / Sculpture”, Garrison Art Center, Garrison, NY, USA.
• 2007: “Bienal Kingston de Escultura”, Kingston, Kingston, NY, USA.
• 2006: “Madi Retrospectiva”, Fundacion Klemm, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2004: “Esculturas en el Jardin”, Museo Larreta, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 1997: “Arte Madi Retrospectiva.”, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Reina Sofia, Madrid, España.
• 1992: “Del Constructivismo a la Geometria Sensible. Curador Jorge Glusberg”, Harrods en el Arte, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Publications

• Raul Santana, Huella del Ojo. Mirada al Arte Argentino (Buenos Aires: Asunto Impreso Ediciones), 370.
• Jorge Glusberg, Del Constructivismo a la Geometria Sensible (Buenos Aires: CAYC), 45.
• Gyula Kosice, Autobiografia (Buenos Aires: Asunto Impreso ediciones), 267.
• 2007: Benjamin Genocchio, “A Biennial That’s Multidirectional“, New York Times, Aug. 12, 2007.

Links

• Artist Website 
• Artist Facebook 
• Mana Contemporary

• Artists

Artists: Miguel Aguirre, Gabriel Alayza, Iosu Aramburu, Marlon de Azambuja, Alejandra Delgado, Katherinne Fiedler, Catalina González, Carla Higa, Koening Johnson, Luana Letts, Eliana Otta, Fernando Prieto, Gianine Tabja y Adán Vallecillo.

Todo lo sólido se desvanece en el aire
April 13, 2016 – May 8, 2016
Centro Cultural PUCP
Lima, Perú

“Todo lo sólido se desvanece en el aire” está basado en el libro homónimo de Marshall Berman, donde se plantea una modernidad a partir de reconocer a la urbe moderna como principal escenario de la vida, donde la ciudad genera divisiones y dramas internos e ironías materiales.

Para efectos de este proyecto –y en deliberado ejercicio de reflexión- instalaciones, intervenciones en sitios específicos, fotografías y videos pondrán en evidencia la ironía de aquel urbanismo modernista es que su triunfo contribuyó a destruir la misma vida urbana que esperaba liberar. Los artistas invitados vienen de diversas disciplinas y formaciones artísticas. Lo cual significa una ejercicio de diversas miradas sobre la modernidad y el urbanismo.

• Happenings

Artist: tepeu choc

Color Mapping
April 6, 2016 – April 30, 2016
Alianza Francesa Guatemala
Guatemala

By abstracting physical space and transforming it into graphic representations, this is how the art of making maps operates, allowing us to conquer inhospitable territories and to access areas through which we move. In a similar manner the artist tepeu choc (Guatemala, 1983) manages to greatly synthesize the external lines and to render them concrete in the most basic aspects of artistic creation: form and color. He creates new languages for reading these lines transforming them in a occupied area. His titles inform us what he is expressing. From figurative representations that he captures in basic color, following the encapsulation of specific times and their abstractions, to the three-dimensional gain and the reading x-ray style of his sculptures, his work invites us to tour those places, that having become strangers. we are able to re-visit from a new appropriation perspective. Color becomes the basic element for the distinction between lines dividing objects, spaces, and temporality—areas where the artist moves. With only seven basic colors, Tepeu Choc is capable of recreating abstract ideas of distance, or the difference between night and day. Color also becomes referential in his sculptural work in the form of floating threads around the interior and exterior space, without specific distinction. While in his two-dimensional creations he applies the golden mean rule, which allows them to be accessible and pleasing to the eye, in his sculpture he retains a somewhat chaotic element due to the plasticity of the materials with which he works, especially in this exhibition. Thus, the artist’s so-called conquest comes from his real-world knowledge and from the rules of abstraction, which first appear close to an exercise in geometry but in reality is a recomposition of the physical spaces he invites us to get to know.

