Abstraction in Action Development – 2017 https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/development-2017/

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.

January 11, 2017 Ishmael Randall Weeks: Constructive Resistance https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ishmael-randall-weeks-constructive-resistance/

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Artist: Ishmael Randall Weeks 

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

Exploring the legacies of modernism and Arte Povera, Randall Weeks will present a room-sized sculptural installation, Ejercicios Para Un Nuevo Mundo V (Exercises For A New World V) that consists of cranium-size chunks of raw mineral ore (silver, gold and copper) sourced from three mines in the Peruvian Andes. The stones have been drilled and attached to steel-pipe armatures that were bent into forms representing outdoor playground structures common to Latin American housing developments of the 1960s.

Two wall works, Paisaje/Repisa I-II (Landscape/Shelf I-II) will also be presented. Each consists of shelves made of copper plating over steel that has been coated with the mineral dust that was left over from the process of creating the sculptural installation. The shelves hold a copperized mold of a calcified tree that was found in a mine, a copper-plated styrofoam plate, and some fragments of minerals.

Randall Weeks utilizes architecture as a metaphorical structure to address the impact of man on the landscape. He juxtaposes modernist architecture with structures common in Latin America–favela shacks, adobe and vernacular buildings–and he incorporates aspects of the do-it- yourself economy to find practical solutions when resources are scarce
December 27, 2016 Marcius Galan, Horacio Zabala: Toda percepción es una interpretación: YOU ARE PART OF IT https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcius-galan-horacio-zabala-toda-percepcion-es-una-interpretacion-part/

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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.

December 27, 2016 KIRIN, Fidel Sclavo, Eduardo Stupía: The Lines of the Hand https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/kirin-fidel-sclavo-eduardo-stupia-lines-hand/

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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

December 27, 2016 Iván Navarro: Mute Parade https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ivan-navarro-mute-parade/

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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 HIGHTONETUNEBASSMUTE, 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.

 

December 12, 2016 Eduardo Costa: Pop & Post Pop https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/eduardo-costa-pop-post-pop/

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

December 8, 2016 Emilio Chapela, Jaime Davidovich, Karina Peisajovich, Horacio Zabala: Illuminations II https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilio-chapela-jaime-davidovich-karina-peisajovich-horacio-zabala-illuminations-ii/

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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

December 6, 2016 Elena Damiani, Lucia Koch, Pablo Rasgado, Adán Vallecillo: XIII Bienal de Cuenca https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/elena-damiani-lucia-koch-pablo-rasgado-adan-vallecillo-xiii-bienal-de-cuenca/

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

December 6, 2016 Magdalena Fernández: Exhibition Series “CLIMAS” https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/magdalena-fernandez-exhibition-series-climas/

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Artist: Magdalena Fernández

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

In the words of Magdalena Fernández: “1i011 (Forest) is a penetrable installation, made of light aluminum rods of various sizes hinged together, which transforms, breaks and become alive when visitors enter it and run through it. It appears, then, as a vibrant, unstable and mobile “Forest”, formed from a metal structure in unstable equilibrium that agitates, shakes and trembles, interacting with the bodies and other elements found in the space it occupies. This webbing of branches takes over the place in which is located, and it is virtually transformed into a vibrant piece of unpredictable changes and movements. Thus, each viewer makes this landscape in a proper place that is constantly redrawing, in a spatial grid with which he interacts and plays, in a jungle of memories where he can circulate reflectively. In short, this “Forest”, this structure in precarious equilibrium, this exploration through our ways of apprehending and experiencing nature, arises as the possibility of a journey of sensations, in which the occurring mutations, due to the exchange between bodies and spatial intervention device, vitalize the geometric rigor of the structure and the coldness of the materials impregnating them with vibrations, reverberations, waves and resonances”.
November 28, 2016 José Luis Landet: Doma https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/jose-luis-landet-doma/

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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.

November 19, 2016 Soledad Arias: Luminous https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/soledad-arias-luminous/

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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.

November 17, 2016 Eduardo Stupía: Fossils and Sediments https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/eduardo-stupia-fossils-sediments/

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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.

November 14, 2016 Emilia Azcárate, Paula de Solminihac: LARA, Latin American Roaming Art https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilia-azcarate-paula-de-solminihac-lara-latin-american-roaming-art/

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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.

 

November 10, 2016 Sandra Gamarra, Marco Maggi: 3rd Bienal de Montevideo https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/sandra-gamarra-marco-maggi-3rd-bienal-de-montevideo/

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Artists: Sandra Gamarra, Marco Maggi.

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

 

November 7, 2016 Sigfredo Chacón, Jaime Gili, Pepe López and Lucía Pizzani: Contralapared https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/sigfredo-chacon-jaime-gili-pepe-lopez-lucia-pizzani-contralapared/

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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.

October 28, 2016 Alberto Casari: Verba Volant (Never Write Bullshit) https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alberto-casari-verba-volant-never-write-bullshit/

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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.

October 26, 2016 Clarissa Tossin: TransAMERICAS: a sign, a situation, a concept https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/clarissa-tossin-transamericas-sign-situation-concept/

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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.

October 26, 2016 Pablo Siquier: Hostile https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/pablo-siquier-hostile/

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Artist: Pablo Siquier 

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

October 26, 2016 Adán Vallecillo, Elena Damiani, Motez Magno, Omar Barquet: Everyday Alchemy https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/adan-vallecillo-elena-damiani-motez-magno-omar-barquet-everyday-alchemy/

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

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Everyday Alchemy
September 3 — October 15, 2016
curated by Andrea Hinteregger De Mayo
von Bartha
Basel, Switzerland

 

October 8, 2016 Nuno Ramos and Clima: Instalaçã0-O Globo da morte de tudo https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/nuno-ramos-clima-instalaca0-o-globo-da-morte-de-tudo/

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Artist: Nuno Ramos 

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

 

October 5, 2016 Felipe Mujica: 32nd Bienal de São Paulo – INCERTEZA VIVA https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/felipe-mujica-32nd-bienal-de-sao-paulo-incerteza-viva/

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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.

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.

 

September 28, 2016 Iván Navarro, Lucia Koch, Marcius Galan, Nuno Ramos, Túlio Pinto: Transparência e Reflexo https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ivan-navarro-lucia-koch-marcius-galan-nuno-ramos-tulio-pinto-transparencia-e-reflexo/

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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

September 28, 2016 Clarissa Tossin: Encontro Das Águas (Meeting of Waters) https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/clarissa-tossin-encontro-das-aguas-meeting-waters/

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Artist: Clarissa Tossin

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

 

September 26, 2016 Clemencia Labin: LA EXTRANJERA – DIE FREMDE – THE FOREIGNER https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/clemencia-labin-la-extranjera-die-fremde-foreigner/

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Artist: Clemencia Labin 

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

 

September 19, 2016 Alexander Apóstol, Jaime Gili, Adriana Minoliti, Santiago Reyes Villaveces, Lucía Pizzani: CONCRETE https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alexander-apostol-jaime-gili-adriana-minoliti-santiago-reyes-villaveces-lucia-pizzani-concrete/

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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.

September 16, 2016 Soledad Arias: Some more or less distant realities https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/soledad-arias-less-distant-realities/

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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.

 

September 16, 2016 Impact Structures: Elena Damiani https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/impact-structures-elena-damiani/

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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.

September 15, 2016 Jaime Davidovich (1936-2016) https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/jaime-davidovich-1936-2016/

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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”.

September 13, 2016 Aichi Triennale 2016: Adriana Minoliti https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/aichi-triennale-2016-adriana-minoliti/

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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.

September 9, 2016 Placebound: Clarissa Tossin https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/placebound-clarissa-tossin/

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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

 

September 9, 2016 Eduardo Santiere: Multitudes https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/eduardo-santiere-multitudes/

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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.

September 2, 2016 Leyla Cárdenas, Danilo Dueñas, Maria Fernanda Plata, Luis Roldán: Pensamiento escultórico https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/leyla-cardenas-danilo-duenas-maria-fernanda-plata-luis-roldan-pensamiento-escultorico/

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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.

September 2, 2016 Ricardo Alcaide, Darío Escobar: good news. https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ricardo-alcaide-dario-escobar-good-news/

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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.

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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.

August 16, 2016 Luis Roldán: Periplo https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/luis-roldan-periplo/

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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.

August 15, 2016 Sigfredo Chacón: Pinturasparadaltónicos https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/sigfredo-chacon-pinturasparadaltonicos/

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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.

August 15, 2016 Richard Garet: SOUND ONE https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/richard-garet-sound-one/

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Artists: Richard Garet and Crystal Z. Campbell

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

Richard Garet interweaves various media including moving image, sound, expanded photography, and multimedia performance. Garet’s pieces seeks to invert the normative function of extraneous noise and bring it into the conscious state. His piece Meta (2013) is a sonic construct intended for ear-to-the-wall-listening. Using the chalky drywall and often hollow interior as an acoustical device, Garet invites his audience to experience the piece aurally and physically by placing their ear against the wall in an investigative action. Garet’s original composition is derivative of our own experiences, actions, and choices. They become emitted by commodities, means of communications, and our own relationships with technology.

In Garet’s Perpetual (2015) series, the artist focused on background noise to create sonic constructions and subsequently translating each piece into a moving image generating a chromatic visual landscape. Removing the sound, Garet draws attention to the processes of perception, which activate sensorial, physical, and psychological phenomena that reflects on the nature and experience of time.

August 11, 2016 Valentino Sibadon: VEJIGA DE PEZ VoL. IV – INMERSIÓN https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/valentino-sibadon-vejiga-de-pez-vol-iv-inmersion/

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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.

August 11, 2016 Magdalena Fernandez, Marcius Galan, Felipe Mujica: De lo Espiritual en el Arte. Obertura https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/magdalena-fernandez-marcius-galan-felipe-mujica-de-lo-espiritual-en-el-arte-obertura/

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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.