• Happenings

Artist: Karina Peisajovich

Background
April 14, 2016 – June 4, 2016
Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Miami, Florida

Peisajovich explores the material constitution of the image more than that of representation. Whether through her environmental lighting projects as in her drawings, she alters the sensory experience of the viewer and at the same time, prompting him/her to wonder about the construction of his/her own perceptual process. In her own words “I think of visuality as an unnatural and imaginary phenomenon, fragile, contingent and constructed at the same time. From all of this are made the images in which we live”.

With their absolute formal nudity, the drawings titled “Gradient” can be seen as time encrypted in color. The palette of these works is organized based on the tension produced by chromatic relations, manifesting the unstable parameters of the eye.

“All that sinks into light is the resonance of what the night submerges” *, it is an intervention of the Gallery’s illumination system.  Peisajovich alters the existing electrical system and the disposition of the space’s lighting fixtures, changing their role and orientation.

In relation to this work, Peisajovich says: “In the latest Light Works I was more focused on using the already existing illumination systems of the premises where I was invited to show. In art spaces, especially in museums, lighting is used to impart a certain theatricality to the works. There is something of overacting in this operation. In this sense, these works disarm and absorb this setting.”

In both, the drawings and the intervention of light, appear the idea of the pictorial background, not as an inert support, but as an active space which realizes imaginary expectations. As produced by the fluctuations of the natural light in an environment, backgrounds are planes where latent forms that have not found their place are projected.

*The title of this work is taken from the film “Passion” of Jean Luc Godard.

• Happenings

Artist: Patrick Hamilton

Black Tools
January 28, 2016 – May 14, 2016
The 9.99 Gallery 
Guatemala City, Guatemala

• Happenings

Artist: Dario Escobar 

Composições [Compositions]
April 6, 2016 – May 7, 2016
Casa Triângulo
São Paulo, Brazil

Dario Escobar’s artistic research develops from sculptural and installation acts started with the appropriation of industrial objects. Throughout a path of over fifteen years, the artist has already worked in dialogue with visual traditions as diverse as the Guatemalan baroque, the skin of broken cars and objects seen as symbols of consumerism. His operation as an artist happens from the selection of those pieces and their reconfiguration through actions like juxtaposition and repetition, fragmentation and cut of materials, and a reflection on how to install them inside the exhibition space.

In “Composition”, continuing this investigation, the artist presents new works in Brazil, which propose multiple possibilities of composition through the appropriation and approximation of dissimilar elements. In the series “Geometric construction” and “Modular construction”, Escobar recodes the tradition of painting the back of trucks in Guatemala, creating new patterns that invite the spectator to open them up and enjoy their distinct configurations. The formal research starting with the two-dimensional is also perceptible in his “Motor oil compositions”, in which also using a non-conventional material the artist explores the possibilities of paper and drawing.

Regarding the three-dimensional, in the series “Still-life” the artist explores ways of presenting objects from the sports industry, like basketballs, still aseptic and distant from its use by the human body. In “Balance” there is a tension of the material as well as of the elements mentioned by the artist: on one hand the metal sheets recall the minimalist sculptures of Carl Andre, on the other hand, sustaining its weight, the glass is present in the famous American glasses commercialized in Sao Paulo since 1940 and already elevated to symbols of Brazilian design.

Besides those works, in dialogue with this sculptural thought that composes through the geometry inherent to ordinary objects, there will be presented new works which will be developed through the meeting between Dario Escobar and the commodities from the popular markets in Sao Paulo. Therefore, these compositions aim to establish other direct conversations with the Brazilian visual culture, in the same way the artist replies everyday to the industrialized objects used in Guatemala.

-Raphael Fonseca

• Happenings

Artist: Thomas Glassford 

Siphonophora
Until July 24, 2016
Museo Universitario del Chopo
Mexico City, Mexico

Siphonophora is a site-specific work that echoes earlier chapters in his career—above all his work on the articulation of neo-botanical structures—as well as a glossary constructed in the present. In direct allusion to the siphonophores, colonies of planktonic marine organisms with a peculiar morphology that places them between animals and plants, Glassford constructs a sculptural organism that recalls the building’s former incarnation as a natural history museum. The work combines reference points ranging from the human microbiome—the collection of microbes that colonize the body and that together comprise one hundred times more genes than in our own genome—to the classic children’s story Jack and the Beanstalk, by way of the artist’s own experiences on a farm, weaving together his extensive knowledge and love for plants, which form an important part of his everyday life.

In both the siphonophores and the microbiome, there is a social parallel with the community, the family nucleus, a neighborhood, or city. This dependency and correlation allows unity and divergence. The encounter with this complex installation fluctuates in the perception between a fossil, plant elements, or an animal organism. Depending on the viewpoint, its monumental character situates us walking on the ocean floor, entering a cave, observing from the sea surface, or seeing a climbing plant from cloud level. This ambiguity highlights the construction of parallel worlds in which viewers recognize themselves in the astonishment of a single, unrepeatable yet collective reflection.

• Happenings

Artists: Andrea Galvani, Marlena Kudlicka, Andres Marroquin Winkelmann, Jose Carlos Martinat, Ishmael Randall-Weeks.

Lo Real Absoluto
in collaboration with Jorge Villacorta
April 13, 2016 – June 17, 2016
Revolver Galeria
Lima, Peru

• Happenings

Artist: Ricardo Rendon

Possible Memory
April 2, 2016 – April 30, 2016
Zipper Galeria
São Paulo, Brazil

Against the backdrop of a social vision that remains very clear in the way that the act of physical labor is understood, the artist seems to once again emphasize the sculptural value of his production. Evidently, the works of Rendón never ceased to be properly sculptural, and thus occupying, in an inescapable way, the exhibition space. But what we see here is a clear concern with specific aspects of the sculpture, notably the treatment of weight, or the way in which the weight of each piece is not an accessory but rather central to the creation of the work. By suspending wooden and stone slab fragments, Rendón brings these questions to light, while suggesting a dialogue with references to the recent history of Western sculpture, such as the series Gravitaciones by Eduardo Chillida, among other possible references, thus justifying his claim for a central role for sculpture in the contemporary art scene.

• Happenings

Artist: Mauro Giaconi

Impermanence
February 2, 2016 – April 16, 2016
Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo
Mexico City, Mexico

Back in 2012, Giaconi conceived the gallery space as a field of conceptual and material experimentation with his exhibition Season of Lead. Where the graphite-covered walls became a set of exchanges between the outside and inside world, between the architectural references and psychical elements from the near environment, making a permeable membrane between different states and dimensions.

After three years and five months, the artist —with the assistance of a restoration team— used ethanol and acetone compresses, tensoactive agents and sharp tools directly on the wall fragments until he found the yet recognisable traces of his past exhibition —now intentionally cracked, underlining their chaotic, fragile and impermanent condition.

By exploring concepts and basic techniques of restoration, the artist deconstructs the architectonic space to rediscover imagery that remained deliberately hidden until now, to unveil ideas of nostalgia, violence and order.

• Happenings

Artist: Montez Magno

Poemata (It is all poetry)
March 30, 2016 – May 21, 2016
Galeria Pilar
São Paulo, Brazil

The latest exhibit by Brazilian artist Montez Magno (b. Pernambuco, 1934) contains over forty works, rigorously selected to reflect Magno’s sixty-year investigation of artistic language as expressed on a myriad of surfaces. Curated by art critic Lisette Lagnado.

Lagnado examines the artist’s poetic inflections, a lesser-known aspect of his work, highlighting the dialogue between painting and script; between “celestial letters” and poems.

“Poemata” seeks to establish non-hierarchical relations between two praxis of creation, making subtle transitions using works in different forms (for example, a painting and a score, a drawing and a poem), subtle just like the lines that appear in the white space on the surface of his work, be it paper, canvas or Styrofoam.

With lines at times vertical and at others horizontal, reminding us of the patterns of a notebook, the chosen works display a type of leitmotif in the vocabulary of the artist, independent of the chosen surface.