August 1, 2016 Abstraction 2 https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/abstraction-2/

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Artists: José Carlos Martinat, Iosu AramburuJaime Gili, Asger Dybvad Larsen, Ricardo Rendón, Saul Sánchez, Fernando Carabajal, Wolfram Ullrich, Emilio Chapela, Justin Hibbs,Károly Keserü, Dannielle Tegeder, Martín PelenurG.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.

July 27, 2016 Guido Ignatti: Setup https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/guido-ignatti-setup/

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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.

July 27, 2016 Elias Crespin: Hommage au Carré https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/elias-crespin-hommage-au-carre/

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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 ».

July 25, 2016 Martin Pelenur: Fragmentations and other Parables https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/martin-pelenur-fragmentations-parables/

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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?

 

July 22, 2016 Sigfredo Chacón: Pinturasparadaltónicos / Colorblindpaintings https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/sigfredo-chacon-pinturasparadaltonicos-colorblindpaintings/

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Artist: Sigfredo Chacón

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

July 18, 2016 Ricardo Alcaide: Down the Line https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ricardo-alcaide-line/

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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.

July 18, 2016 Alice Quaresma: Threaded https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alice-quaresma-threaded/

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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.

July 14, 2016 Bernardo Ortiz: Borrar https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/bernardo-ortiz-borrar-2/

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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.

July 14, 2016 Emilia Azcárate: Full Emptiness / El Vacío lleno https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilia-azcarate-full-emptiness-el-vacio-lleno/

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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.

July 11, 2016 Esvin Alarcón Lam, tepeu choc, Diana de Solares, Darío Escobar, Patrick Hamilton: Overlap/Traslape https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/esvin-alarcon-lam-tepeu-choc-diana-de-solares-dario-escobar-patrick-hamilton-overlaptraslape/

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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.

 

July 8, 2016 Cristina Ghetti: stripe – generators https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/cristina-ghetti-stripe-generators/

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Artist: Cristina Ghetti

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

July 8, 2016 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 https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilia-azcarate-emilio-chapela-eduardo-costa-jaime-davidovich-diana-de-solares-karina-peisajovich-osvaldo-romberg-luis-roldan-eduardo-santiere-horacio-zabala-imagining-spaces-constructions/

Henrique Faria

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.

July 1, 2016 Gabriel de la Mora: Sound Inscriptions on Fabric https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/gabriel-de-la-mora-sound-inscriptions-fabric/

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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.

July 1, 2016 Jose Dávila: The Elephant and the Feather https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/jose-davila-elephant-feather/

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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.

June 27, 2016 Fernando Uhía: Impresionismo Multinacional https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/fernando-uhia-impresionismo-multinacional/

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Artist: Fernando Uhía

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

June 21, 2016 Amadeo Azar: Shadowplay https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/amadeo-azar-shadowplay/

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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).”

“… 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

June 17, 2016 Emilio Chapela: No Pain, No Brain https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilio-chapela-no-pain-no-brain/

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Artist: Emilio Chapela

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

Building on the investigations of the material manifestations of human perspective and information systems that Chapela introduced in his 2014 exhibition at the gallery, No Pain, No Brain focuses specifically on the intellectual and physical environments of the Bell Labs complex during its 90-year history. As the premises were recently sold to Nokia and some buildings are on the verge of being converted into a “mixed-use lifestyle complex”, Chapela took on the role of archeologist and anthropologist as he explored the grounds and uncovered its vestiges: abandoned but yet stuck in time, as if the scientists would return at any moment to resume their experiments. The Do Not Erase series offers a tribute to the anonymous scientists whose musings remain un-erased on whiteboards inside the Laboratories’ buildings. Saved from the fate of demolition, these whiteboards preserve for posterity the ‘famous last words’ and calculations of some of these scientists, some of which include “No Pain, No Brain” and “Frieder Mach’s Gut!” As Ken Farmer writes in the exhibition text, “Appropriation and direct representation creates the space for abstract reflection and poetic speculation.” Re-contextualized in the gallery, these whiteboards offer glimpses into sets of knowledge and potentialities to which the public was not privy until now.

Other works also speak to Chapela’s interest in opening up the boundaries of knowledge in light of the on-going technological boom. Bell Nobel Prizes (2016) presents the brains of the eight Nobel Prize-winning scientists that worked at Bell Labs. The brains here are made of silicon, “an atomic relative of the carbon that comprises our own brains and the key ingredient in the computer chips that power society today”, and continue the speculation started by early science fiction writers of whether it too could be a life-generating and sustaining element. The sculptural series Semi-transistors (2016) also uses silicon as a base, this time for amplifying an electrical current, and pays homage to the first transistors that were created at Bell Labs in 1947. In the midst of the surge of artificial intelligence and machine learning, these works acknowledge the present issues brought forth by the machine’s challenge to the singular power of the human mind.

June 13, 2016 Bernardo Ortiz: Borrar https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/bernardo-ortiz-borrar/

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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.

June 13, 2016 Richard Garet: Screen Memory https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/richard-garet-screen-memory/

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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.

 

June 6, 2016 Pedro Tyler: Land or Liberty! On Patriotism, Nationalism and Populism https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/pedro-tyler-land-liberty-patriotism-nationalism-populism/

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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.

June 3, 2016 Martin Pelenur: Ballena https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/martin-pelenur-ballena/

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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.

June 1, 2016 KIRIN: DIDERÓTICA https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/kirin-diderotica/

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Artist: KIRIN

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

DIDERÓTICA is a double tribute, or an “appreciation”, as specified in the subtitle of the exhibition. On the one hand, the figure of famous French philosopher and writer Denis Diderot (1784 1713) is celebrated, creator, animator and editor of one of the most ambitious and influential intellectual endeavors of the human spirit, L’Encyclopédie (1751 -1772). On the other hand, the exhibition celebrates a color present in all the works on display: red.

There is no direct, causal link between the life and work of Diderot and the color red. The encyclopedic – who was perhaps the first great art critic in history – does not even have any explicit mention of red in his writing. It could be surmised that the color red is usually used to mark or highlight something and Kirin uses it to reveal details or aspects of the work from Diderot. The fact is that Kirin dreamed about this writer he admires in reds and it is known that dreams have a mysterious logic of their own. Some of the works on show are recreations made by the artist of the wonderful illustrations from L’Encyclopédie. Kirin recreates, draws, copies and pixelates these images and intervenes with red, or rather with variations of the range of this color that is so powerful and symbolic. Kirin uses vermilion, cadmium, scarlet, cinnabar and several shades of red, as Michel Pastoureau says in his Dictionary of colors, “… it is the color par excellence, the archetypal color, first of all colors “. Kirin had already used a single color in some previous pictorial series: Negro de marfil (2004) or black-white dialogue in Entrelíneas (2014), both of which were exhibited at the Jorge Mara – La Ruche Gallery. In both exhibitions there is an illustrated catalog.

In this series Kirin continues developing variations on geometric shapes, sometimes large in size. Along with these, there are smaller oils on paper, showing a kind of weaving or linking of graphic signs evocative of ancient, archaic alphabets with a singular poetic content: pure pictorial representations without further reference than their own mystery.

 

June 1, 2016 Horacio Zabala: Purity Is in the Mix https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/horacio-zabala-purity-mix/

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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.

The exhibitions is not organized chronologically, but it moves dialectically across time to demonstrate how Zabala has explored some ideas and forms of abstraction since the early 1970s to today. Constant areas of investigation are the monochrome and the use of mathematical and and punctuation symbols which create a tension between the color planes and the wall. Also a singular form of criticality and irony is present in much of his work, ranging from the political and the everyday in the global world.
-Cecilia Fajardo-Hill
May 27, 2016 Omar Barquet: Syllables https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/omar-barquet-syllables/

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Artist: Omar Barquet

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

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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.

May 23, 2016 Nuno Ramos: O DIREITO À PREGUIÇA https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/nuno-ramos-o-direito-preguica/

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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.

May 23, 2016 Felipe Arturo, Adrián S. Bará, Ximena Garrido-Lecca: DIVAGATION https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/felipe-arturo-adrian-s-bara-ximena-garrido-lecca-divagation/

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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.

May 20, 2016 Pedro Tyler: Lo Bello & lo Sublime https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/pedro-tyler-lo-bello-lo-sublime/

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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.

 

 

May 19, 2016 Mauro Giaconi: From the Depths of Time https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/mauro-giaconi-depths-time/

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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.

May 17, 2016 Horacio Zabala: Entre líneas https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/horacio-zabala-entre-lineas/

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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

May 6, 2016 Emilia Azcarte: Pinturas de Castas https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilia-azcarte-pinturas-de-castas/

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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”.

May 6, 2016 Iosu Aramburu, Fernando Prieto, Adán Vallecillo: Todo lo sólido se desvanece en el aire https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/iosu-aramburu-fernando-prieto-adan-vallecillo-todo-lo-solido-se-desvanece-en-el-aire/

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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.

April 29, 2016 tepeu choc: Color Mapping https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/tepeu-choc-color-mapping/

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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.

 

April 29, 2016 Karina Peisajovich: Background https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/karina-peisajovich-background/

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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.

April 25, 2016 Patrick Hamilton: Black Tools https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/patrick-hamilton-black-tools/

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Artist: Patrick Hamilton

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

True to the conceptual nature of his work, Hamilton refers to the political history of his country through a series of collages and sculptures, which he has produced in the last year, and which broadens and deepens his aesthetic reflections on major issues affecting contemporary societies, particularly those that refer to labor and social inequality in Chile in recent years. These reflections analyze the consequences of the “neoliberal revolution” (Thomas Moulian) implemented in Chile by Pinochet — and the “Chicago School” — during the eighties and its projection in the social and cultural milieu in a post-dictatorship Chile; they result in works that can be read from the notion of “social forms” (Christian Viveros-Fauné), thanks to their economy of expressive resources and their deep bond with the analysis of social, political, and economic phenomena. Hamilton’s production could be described as realist art in relation to the exaltation of the physical qualities of his works, as well as a consideration of the concrete phenomena of our social reality.

Through the manipulation of tools used for manual labor, the artist creates objects that represent and act as metaphors in the increasingly precarious world labor economy. The formal character of the work is provided by another of Hamilton’s great source of inspiration: the History of Art. So, is the work of the constructivists, concrete art, and Suprematism — in this case Kasimir Malevich’s emblematic black square — which serves as a link between the economy of gestures and means, the use of monochrome and the formal rigor with spatulas, pikes, and sandpaper, which leave behind their functionality and remain at the mercy of anyone who wants to contemplate them.

The placement of the works in the space resembles a shadow theater, with pieces that disguise their materiality and communication function, a contradiction between the visible and invisible, transparent and opaque, opposites that in contemporary societies contribute to the concealment of problems of unemployment, shadow economies, and illegal work that become a precarious solution to the lives of millions of individuals.

April 25, 2016 Dario Escobar: Composições [Compositions] https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/dario-escobar-composicoes-compositions/

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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

April 22, 2016 Thomas Glassford: Siphonophora https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/thomas-glassford-siphonophora/

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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.

 

 

April 18, 2016 Lo Real Absoluto: Ishmael Randall-Weeks https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/lo-real-absoluto-ishmael-randall-weeks/

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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

April 15, 2016 Ricardo Rendon: Possible Memory https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ricardo-rendon-possible-memory/

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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.

April 13, 2016 Mauro Giaconi: Impermanence https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/mauro-giaconi-impermanence/

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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.

April 8, 2016 Montez Magno: Poemata (It is all poetry) https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/montez-magno-poemata-poetry/

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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.

April 7, 2016 Richard Garet: Sound vs Sense: Intersections https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/richard-garet-sound-vs-sense-intersections/

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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.

March 30, 2016 Diana de Solares: The Material Space of Radiance https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/diana-de-solares-material-space-radiance/

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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

March 28, 2016 Pia Camil: A Pot for a Latch https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/pia-camil-a-pot-for-a-latch/

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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

March 25, 2016 Emilia Azcarate, Magdalena Fernandez, Ximena Garrido-Lecca: MDE 15 Medellín https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilia-azcarate-magdalena-fernandez-ximena-garrido-lecca-mde-15-medellin/

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Artists: Adrián Balseca, Adrian Paci, Adriana Escobar, Alexandra McCormick, Allan Sekula and Noël Burch, Amar Kanwar, Ana Patricia Palacios, Annaleen Louwes, Anri Sala, Antonio Caro, Antonio Paucar, Arquitectura Expandida and Caldo de Cultivo, Camila Botero, Camilo Cantor, Camilo Restrepo, Carlos Motta, Clara Ianni and Debora da Silva, Claudio Perna, Colectivo Nomanada, Cráter Invertido, Dan Perjovschi, Daniela Ortiz, Elena Vargas Tisnés, Élkin Calderón Guevara, Emilia Azcárate, Fernando Arias, Giuseppe Campuzano, Gülsün Karamustafa, Halil Altindere, Jordi Colomer, Jorge Alonso Zapata, Jorge Andrés Marín, José Alejandro Restrepo, Juan Javier Salazar, Juan Obando, Libia Posada, Liliana Angulo, Magdalena Fernández, Mapa Teatro, María Buenaventura, Michael Soi, Miguel Ángel Rojas, Mónica Mayer, Mujeres Creando, Myriam Lefkowitz, Natalia Giraldo Giraldo, Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, Nathaly Rubio, Núria Güell, Paromita Vohra, Phil Collins, Santiago Vélez, Sislej Xhafa, Tercerunquinto, Todo por la Praxis, Tricilab, William Engelen, Wilson Díaz, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Yoel Díaz Vázquez.

MDE 15 Medellín
Curated by Nydia Gutiérrez, Tony Evanko, Fernando Escobar, Sharon Lerner, Edi Muka.
October 2015 – March 2016
Museo de Antioquia
Medellín, Colombia

The theme of Local Stories/Global Practices has been conceived to create a space of reflection and engagement with the recent transformation of Medellín since the turn of the millennium. Medellín, considered to be a progressive Latin American city that has implemented innovative programs to stimulate social and urban development, is part of a larger picture. While the results of these processes are real and tangible, the dynamics they have generated are particularly complex from an ethical standpoint. In order to understand their implications we propose to focus on these processes of change and explore them through commissioned projects, works of artists and other socially oriented initiatives, sometimes inserted in spaces beyond the artistic field.

MDE15 inserts itself in the social fabric of the city while sharing stories, experiences and practices from elsewhere in the world. Transformative changes can elicit psychological, physical and social responses that range from issues of trust and security to economic well-being. The stories that result from observations and from the direct experiences of people in communities, often address the coping mechanisms that are required to survive and flourish amid those changes, which often occur at a pace that outstrips the citizens and society’s ability to assimilate them. MDE15 aims at focusing on the unsaid and the less visible aspects of the everyday, such as memory, the past, the persistence of structural problems, but also the resilience of life in the city. It also relies on the potential of art to harness the capacity of individual and collective imagination to re-signify complex situations.

It is in this context and in the context of a critical standpoint in which the definition of artistic practice is constantly being challenged, that the MDE15 unfolds.

Topics

  1. Violence, conflict and memory
  2. Local stories in a global context
  3. Exertion of power over the body
  4. The institutional teasing
  5. Resilient city: dreams, desires and possibilities
January 29, 2016 Alexander Apóstol, Clarissa Tossin: Customizing Language https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alexander-apostolclarissa-tossin-customizing-language/

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Artists: Alexander Apóstol, Mely Barragán, Beatriz Cortez, Marcos Ramírez ERRE, Regina José Galindo, Luis G. Hernández, Camilo Ontiveros, Rubén Ortiz-Torres, Gala Porras-Kim, and Clarissa Tossin.

Customizing Language
Curated by Idurre Alonso and Selene Preciado
January 7 – February 14, 2016
LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions)
Los Angeles, CA, USA

Customizing Language critically examines how language reflects geopolitical realities. The project approaches language as a tool to reflect power relations, hierarchies, social differences, and historical problems, as well as a cultural system of belonging that can indicate the loss or reconfiguration of certain kinds of identities. The participating artists engage local and historical issues by using experimental language to create a dialogue with the audience, exploring issues of “custom” as cultural tradition, U.S. Customs as an immigration agency, and lowrider customization in popular culture.

January 29, 2016 Anibal Vallejo: TRANSBORDER https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/anibal-vallejo-transborder/

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Artists: Cyrcle, Jan Kaláb, Ox, Rero, Andrey Zignnatto, and Aníbal Vallejo.

TRANSBORDER
January 30 – February 28, 2016
Fabien Castanier Gallery
Los Angeles, CA, USA

The exhibition centers around artists who challenge the idea of boundaries within art, both physical and ideological borders. Each artist presents new work for TRANSBORDER, examining the transitory elements of shape, color, form, and context within art making. The group exhibition takes a survey of how the language of both abstraction and figurative form can be conveyed throughout vastly different corners of the world.  Across borders of both time and space, these artists have created connectivity and conversation through creation.

From the curator
This exhibition aims to bring together, in a single physical space, artists from five nationalities, while also focusing on the artists’ variations in approaches, practices and techniques. So why did I want to bring these artists together in the same space and time? But also, why Transborder?

Firstly, art is for me a pretext for meetings and travel. Art is above all a human adventure. However art is also a coming together of objects, materials, and works that evoke an “emotional shock” that drives viewers to evolve ideas, perceptions, life trajectories and constructs of reality. I ask you to search your memory for a time that you, as a viewer, experienced a work by an artist you did not know, yet you sensed an inexplicable vibration. That same sensation in that precise moment has driven my desire to curate Transborder, to evoke these emotionally compelled experiences in viewers.

I have the feeling that what unites us all is the fact that we are all in the “fold”, i.e. that we have decided to place ourselves consciously or unconsciously to the limit of inside and outside as Michel Foucault suggested. “We must escape the alternative of outside and inside: we must be the border.”

TOP: Jan Kaláb | Black Planes, acrylic on cut-through canvases, 44 x 48 in. (112x121cm)

 

 

January 11, 2016 Emilia Azcárate, Emilio Chapela, Horacio Zabala: América https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilia-azcarate-emilio-chapela-horacio-zabala-america/

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Artists: Emilia Azcárate, Jacques Bedel, Fernando ‘Coco’ Bedoya, Paulo Bruscky, Jorge Caraballo, Elda Cerrato, Emilio Chapela, Guillermo Deisler, Noemí Escandell, Nicolás García Uriburu, Anna Bella Geiger, Leandro Katz, Leonel Luna, Jonier Marín, Juan José Olavarría, Alejandro Puente, Osvaldo Romberg, Horacio Zabala, Carlos Zerpa.

América
October 21, 2015 – February 10, 2016
Henrique Faria
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Perfiles múltiples para un continente

La historia de América está repleta de gritos: aquellos del conquistador divisando tierra, los de independencia -desde Dolores a Yara- o los del inmigrante que a comienzos del siglo XX intentaba conjurar con su voz el calvario que atravesaba. Sin embargo, hay otras formas de decir América, modos singulares de invocarla, donde se experimenta con su nombre, su cartografía o su pasado. Aquí América se revela como una construcción, una evocación estratégica para desarmar imágenes naturalizadas, desafiar poderes o confrontar mecanismos de opresión.

A través de las obras que participan de esta exposición es posible distinguir no sólo cómo los diversos problemas de las agendas americanas fueron recurrentes en las investigaciones de los artistas contemporáneos sino la manera en que sus estrategias, sus fundamentos políticos y sus objetivos de intervención se modificaron a lo largo del tiempo. Sin embargo, es necesario regresar hacia las obras, establecer nuevos diálogos entre artistas y clarificar sus contextos de circulación para dar lugar a la tarea que parece más urgente: desarmar lecturas naturalizadas que en el estado actual del arte definen los perfiles de lo latinoamericano.