• Happenings

Microhistorias y Macromundos Vol. 3.
Editor: Maria Lind, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, 2010.
Authors: Ina Blom, Anthony Davies, Stephan Dillemuth, Matias Faldbakken, Liam Gillick, Peter Halley, Brian Holmes, Jakob Jakobsen, Maria Lind, Sven Lütticken, Nina Möntmann, Mai-Thu Perret, Gerald Raunig, Irit Rogoff, Emily Roysdon, Meyer Shapiro.
Publisher: Insituto Nacional de Bellas Artes

This anthology of texts by artists, critics, curators, writers and researchers was selected by Maria Lind, its editor and the guest curator of the exhibition Abstract Possible. Literature, critical theory and art history are disciplines  contained in this publication.  Abstract Possible proposes that abstraction not only relates to the formal in art, but that it is a concept which emerges from the economic, political, social and cultural relations that shape our lives, buy which abstraction is omnipresent. Authors: Ina Blom, Anthony Davies, Stephan Dillemuth, Matias Faldbakken, Liam Gillick, Peter Halley, Brian Holmes, Jakob Jakobsen, Maria Lind, Sven Lütticken, Nina Möntmann, Mai-Thu Perret, Gerald Raunig, Irit Rogoff, Emily Roysdon, Meyer Shapiro.

Microhistorias y Macromundos Vol. 3. Editora: Maria Lind, Museo Tamayo, Ciudad de Mexico, 2010.

Esta antología de textos por artistas, críticos, curadores, escritores e investigadores, fue seleccionada por Maria Lind, su editora y curadora invitada de la exhibición Abstracción Posible. La literatura, teoría crítica e historia del arte son las disciplinas contenidas en esta publicación. Abstracción Posible propone que la abstracción no solamente refiere a lo formal en el arte, sino que es un concepto que emerge de las relaciones económicas, sociales y culturales en que vivimos, por la cual la abstracción es omnipresente. Autores: Ina Blom, Anthony Davies, Stephan Dillemuth, Matias Faldbakken, Liam Gillick, Peter Halley, Brian Holmes, Jakob Jakobsen, Maria Lind, Sven Lütticken, Nina Möntmann, Mai-Thu Perret, Gerald Raunig, Irit Rogoff, Emily Roysdon, Meyer Shapiro.

• Contemporary Contexts

Artists: Víctor Aguado, Miguel Álvarez-Fernández, María Chávez, Ferrer-Molina and Richard Garet.

Sound vs Sense: Intersections
March 22, 2016 – April 9, 2016
ICNY Instituto Cervantes New York
New York, NY, USA

Sound and language have a challenging relationship. What exactly does it mean to “understand” what we hear? This doubt is expressed through various artistic forms in this exhibition, taking the form of a dialogue and blurring the lines that divide aesthetic categories as apparently well-defined as music, poetry, or the visual arts.

In their installations, artists Víctor Aguado, Miguel Álvarez-Fernández, María Chávez, Ferrer-Molina and Richard Garet place us face to face with some of the infinite nuances that constitute and inhabit our language.

• Happenings

Artist: Diana de Solares

Diana de Solares: The Material Space of Radiance
March 17, 2016 – April 23, 2016
Henrique Faria Fine Art
New York, NY, USA

It is no coincidence that my immersion in art began through my brief studies of architecture as a very young woman. In retrospect, it makes sense to me. I now realize that I wasn’t seeking tools for creating buildings and houses, but trying to get at some kind of knowledge about space in human life. Some years ago, my paintings became three-dimensional, and then my three- dimensional constructions became installational.

The notion of space led me to that of place. And to questions such as, Where are we when we are in the world? How does an object become a place? How do we experience the world?

Andrew J. Mitchell begins his brilliant monograph of Heidegger’s ideas on sculpture proposing, “sculpture teaches us what it means to be in the world…to be in this world is to be ever entering a material space of radiance1”. Mitchell is referring to Heidegger’s reflections on the relation between space and body. In this context, space is no longer deemed as the void where bodies are contained, but as an almost material entity that facilitates and embraces, that allows bodies to appear, radiate, and thus, constitute a world. In Heidegger’s novel conception of limit, a body’s boundary does not mark its end but rather its beginning–for it is there that it interacts and mingles with the physicality of the world around it. This beautiful notion of a participatory space that allows bodies to move beyond themselves and distribute their radiance has changed my perception of a work of sculpture, as it appears in front of me.