Agustín Díez Fischer

 

December 7, 2015 Omar Barquet, Pablo Rasgado, Ana Tiscornia, Ishmael Randall Weeks: A Sense of Place https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/omar-barquet-pablo-rasgado-ana-tiscornia-ishmael-randall-weeks-sense-place/

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Artists: Omar Barquet, José Bedia, Jorge Méndez Blake, Carlos Cárdenas, Los Carpinteros, Enrique Martínez Celaya, Eugenio Dittborn, Gonzalo Fuenmayor, Carlos Garaicoa, Guillermo Kuitca, Gilda Mantilla, Moris, Vik Muniz, Oscar Muñoz, Damián Ortega, Liliana Porter, Sandra Ramos, Pablo Rasgado, Camilo Restrepo, Graciela Sacco, Ana Tiscornia, José  A. Vincench, Ishmael Randall Weeks, and many others.

A Sense of Place – Selections from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection
Curated by Patricia Hanna and Anelys Alvarez
December 3-6, 2015
Mana Contemporary
Miami, FL, USA

Despite the fact that these artists are working in a globalized society, where technology and communication transcend physical boundaries, many continue to construct personal and cultural identities by exploring ideas that are specific to their own experiences and places of origin. The show will examine the idea of building such an identity; how artists use abstraction, architecture, politics and memory to carve out a sense of place; and how these concerns are reflected in Pérez as a collector and in Miami as a developing city. Artists in the show include a mix of well-known and emerging art stars from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay, including: Omar Barquet, José Bedia, Jorge Méndez Blake, Carlos Cárdenas, Los Carpinteros, Enrique Martínez Celaya, Eugenio Dittborn, Gonzalo Fuenmayor, Carlos Garaicoa, Guillermo Kuitca, Gilda Mantilla, Moris, Vik Muniz, Oscar Muñoz, Damián Ortega, Liliana Porter, Sandra Ramos, Pablo Rasgado, Camilo Restrepo, Graciela Sacco, Ana Tiscornia, José  A. Vincench, Ishmael Randall Weeks, and many others.

Jorge M. Pérez was named one of the most influential Hispanics in the U.S. by TIME magazine, and is considered a visionary for his contributions to South Florida’s cultural and artistic landscape, as well as his integration of world-class art into each of his real estate developments.

A Sense of Place is being held at Mana Wynwood Convention Center, 318 NW 23rd Street, Miami, Florida.

December 3, 2015 Soledad Arias: The Weight of Light https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/soledad-arias-weight-light/

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Artists: Fariba Abedin, Adela Andea, Soledad Arias and Lorraine Tady.

The Weight of Light
December 5, 2015- January 2, 2016
Rudolph Blume Fine Art / ArtScan Gallery
Houston, TX, USA

The visible light spectrum is quite dramatic and holds all the colors that humans can see; a beam of white light is made up of all the colors. Visible light is composed of photons, which are the most abundant particles in the universe. These weight-less particles have the ability to form a stream or wave-like pattern that makes up the wavelengths of the Electromagnetic Spectrum. Contrast of hue, in painting, enables the painter to establish the interplay of luminous forces. Black and white are the artist’s strongest tools to express darkness and light, but with the advancement in harnessing different light particles, neon and LED lights are new and exciting instruments.This exhibition explores and juxtaposes the visual parameters of light as a physical presence and asa symbolic conjecture.

Soledad Arias’ work has been exhibited extensively in museums throughout the US and South America. Her wall based neon sculptures engage the viewer with mostly trivial, yet emotionally charged words like “white lies” or “like you i forgot”. The impact of the brilliant luminescence and the halo effect of the neon writing potentially transforms the immanence and perception of these phrases.

December 3, 2015 Horacio Zabala: Dark Mirror https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/horacio-zabala-dark-mirror-2/

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Artists: Álvaro Barrios, Eduardo Berliner, Luis Camnitzer, Mario Cravo Neto, Antonio Dias, Paz Errázuriz, León Ferrari, Guillermo Kuitca, Liliana Porter, Miguel Ángel Rojas, Melanie Smith and Horacio Zabala.

Dark Mirror, Art from Latinamerica since 1968
September 27, 2015 – January 31, 2016
Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
Wolfsburg, Germany

In its exhibition, Dark Mirror: Art from Latinamerica since 1968, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg provides compelling and multi-faceted look at contemporary art in Central and South America.

Topics such as the literal and metaphorical boundaries of freedom, gender identity, social criticism and political power as well as reflections on nature vs. urban existence will be examined via more than 150 works. These come from all genres of art – including installations, objects, paintings, photographs, videos and works on paper – and will be shown in an exhibition space encompassing 1100 square meters. This extensive selection of works, from the largest and most important institution devoted to contemporary Latin American art in Europe: the Zurich-based Daros Latinamerica Collection, not only sheds light on parallels to the history of European art but also on specific Latin American developments, particularly since the 1960s.

The works by such artists as Álvaro Barrios; Eduardo Berliner; Luis Camnitzer; Mario Cravo Neto; Antonio Dias; Paz Errázuriz; León Ferrari; Guillermo Kuitca; Liliana Porter; Miguel Ángel Rojas; Melanie Smith and Horacio Zabala provide a striking picture of Latin American art’s creative diversity and energy.

With respect to its beginnings in 1967 as well as its focus on groups of works by major artists, there are conceptual parallels between the Daros Latinamerica Collection and the holdings of the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. The examination of the artistic continent of Latin America in the Dark Mirror exhibition also serves, in this context, as a laboratory for a global expansion of the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg’s collection.

The exhibition Dark Mirror Art from Latinamerica since 1968 is supported by the artEDU Foundation.

Image: Marcos López, Criollitas, 1996/2006
December 2, 2015 Alice Quaresma: Coleções 10 https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alice-quaresma-colecoes-10/

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Artists: Matheus Rocha Pitta, Marcos Chaves, Pedro Motta, Marepe, Rosângela Rennó, Rochelle Costi, Alexandre da Cunha, Marcos Vilas Boas, Fernando Lazslo, Alice Quaresma, Laura Belém, Maria Laet, Luiza Baldan, Arnaldo Antunes, Cinthia Marcelle, Vicente de Mello, Maria Nepomuceno, Marcia Xavier, Omar Salomão, Marcius Galan e Douglas Garcia, Jarbas Lopes, Thiago Honório e Cao Guimarães.

Coleções 10
Curated by Nessia Leonzini
November 25, 2015 – January 30, 2016
Galeria Luisa Strina
São Paulo, Brazil

A série Coleções, considerada um projeto pioneiro no universo da fotografia e da arte contemporânea no Brasil, tem como objetivo ampliar o público da fotografia no país e a formação de novos colecionadores. Já participaram de Coleções mais de 100 artistas, consagrados e emergentes, brasileiros e estrangeiros.

Nesta edição fazem parte 23 artistas que trabalham, também, em outros suportes e representam diferentes pontos de vista. Eles utilizam um vocabulário imagético inspirado por objetos e situações do dia a dia ou determinados por uma poética pessoal. O espírito de Coleções é definido pelo envolvimento dos artistas que produzem trabalhos específicos para o projeto e tornam possível a aquisição de obras de arte a um preço acessível.

November 25, 2015 Ricardo Rendón: Equilibrio y concentración https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ricardo-rendon-equilibrio-y-concentracion/

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Artist: Ricardo Rendón

Equilibrio y concentración
November 21 – December 18, 2015
Nueveochenta
Bogotá, Colombia

La obra de Ricardo Rendón se ha mantenido como un comentario constante de las posibilidades espaciales y materiales de la práctica escultórica, en busca de la concepción de atmósferas creadas para la reflexión sensorial de la forma y los materiales que la detonan. Su trabajo discurre en los limites de los formatos industriales y los propios de la práctica artesanal, y propone con su antonimia de producción una plataforma de especulación de lo que podría identificarse como nuestra “actual naturaleza”, cargada de soportes y disciplinas para comprender la materia de manera no científica, sino emocional.

David Miranda

November 25, 2015 Sandra Gamarra: Grafización https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/sandra-gamarra-grafizacion/

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Artists: Rocío Areán, Christian Bagnat, Luis Camnitzer, Jef Chippewa, Sandra Gamarra, Carlos Garaicoa, Carmela García, Jimena Kato, Adriana Lara, Rogelio López Cuenca, Fernando Millán, Levi Orta, Víctor Piverno, Elvira Poxon, José Andrés Prieto, Manuel Rocha Iturbide, Tania Rubio, Sara y André, Lucía Simón, Ignacio Uriarte, Isidoro Valcárcel Medina, Pierre Valls.

Grafización Bocetos, mapas y partituras: representaciones gráficas para la interpretación
Curated by Víctor Aguado Machuca y Antoine Henry Jonquères
November 11-29, 2015
LiMAC Museo de arte contemporáneo de Lima
Lima, Peru

Archivo de documentos preliminares, véase: notas, bocetos, borradores, apuntes, mapas y partituras. Tómese éstos como guiones gráficos para la interpretación. Entiéndase por «nota» cualquier documento digital, mecanografiado o manuscrito de carácter personal. Entiéndase por «boceto» cualquier documento preparatorio que contenga una idea esbozada. Entiéndase por «borrador» cualquier documento provisional que preceda a la obra pero no sea la obra final. Tómese el término «apunte» desligado de su carácter de registro. Tómese el término «mapa» desligado de su condición documental. Tómese el término «partitura» según su etimología: como partición (partition, en francés) y como punto de partida (departure, départ). Nótese que aquí la «partitura» no está limitada por el uso del lenguaje musical, así como el «mapa» tampoco lo está por el uso del lenguaje cartográfico o arquitectónico. Entiéndase por ambos términos cualquier escritura abstracta, emancipada de la realidad sonora y visual, que describa un desarrollo espacial y temporal.

Nótese que el archivo no pretende poner en entredicho las categorías «obra» y «documento». Aquí el documento ocupa eventualmente el lugar de la obra pero no es la obra final. Absténgase de considerar que el documento expuesto insinúa que tal vez no haya lugar para la obra, el archivo no está condicionado por la faceta productiva del arte conceptual; tampoco cuestiona si será necesario ejecutar la obra tal como describe el documento, o si por el contrario deberá bastar con éste. Entiéndase en todo caso que el documento no es autónomo sino declaradamente preliminar, accesorio, funcional, o dicho de otra manera: que precisa forzosamente un estado posterior.