I imagine an experience in which a multiple exchange of radiance occurs. The work of art emanating its life through space, and the viewer momentarily emptying himself to accommodate its radiance, in an ongoing movement that transforms both person and object. With the works contained in The Material Space of Radiance, I have sought the embodiment of space through the various visual and haptic qualities of the constructions interacting in it. These varied works have unfolded in the same span of time and share qualities of color and tactility as well as an affinity to human body, and in sharing this moment in space and time they “slowly dissolve in the world”.

– Diana de Solares

• Happenings

Artist: Pia Camil

Pia Camil: A Pot for a Latch
January 13, 2016 – April 17, 2016
New Museum
New York, NY, USA

The New Museum hosts the first solo museum presentation in New York of the work of artist Pia Camil.

In her paintings, sculptures, performances, and installations, Camil draws inspiration from the urban landscape of her native Mexico City and engages with the history of modernism. Her projects transform the remnants of dysfunctional commercial culture, revealing the inherent problems as well as the latent aesthetic potential within inner-city ruin. Often using laborious fabrication processes in collaboration with local artisans, Camil deaccelerates the frenetic pace of mass commodification through the handcrafted production and intimate quality of her works. In recent projects, she has expanded the scope of her practice to create theatrical environments that invite the viewer to navigate the exhibition space and experience shifting viewpoints and juxtapositions.

For “A Pot for a Latch,” Camil presents a participatory sculptural installation produced specifically for the Lobby Gallery. Inspired by the modular display systems typically used by vendors, Camil has constructed a succession of gridwall panels of her own design, complete with built-in hooks, shelves, and other fixtures for displaying items. Composed of grids, lines, and geometric shapes, the structures form a volumetric drawing within the space of the gallery, referencing cheap commercial constructions as well as the serial patterning of paintings and sculptures made by Minimalist artists such as Sol LeWitt and Agnes Martin.

The title of the exhibition refers to the potlatch, a ceremonial gift-giving festival practiced by the Native-American peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast, for whom it continues to be a system of wealth redistribution. Camil invites the public to participate in the ongoing creation of her piece on designated days, during which visitors are encouraged to exchange their own unique items for others in the installation. The composition on the gridwall panels is thereby in flux and is repeatedly altered throughout the course of the exhibition. With “A Pot for a Latch,” Camil transforms the Lobby Gallery into a shop of sorts, in which the monetary value of an object is supplanted by its personal history and significance.

New Museum visitors are invited to exchange items for those in the installation during a series of six public events. On subsequent days, participants’ items will be exchanged for those items that are installed in the Lobby Gallery on that particular day.
Sunday April 3, 2–4 PM

Artist’s invitation: “A Pot for a Latch” is an invitation to exchange.
The object you bring is a talisman of sorts, and it should be thought of in the same way that the ancient Romans conceived of in their term “res,” which denotes a gift that has both a personal value and a history. Bring objects of power, of aesthetic interest, and of poignancy. The monetary value of these items is insignificant; their value lies instead in their richness of meaning and in the new life that they acquire on the grid within the Lobby Gallery.
Potential exchange items may include: clothes, curtains, blankets, artworks, photographs, paintings, frames, nondescript items of undetermined function, objects that resemble parts of the human body such as wigs or mannequins, costume jewelry and accessories, mirrors and reflective items, potted plants, colorful items and/or those with interesting shapes and forms, transparent materials such as shower curtains, lingerie, or X-rays, books, and trinkets.

Prohibited exchange items include but are not limited to: electronics, heavy items (over twenty pounds), small-scale objects (less than six inches in diameter), loose-leaf paper, tote bags, mass-produced garments, food or other perishables, weapons, and chemicals or other hazardous materials.

The exhibition is curated by Margot Norton, Associate Curator.
Cover Image: “Pia Camil: A Pot for a Latch,” 2016. Exhibition view: New Museum. Photo: Maris Hutchinson / EPW Studio

• Happenings