El archivo no está sujeto a la supervivencia material, puesto que los documentos no importan como objetos sino como factores (del latín: facere, «que hacen»). Concíbase indistintamente el documento original y una fotocopia del mismo, ambos formatos se ajustan al propósito del archivo.

November 24, 2015 Sandra Gamarra: Paisaje entre comillas https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/sandra-gamarra-paisaje-entre-comillas/

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Artist: Sandra Gamarra

Paisaje entre comillas
October 17 – November 14, 2015
Galería Lucía de la Puente
Lima, Peru

Como constructora de imágenes en un mundo en el que se multiplican constantemente, Sandra Gamarra las recicla y reincorpora para indagar en sus orígenes y especular sobre su posible destino. En su cuarta exposición en la galería Lucía de la Puente, utiliza el género de paisaje occidental “en el arte” para señalar de dónde procede, que lo caracteriza y cuáles son las repercusiones que ha tenido en nuestra relación con el entorno. Continuando con la apropiación de imágenes y cuestionamiento del arte mediante la pintura, Sandra Gamarra utiliza el medio con el que se creó la idea de paisaje europeo con la intención de desvelar su supuesto realismo y de esta manera confrontarlo con la Naturaleza.

Desde que el paisaje apareció como género propio en el siglo XV en el arte europeo, este concepto ha invadido otras áreas del conocimiento. Se habla de paisaje social, sonoro, visual, económico, psicológico, como si fuese una verdad tangible y olvidando que el paisaje ha sido construido como una ilusión, una aproximación y una fragmentación de la naturaleza, que de por sí no busca abarcarla por completo. Al construir puntos de vista parciales, el paisaje “no traza tanto los contornos o examina la topografía de su entorno como selecciona y reforma naturalmente la naturaleza para representarla de modo ejemplar”. (Sutton, 1994, El siglo de oro del paisaje holandés, p.16)

De este modo “ejemplar”, los paisajes sirvieron también de certificados de autenticidad. El territorio era delimitado y domesticado por la pintura. Al igual que el mapa, el paisaje sirve como una herramienta para relacionarse con el entorno, que la edita y reencuadra, desde una perspectiva única.

Por otro lado, la representación de la naturaleza en las culturas precolombinas fue siempre simbólica y abstracta; no existió, por tanto, la ilusión “realista” del paisaje. En comparación a la lógica cristiana que considera que el mundo fue creado por un dios, las culturas precolombinas ubican a sus propios dioses en la naturaleza. Esta distinción fundamental respecto a la interpretación e interacción con lo natural es producto de una mentalidad que no intenta dominar la naturaleza (a sus dioses), si no que más bien se sabe dominada por ésta.

El Perú actual se exporta como un país de paisajes. Los instrumentaliza para comercializarlos turísticamente o usarlos como símbolos de poder y permanencia en los billetes y monedas, tarjetas de crédito, condecoraciones, etc. Este “paisaje” que sirve de eje unificador de lo peruano ha reducido a la naturaleza, mucho más compleja y sensible a nuestra acción. La incomprensión de las consecuencias ambientales producto de la explotación de los recursos naturales y el uso del territorio es una medida de esta distorsión.

En nuestra sociedad, generadora incansable de imágenes, la pintura de paisaje podría parecer un género obsoleto, relegado a decorar pasillos y salvapantallas. Si bien la fotografía de paisaje ha tomado el relevo a la pintura, popularizándola a través del turismo y la publicidad, ha mantenido la fragmentación y reducción que la pintura, de la que es heredera, ha construido como “realidad”.

Paisaje entre comillas  tiene como punto de partida fotografías de paisajes peruanos provenientes de la prensa y reproducciones de obras de distintas épocas para colocarlas sobre soportes como espejos, cuadros antiguos y falso pan de oro. De esta manera, la carga simbólica y las propiedades de cada material hacen que la pintura pierda la independencia que le confiere la superficie blanca

Sandra Gamarra retoma el paisaje para cuestionar los elementos que lo conforman, señalar las consecuencias que tiene sobre nuestros modos de pensar y devolverle su perdida aura de falsedad. Desde este punto de vista, se pueden observar las deformaciones que infligen las imágenes en nuestro raciocinio cuando no son usadas con los fines para las que fueron creadas.

Antoine Henry Jonquères

November 24, 2015 Adán Vallecillo: Earthworks https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/adan-vallecillo-earthworks/

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Artist: Adán Vallecillo

Earthworks
Curator: Carla Acevedo-Yates
November 13 – December 21, 2015
80M2 Livia Benavides
Lima, Peru

Adán Vallecillo nació en Danlí, El Paraíso, Honduras (1977). Es licenciado en Sociología por la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras (2010). Realizó estudios de arte en Escuela de Artes Plásticas, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2000) y en la Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, Tegucigalpa, Honduras (1995).

Su carrera artística incluye decenas de exhibiciones individuales y colectivas, así como varias conferencias y talleres en América Latina, el Caribe, Europa y  Estados Unidos. Entre algunos de los reconocimientos a su labor artística se pueden citar selecciones para: CIFO, Miami, USA (2015); Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, México D.F. (2015); Trienal Poligráfica de San Juan, Puerto Rico, (2015);  10 Bienal de Mercosur, Porto Alegre, Brasil, (2015); Bienal de Montevideo, Uruguay, (2014); Bienal de Arte Paiz, Ciudad de Guatemala (2014); Bienal de Cartagena, Colombia, (2014); California-Pacific Triennial, Orange County Museum of Art, USA, (2013); Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, Museo del Barrio, New York, USA (2012); 54 edición de la Bienal de Venecia, (2011); XIV Muestra Internacional de Performance, Ex-Teresa, Arte Actual, México D.F. (2010); Bienal del Istmo Centroamericano, Managua Nicaragua, 2010; XXXI Bienal de Pontevedra, España, (2010); 10 Mª Bienal de la Habana (2009),Residencia Artística en la  Escuela de Artes Plásticas, San Juan, Puerto Rico, (2007), entre otros.

Sus obras forman parte de importantes colecciones como Daros Latin-america, Zurich-Río de Janeiro;Fundación Teorética, San José, Costa Rica; Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Nueva York-Caracas; Saxo Bank, Dinamarca; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano MoLaa, California, Estados Unidos;Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo, San José, Costa Rica; entre otras.

November 24, 2015 Sandra Nakamura: Una razón superficial https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/sandra-nakamura-una-razon-superficial/

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Artist: Sandra Nakamura

Una razón superficial
November 11 – December 5, 2015
Wu Galeria
Lima, Peru

Una razón superficial reúne una serie de obras en diversos formatos que abordan la idea de superficie como simulacro, a la vez apariencia, ejercicio e imagen. En ellas, es recurrente la alusión a la línea de horizonte -a la superficie del agua- como un punto de referencia inestable y desde el cual el paradigma de la percepción se hace evidente.

November 24, 2015 Kirin, Macaparana, Sclavo, Stupía: El color de los sueños https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/kirin-macaparana-sclavo-stupia-el-color-de-los-suenos/

Fidel Sclavo- Mixta sobre papel -36 x 36 cm.- año 2012

Artists: Arnaiz, Greco, Grilo, Kemble, Kirin, Lecuona, Lío, F. Muro, Macaparana, Minujín, Pakovskà, Pucciarelli, Sacerdote, Sakai, Sclavo, and Stupía.

El color de los sueños
November 6 – December 30, 2015
Jorge Mara La Ruche
Buenos Aires, Argentina

A blue stain on the white fabric and beside it the words: ceci-est-la-couleur-de-mes- rêves. That is how Joan Miró named his monochrome picture.

Many other artists – before and after- felt attracted by the use of a single color in their works. Klee, Kandinsky, Fontana, Klein and Malevich painted monochrome works. Sometimes the dominance of one color is inextricably associated with the artist: Ives Klein is blue, Beuys and Jasper Johns are identified with gray, Rothko and Tapies with roasted reds. Black is Goya and Ad Reinhardt, Millares and Saura too. Gray evokes Joseph Beuys, Jasper Johns and Robert Morris. Blue is Miró; red belongs to Matisse and Newman. Roasted red belongs to Rothko and Tapies. Black is Goya and Millares, Ad Reinhardt, Saura …

Art history provides examples of various possible meanings for monochrome painting. This is sometimes negation and sometimes affirmation. The monochrome is a vacuum which, by definition, means absence of image. The rectangle of a single color is a tabula rasa on which the unique relationship that it counts is the one between the pictorial surface and the viewer.

The first fully monochrome paintings, three fabrics that Rodchenko painted in 1915, Red, Yellow, Blue, expressed a return to the primary colors, or in other words, the principle ones. For artists of the revolutionary vanguard, the goal was to go “beyond the painting”. The tabula rasa corresponds to the revolutionary impulse of starting over: Russian and Polish constructivists, the School of New York in the post-war, Burri, Fontana and Manzoni in Italy, Yves Klein in Paris and the Zero Group in Germany use monochromes in the immediate post war. During Franco’s dictatorship the Spanish abstraction is characterized by mostly almost black paintings. Blacks are typical Saura pictures, including a series based on the black paintings from Goya. In fact, the first specific identification of single color paintings in art history goes back to the series of frescoes painted by Goya in the Quinta del Sordo, known as “black paintings”. His Perro semi-hundido (1819) is certainly the first monochrome works of art history.
From there onwards, there were and are many artists who aspire- through the use of one color only – an eloquent silence, to an irradiation of light and color, or an unrelenting darkness. In this exhibition we present various works, mostly related to our gallery artists who explore in their works, and in their own way, this singular and complex way of using a dominant color.

November 24, 2015 Cipriano Martínez: Woven Cities https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/cipriano-martinez-woven-cities/

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Artist: Cipriano Martínez and Christine van der Hurd

Woven Cities
November 27 – December 19, 2015
Maddox Arts
London, UK

Christine Van Der Hurd and Cipriano Martínez have a mutual appreciation for traditional artistic techniques and geometric design. When they were first introduced in the Autumn of 2013 their collaborative process was quick to develop. Cipriano Martínez paints with oils on canvas and then screenprints his artwork; while Vanderhurd rugs are woven by highly skilled craftsmen in India using traditional techniques. This process involves a strong mutual belief in the artistic, hand crafted approach to the creation of an original artefact of true lasting value.

In contrast to the ordered geometry found in Vanderhurd designs, Martínez enjoys disruption and dislocation of pattern, creating conflict between order and chaos. The greatest challenge for him during this creative process was adapting to a different format for the execution of these pieces, and that this would create an alternative interpretation of his original paintings. Though he was never expecting the process to be an easy one.

For example, the designs that included very small triangular shapes had to be enlarged to a minimum of 6 centimetres to enable sharp, straight lines to be achieved in the weaving process. The artwork represents aerial views of maps and cities, describing the juxtaposition of order and chaos found within them. Martínez has relished the implications of this new medium, while Vanderhurd’s considerable understanding of colour has been a key component in the development of these dhurries.

A small selection of Cipriano Martínez oil paintings will be accompanying the exhibition.

November 24, 2015 Eduardo Stupia: Cenas de uma Viagem https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/eduardo-stupia-cenas-de-uma-viagem/

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Artist: Eduardo Stupia

Cenas de uma Viagem
November 9, 2015 – January 16, 2016
Baró Galeria
Sao Paulo, Brazil

A mostra conta com obras criadas em São Paulo, inspiradas no bairro da Barra Funda. As telas pintadas por Stupía, reconhecido por seus desenhos de formas arquitetônicas utópicas, revelam uma percepção do artista, mais do que sobre o deslocamento geográfico. Stupía acredita que toda mudança física e territorial implica em mudanças emocionais, é o que transparece nas obras que compõem a exposição.

“O bairro da Barra Funda impõe suas qualidades a um recém-chegado e um forte temperamento cênico. Nesse sentido, entendo a mostra como um verdadeiro diário de viagem, além de aventuras geográficas, mas sim impressões psíquicas, ressonâncias, metáforas e miragens. Às vezes, olhando para cada uma das telas, individualmente parecem representar aspectos mais narrativos”, comenta Stupía.

Segundo o artista, a inspiração aconteceu naturalmente quando esteve em visita ao galpão da Baró Galeria, ao entrar no grande espaço, observou que havia uma ressonância entre o alcance e geometrias, estruturas arquitetônicas e espaços ao ar livre em torno. “Tudo começou a ser processado e traduzido na forma de linguagem gráfica pura, ou seja, minhas impressões sobre a viagem produziram um fenômeno mais análogo do que mimético”, reforça.

As cores são a influência mais visível na estadia de Eduardo Stupía no bairro, na série há presença, vibração, temperamento e importância, segundo o artista, mais fortes do que em suas obras mais recentes. Suas pinturas narram mais uma vez o estado das coisas, antes mesmo das próprias coisas. Sons, percepções sobre o caos, mistura de características suburbanas com a turbulência do centro, estão em cada detalhe em suas obras.

November 20, 2015 Jesús Matheus: Neoglifos https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/jesus-matheus-neoglifos/

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Artist: Jesús Matheus

Neoglifos
November 1, 2015
Beatriz Gil Galería
Las Mercedes, Caracas, Venezuela

Solo show by artist Jesús Matheus

 

November 20, 2015 Ana Tiscornia: Des-habitaciones https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ana-tiscornia-des-habitaciones/

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Artist: Ana Tiscornia

Des-habitaciones
November 5, 2015
Galería del Paseo
Miraflores, Peru

Los trabajos que hacen parte de Des-habitaciones son pinturas, ensamblajes, y objetos, creados a partir de una preocupación recurrente en mi trabajo de los últimos años, la de encontrar un lugar conceptual y poético que albergue aquello que resulta de cualquier desplazamiento ya sea físico o de sentido.

Estas construcciones y re-disposiciones de objetos y materiales, en general surgen de una relación paradojal entre la arquitectura -un lugar por excelencia vinculado al acto constructivo- y la destrucción, o la dislocación. Al reordenar los materiales, creando nuevas situaciones busco un potencial poético -una especie de cartografía del olvido- que al mismo tiempo exponga y recobre fragmentos disperos de un proyecto utópico. Aunque mis trabajos suelen ser disparados por circunstancias políticas y catastróficas sociales, no corresponden a ningún incidente específico, sino que miran a una situación global compartida.

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November 20, 2015 Alexander Apóstol, Carla Arocha & Stephane Schraenen: BIG https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/carla-arocha-stephane-schraenen-big/

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Artists: Carla Arocha & Stephane Schraenen, Alexander Apóstol, Miguel Braceli, Alberto Cavalieri, Arturo Herrera, Suwon Lee, Victor Lucena, Alfredo Ramírez.

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September 27 – December 20, 2015
Espacio Monitor
Caracas, Venezuela

Ocho piezas de gran formato componen la muestra que está tejida por lo efímero y las imposibilidades. Alexander Apóstol, Carla Arocha-Stéphane Schraenen, Miguel Braceli, Alberto Cavalieri, Arturo Herrera, Suwon Lee, Víctor Lucena y Alfredo Ramírez son los nueve creadores –cuatro de ellos no residen en el país– que dan forma a la muestra que cuenta con la curaduría de Miguel Miguel.

La exposición abre con una pieza de Ramírez, quien continúa trabajando sobre el cuerpo humano. Esta vez el artista presenta Tercero excluido, una progresión helicoidal de piezas fabricadas con una aleación de hierro y acero.

“Hacer las obras cuesta 10 veces más que antes, no solo en dinero sino en esfuerzo para conseguir los materiales. Hay que negociar en cada esquina, pero es algo que sigo haciendo con mucho placer”, indica el creador.

Entretanto, del techo de la sala cuelga una inmensa viga, anudada, presentada por Alberto Cavalieri con el título Estructural IPN-200.

“Esta obra resume varios códigos formales de mi propuesta artística, que es darle características que no corresponden a las formas ni a los materiales de los objetos que utilizo”, indicó el artista, quien piensa que en el país el arte continúa vivo a pesar de las dificultades para desarrollar las investigaciones.

Arturo Herrera creó el mural Victoria, que ocupa toda una pared. En magenta y verde establece un diálogo entre el interior de la sala y el jardín del Centro de Arte Los Galpones. En la pintura, las formas confunden su apariencia entre lo orgánico y lo abstracto.

El más joven de la muestra es Miguel Braceli, quien en esta exposición presenta Horizontes, una serie de 28 fotografías realizadas durante un performance de participación colectiva en Catamarca, Argentina, en las que una tela blanca es afectada por el viento del valle y esta, a su vez, modifica el paisaje.

“Algo que descubrí luego son las dos líneas que se van dibujando. Una que hace la tela, donde el tiempo y la velocidad cambian constantemente, y el horizonte que se ha edificado por miles de siglos en el tiempo. Esa lectura, esas dos velocidades, esos cambios y el contraste entre lo efímero y lo estático, y cómo ambas son productos de la naturaleza”, aseguró Braceli.

Para Miguel Miguel, el curador de la muestra, BIG tiene carácter museístico: “Tenemos el deber de contribuir. Nunca una galería sustituirá a un museo, pero tenemos la responsabilidad y el compromiso con el arte venezolano”.

La muestra se completa con Marauder, una pieza elaborada por Carla Arocha y Stéphane Schraenen; What I’m Looking For de Alexander Apóstol; la serie fotográfica Caracas crepuscular de Suwon Lee y Space Shock Dimension TAU (09) de Víctor Lucena.

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November 10, 2015 Carla Guagliardi: Skulptur https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/carla-guagliardi-skulptur/

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Artists: Benjamin Bergmann, Hermann Breucker, Christian Truth Czaplicki, Ingrid Dahn, Bogomir Ecker, Thomas Florschütz, Aslan Gaisumov, Carla Guagliardi, Selma Gültropak, Bernhard Heiliger, Pia Janssen, Martin Kaltwasser, Markus Karstieß, Mischa Kuball, Marlena, Kudlicka, Katharina Monka, Johanna Reich, Thomas Rentmeister, Matthias Schamp, Jan Scharrelmann, Martin Schwenk, Max Schmitz, Kenneth Snelson, Albert Weiss und chinesische Gelehrtensteine aus dem Museum DKM, Duisburg sowie Werke aus der Sammlung des Skulpturenmuseums Glaskasten Marl.

Skulptur
October 25, 2015 – February 7, 2016
Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl
Marl, Germany

Die Ausstellung Skulptur 2015 will die Möglichkeiten von Skulptur heute aufzeigen, ohne eine These zu belegen, sondern indem sie die Marler Situation mit den über 80 Skulpturen im öffentlichen Raum und die spezifische Sammlung des Skulpturenmuseums nutzt. Konkret ist damit eine Verzahnung der hochinteressanten Marler Sammlung mit eigens für die Ausstellung entstandenen neuen Arbeiten im Museum sowie drei neuen Installationen im Skulpturenpark von Bogomir Ecker, Selma Gültropak und Jan Scharrelmann und gezielt ausgewählten Leihgaben gemeint.

November 10, 2015 Alexander Apostol, Elena Damiani, Aníbal López: Project 35: The Last Act https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alexander-apostol-elena-damiani-anibal-lopez-project-35-last-act/

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Artists: Vyacheslav Akhunov, Jonathas de Andrade, Meris Angioletti, Alexander Apóstol, Marwa Arsanios, Vartan Avakian, Azorro Group, Zbyněk Baladrán, Sammy Baloji, Yason Banal, Guy Ben-Ner, Michael Blum and Damir Nikšić, Deanna Bowen, Pavel Braila, Andrea Büttner, Robert Cauble, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Park Chan-Kyong, Chen Chieh-jen, Chto delat/What is to be done?, Josef Dabernig, Elena Damiani, Shezad Dawood, Manon de Boer, Jos de Gruyter &  Harald Thys, Angela Detanico, Annika Eriksson, Kota Ezawa, Antanas Gerlikas, Tamar Guimarães, Dan Halter, Annemarie Jacir, Ranbir Kaleka, Beryl Korot, Nestor Kruger, Rafael Lain, Lars Laumann, Aníbal López, Reynier Leyva Novo, Basim Magdy, Cinthia Marcelle, Bradley McCullum & Jacqueline Tarry, Anja Medved, Tracey Moffatt, Ivana Müller, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Phu Nam Thuc Ha, Ho Tzu Nyen, Ahmet Ögüt, Agnieszka Polska, Jenny Perlin, Daniela Paes Leao, Elodie Pong, The Propeller Group, Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz,  Sara Ramo, Tracey Rose, Sona Safaei, Edwin Sánchez, Heino Schmid, Michael Stevenson, Stephen Sutcliffe, Yukihiro Taguchi, Prilla Tania, Alexander Ugay, Ulla Von Brandenburg, Wok the Rock, Zhou Xiaohu, Sun Xun, Jin-me Yoon, Dale Yudelman, Helen Zeru, Chen Zhou.

Project 35: The Last Act
ICI Independent Curators International, organized by Andrey Misiano
August 8, 2015 – January 31, 2016
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
Moscow, Russia

Project 35: The Last Act is an unprecedented exhibition of single-channel video works that reveal today’s global connectivity through art. It is the result of an extensive five-year project by Independent Curators International (ICI), which exclusively culminates at Garage. Project 35: The Last Act presents 70 video works from artists living and working all over the world—from Zimbabwe and Guatemala to Japan, from the USA and New Zealand to Kyrgyzstan, that have been selected by 70 leading curators who are part of ICI’s extensive network, including, Chus Martinez, Viktor Misiano, Hou Hanru, and Hans Ulrich Obrist. Since 2010, different versions of the exhibition have been presented in over 50 institutions around the world. As the finale, this is the first time they will be screened together, providing a unique, global overview of video art now.

Showcasing many leading artists in Russia for the first time, the exhibition is also unusual for its “cinema” style presentation in Garage’s new auditorium. Each week there is a new, daily program of video works, which are each especially selected for audiences by eleven key creative people in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, such as Olga Chernishova (artist), Anton Belov (Garage Director), and Elena Yushina (independent curator), based on their personal interests and tastes. Visitors can watch for half an hour, an hour, or four hours—to see the “top picks” that each selector has made and why they liked them—and can keep coming back to see more works from more selectors over the winter months, all through January 2016. In this way the exhibition offers a flexible viewing opportunity for visitors to enjoy on their own time.

Project 35 began as the first international survey of what curators thought was the most interesting video art happening around the world since the new millennium, further revealing the ways in which artists are wanting to communicate today. To begin, 35 international curators selected 35 video works that ranged from reinterpretations of traditional philosophical propositions, to uprisings and protests in South Africa and emerging youth culture in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, to environmental exploitation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Then, in 2012, 35 new curators selected 35 new videos works, expanding the reach of the project to reflect the continued rise of video art as an important medium for artists. Together, the works reveal the diversity of approaches practitioners are taking to the medium, using various animation techniques, as well as borrowing from the language of cinema, performance, and even YouTube, to produce work that weaves between documentary and fiction formats.

The weekly screening program that takes place in the Garage Auditorium has been prepared in collaboration with Russian artists (Olga Chernyshova, Evgeny Granilshikov), film critics (Alexey Artamonov, Boris Nelepo), journalists (Maria Kravtsova), art critics (Alexander Evangeli), curators (Elena Yushina, Aperto gallery; Maya Kuzina, Documentary film center; Andrey Misiano, Garage) directors (Anton Belov, Garage) and theatre director who will choose their personal favourites from the wide range of works.

November 5, 2015 Ximena Garrido-Lecca: Solo show https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ximena-garrido-lecca-solo-show/

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Artist: Ximena Garrido-Lecca

Solo show
November 5 – December 26, 2015
Casado Santapau Gallery
Madrid, Spain

Solo show by Ximena Garrido-Lecca.

 

November 5, 2015 Elena Damiani, Ivelisse Jiménez, Lucia Koch, Amalia Pica, and Adán Vallecillo: Displaced Images / Images in Space https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/displaced-images-images-in-space/

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Artists: Rosenda Álvarez Faro and Grabadores por Grabadores, Carlos Amorales, Francisca Aninat, Rodrigo Arteaga, Myrna Báez, David Beltrán, Hernaín Bravo, Fernando Bryce, Waltercio Caldas, Manuel Calderón, Johanna Calle, Luis Camnitzer, Tania Candiani, Claudia Casarino, Albert Chong, Lourdes Correa-Carlo, Elena Damiani, Annalee Davis, Paula Dittborn, Frances Gallardo, Carlos Garaicoa, Félix González Torres, María Elena González, Karlo Andrei Ibarra, José Iraola, Alfredo Jaar, Voluspa Jarpa, Ivelisse Jiménez, Leandro Katz, Lucia Koch, Irene Kopelman, Ricardo Lanzarini, Nicola López, Claudia Martínez Garay, Vik Muniz, Mônica Nador, Jesús Bubu Negrón, Rivane Neuenschwander, José Ortiz-Pagán, Amalia Pica, Isabel Ramírez, Sandra Ramos, Rosângela Rennó, Verónica Rivera, Nicolás Robbio, Mariana Rondón, Graciela Sacco, Rosemberg Sandoval, Oscar Santillán, Giancarlo Scaglia, the SEMEFO Collective, Daniel Senise, Edra Soto, Adán Vallecillo, and Alicia Villarreal.

Displaced Images / Images in Space
The 4th Poly/Graphic San Juan Triennial: Latin America and the Caribbean
Curators: Gerardo Mosquera (Chief Curator), Vanessa Hernández, Alexia Tala
October 24, 2015 – February 28, 2016
Institute of Puerto Rican Culture
San Juan, Puerto Rico

The Poly/Graphic Triennial of San Juan, Latin America, and the Caribbean represents the transformation of what was, for more than 30 years, one of the most important art events in Latin America and the Caribbean: the San Juan Biennial of Latin American Graphics. Created in 2004, the Triennial promotes experimentation in the graphic arts, stimulating the combination of traditional printmaking and contemporary practices within a different curatorial theme each year.

Under the curatorial team of distinguished art critic Gerardo Mosquera (Cuba) as chief curator and co-curators Alexia Tala Barril (Chile) and Vanessa Hernandez Gracia (Puerto Rico), this 4th edition, titled Displaced Images/Images in Space will examine the shift of the graphic image between fields, supports, habits, and techniques, and especially its projection into three-dimensional spaces.

This edition of the Triennial will feature 55 artists from Puerto Rico, Latin America, and the Caribbean, as well as Latino artists residing in the United States.

This ambitious edition will include exhibitions, an educational program, events and publications throughout Puerto Rico, expanding beyond the capital city of San Juan to include spaces on the periphery and in other municipalities. As well, galleries and alternative spaces across the island will organize exhibitions in salute to the Triennial.

As a fundamental part of this 4th Triennial, an educational program has been designed whose aim is to develop and nurture creative thinking through participatory activities aimed at a variety of audiences and focusing on the exploration and collective recognition of the aesthetic experience. The project will feature activities that go beyond looking at art and entering the classroom as passive and hierarchical experiences.

The highlight of the workshops and lectures will be an international symposium, titled “The Contemporary Image: From Symbolic Space as Hegemony to Symbolic Space as Problematization,” to be held on October 25, 2015 in the theater of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Panelists scheduled to take part are Luis Camnitzer, Marta, Gili, Alfredo Jaar, Mari Carmen Ramírez, Cuauhtemoc Medina, and Beatríz Santiago Muñoz. This opening summit will bring together internal and external audiences of the 4th Triennial, and is aimed at promoting a discussion of the contemporary image, and the image in general, as social experience.

Amalia Pica, Venn Diagrams (In the spotlight), 2011, Focos en trípode, sensor de movimiento, gel de iluminación y grafito sobre la pared, Dimensiones variables, Obra: Cortesía de la Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros

 

November 4, 2015 Carla Arocha & Stephane Schraenen: Landscape and Spacing https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/carla-arocha-stephane-schraenen-landscape-spacing/

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Artists: Carla Arocha & Stephane Schraenen, and Piotr Tolmachov.

Landscape and Spacing
Pulsar
November 6 – 22, 2015
Antwerp, Belgium

Pulsar is a new artist run, not-for-profit space located in Antwerp. Each month we feature works by local, international, established or emerging artists. A platform is offered for artist curated installations and exhibitions, encouraging a wide range of disciplines and practices.

 

 

November 4, 2015 Emilio Chapela: Cavalo de Pau https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilio-chapela-cavalo-de-pau/

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Artist: Emilio Chapela

Cavalo de pau
October 9 – November 21, 2015
Galeria Pilar
Sao Paulo, Brazil

Emilio Chapela apresenta uma seleção de obras que refletem sobre temas relacionados com a instabilidade, a fragmentação e a descontinuidade que tem caracterizado os países da América Latina ao longo de sua história. Através de uma investigação escultórica, o artista demonstra uma América acidentada, discorre sobre temas políticos instáveis e sistemas econômicos falidos; um continente complexo em sua geografia, dependente de petróleo e exaurido pela corrupção. O artista utiliza vassouras, cavalos de brinquedo e outros materiais banais para construir mapas que desenham algumas das mais conflituosas e irregulares fronteiras das Américas. Com tambores de petróleo constrói esculturas que se acomodam precariamente de forma orgânica dentro do espaço da galeria. Segundo o artista “O Petróleo tem sido uma fonte de riqueza e desenvolvimento para os países da América Latina, mas as consequências de sua exploração tem sido fonte de desconstrução política e corrupção”. Finalmente o artista incorpora a exposição uma série de objetos e obras que tocam temas relacionados com a geografia do mundo e do Brasil. A obra de Emilio Chapela tem um estreita relação com o político e o econômico, no entanto, no campo escultórico dialoga (por vezes em sentido contrário) com artistas abstratos como Carl Andre, Ellsworth Kelly , Christo e outros.
November 2, 2015 Christian Camacho: Como fantasmas que vienen de las sombras… https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/christian-camacho-como-fantasmas-que-vienen-de-las-sombras/

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Artists: Daniel Aguilar Ruvalcaba, Esteban Aldrete, Maj Britt Jensen, Christian Camacho, Ramiro Chaves, Carolina Esparragoza, Andrés García Riley, Cynthia Gutiérrez, Rodrigo Hernández, Mauricio Marcin, Jonathan Miralda, Jazael Olguín, Rita Ponce de León, Emiliano Rocha, José Luis Sánchez Rull, Daniel Steegmann.

Como fantasmas que vienen de las sombras…
Project: Juan Caloca and Andrés Villalobos
October 30, 2015
ESPAC
Mexico City, Mexico

Contrario a lo evidente esta cueva no es el resultado de una búsqueda primigenia. Esta caverna es un umbral. Un pasaje a otros mundos, una nueva forma de ver y sentir. La cueva en este caso sirve como metáfora de procesos de representación. La cueva es un dibujo expandido, una textura gigante. Esta caverna alude a lo interior, a lo más profundo de los pensamientos escondidos detrás de las pantallas, las imágenes y los seres humanos. Esta cavidad sirve de analogía para hablar de la televisión, el pensamiento y los desdoblamientos del ser. De algún modo esta cueva representa el origen, pero no el de la humanidad, ni mucho menos el de la filosofía como en la de Platón.

La intervención a su vez plantea un esfuerzo para el espectador. Los recorridos probables para transitar la exposición no serán de fácil acceso, requiriendo un esfuerzo extra en los participantes. Exigiéndoles una interacción activa tanto con el espacio como con las piezas contenidas en éste.

Es así que las piezas de la exhibición se afectarán una a otra, formarán parte de un todo conglomerado. No estarán aisladas señalando su aura artística sino que se implantarán en este habitáculo para formar una sola idea antropofágica. Unos comiéndose a los otros. Unos siendo los otros.

November 2, 2015 Marcius Galan: Planta / Corte https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcius-galan-planta-corte/

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Artist: Marcius Galan

Planta / Corte
October 8 – November 14, 2015
Galeria Luisa Strina
Sao Paulo, Brazil

O título da exposição é retirado da denominação das vistas de desenhos de arquitetura, utilizadas para a compreensão geral da área de um projeto.

Em Planta/Corte, Marcius Galan fragmenta elementos como linhas, cantos, e intervalos, em uma escala próxima à escala real, em que a espessura das linhas coincide com a das paredes da galeria.

Exercícios geométricos e de transposição de escalas, além do tráfego entre diferentes disciplinas, são recorrências em seu trabalho. Na Bienal de São Paulo de 2010, o artista apresentou dois trabalhos: Ponto em escala real, apropriando-se de um elemento gráfico do mapa (um ponto) e submetendo-o a uma escala 1:1; eEntre, um conjunto de microscopias que partiam de linhas divisórias em mapas nos quais a noção de precisão se transformava na possibilidade de adentrar em um universo interno às fibras do papel.

O universo da geometria costuma ser encontrado em sua pesquisa. A linha pode ser um simples desenho no papel, assim como também pode se impor como barreira física, impossibilitando a livre movimentação entre territórios, orientando nosso percurso pela cidade, e organizando o espaço doméstico e, diagramando os formulários burocráticos, as filas de banco, etc. Nesse sentido, ao desmembrar essas plantas em pequenos fragmentos, temos uma situação ambígua entre a organização e a desordem.

Translúcido, outra série apresentada na exposição, é formada por sobreposições de retângulos de ferro vazios que estão posicionados contra a parede e projetam um improvável reflexo de vidro e sombra. O trabalho forma um conjunto de janelas, em equilíbrio aparentemente precário, onde a percepção do espaço está outra vez em jogo.

Na última sala será apresentado um conjunto de trabalhos inéditos intitulados A mão suja, em que superfícies impregnadas de grafite são suspensas em uma parede que guarda a marca de sua instalação, formando desenhos que registram os movimentos durante a montagem da sala. Novamente o desenho deixa de lado seu aspecto virtual, de representação, e impregna a sala com os rastros do trabalho ali realizado durante o período de pouco mais de uma semana.

Ao sobrepor sistemas e códigos, apresentando novas formas de leitura e de compreensão do espaço, Marcius Galan explora a funcionalidade dos objetos e dos sistemas de representação, e propõe, consequentemente, um questionamento acerca da ideia de precisão – sobretudo no que se refere à representação de lugar, como a cartografia, a geometria, a arquitetura e o design.

Recentemente, seu trabalho participou de importantes mostras coletivas como Site, Specific, Objects, Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlim, Alemanha (2015); Now? Now!, Biennial of the Americas, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, EUA (2015); Empty House/Casa vazia, Luhring Augustine, Nova York, EUA (2015); Spatial Acts: Americas Society Commissions Art, Americas Society, Nova York, EUA (2014);  Cruzamentos: Contemporary Art in Brazil, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, EUA (2014); My Third Country, Frankdael, Amsterdã, Holanda (2013); Blind Field, Krannert Art Museum e Kinkead Pavilion, EUA (2013); Planos de fuga: uma exposição em obras, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, Brasil (2012); Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation 2011 Grants Program, Miami, EUA (2011); 8a Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brasil (2011); 29aBienal de São Paulo, Brasil (2010); Para ser construidos, MUSAC Castilla y León, Espanha (2010); Color into light: Selections from the MFAH Permanent Collection, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, EUA (2008).

Exposições individuais incluem: Diagrama, NC – Arte, Bogotá, Colômbia (2013); Geometric Progression – Marcius Galan Inside the White Cube, White Cube Bermondsey, Londres, Inglaterra (2013).

Seu trabalho é parte das seguintes coleções privadas e institucionais: Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (Brasil), Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (Brasil), Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (Brasil), Fundação Serralves (Portugal), Zabludowicz Collection (Inglaterra), Museum of Fine Arts Houston (EUA), Cisneros Fontanals Foundation (EUA), MALBA – Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (Argentina), Nicolas Cattelain Collection (Inglaterra), CACI – Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim (Brasil), Coleção Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz (Brasil).

Entre os prêmios e residências, destacam-se: residência na Gasworks, Londres (2013); Prêmio PIPA (2012); residência na School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2005); prêmio residência do Instituto Iberê Camargo (2005); residência na Cité des Arts, Paris (2003). hosting information lookup

October 28, 2015 Arocha + Schraenen, Elena Damiani, Jorge Pedro Núñez & Sergio Vega: The Devil is in the details https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/arocha-schraenen-elena-damiani-jorge-pedro-nunez-sergio-vega-devil-details/

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Artists: Iván Argote, Arocha + Schraenen, Lothar Baumgarten, Matthew Buckingham, Elena Damiani, Adler Guerrier, Jorge Pedro Núñez, Edgar Orlaineta, Laercio Redondo, Matheus Rocha Pitta, Sergio Vega.

The Devil is in the details
Curated by Jesus Fuenmayor
September 17 – November 20, 2015
KaBe Contemporary
Miami, FL, USA

The title of the exhibition “The Devil is in the details” pretends to point towards the details’ appearances in a work of art that unexpectedly allow viewers to comprehend the work (and even history) in a different way, even when this reading betrays our expectations or completely twists a work’s initial intention. Instead of just speaking about how important the use of historiography is for this group of artists, the show draws attention to what Roland Barthes used to call the “Punctum.” That is, that detail in an image (or work) that escapes its own structure, shooting out like an “arrow” towards the viewer. The artists selected for this exhibition have turned to the representation of history not just as material itself but also as means by which to criticize how history is constructed. They are not just interested in the past tense or simply reviving archival strategies, but in putting the past in relation to the present and the future, creating overlapping temporalities that bring disparate moments together. scottrade site down

October 28, 2015 Darío Escobar, Patrick Hamilton: Pero no soy fotógrafo https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/dario-escobar-patrick-hamilton-pero-soy-fotografo/

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Artists: Alejandro Almanza Pereda, Darío Escobar, Alexandra Grant, Patrick Hamilton, Sandra Monterroso, Gabriel Orozco, Sebastián Preece, Richard Prince, Isabel Ruíz, Inés Verdugo.

Pero no soy fotógrafo / But I am not a photographer
November 5, 2015
The 9.99 Gallery
Guatemala City, Guatemala

In Roland Barthes’s book La Chambre Claire (1980), he explains that the critical part of photography focuses on the mechanical moment. The moment in which the brain decides and the finger clicks is the moment in which the “[t]he obstinacy of the referent in being there, always there” is present. Currently, that moment continues to be the most important; it is the one that makes the difference between points of view. Photography as a technique has rapidly shifted from the dark room into digitalization. When it started in the nineteenth  century, it was a contraption. The expertise one needed to have in physics for the light aperture, along with the chemistry knowledge required to reveal the images have all but faded away. Technological advances allow many of us to carry a camera in our pocket.

Photography’s goal is to capture a moment that takes place only once, whether it is in the various classifications borrowed from academic painting: still-life, landscapes, people and historical moments. The way in which we approach them, and the stories that these images tell us, are not from a specific moment; but rather from the combination of several moments: to click, to develop, to manipulate, and finally, to single that moment and to make its invisibility present.

The exhibition consists of 27 pieces, which presentation starts from a photographic aspect challenging its more orthodox definition as it returns to an academic classification. Installed in a “cabinet of curiosities” style, we see a small compilation of works that goes from landscape to photographs of historical moments, in different formats and presentations, highlighting its rareness or its single imperfection as “impure” photography.

The exhibit starts with the hesitation and manipulation of the countryside landscapes Paisajes Perforados I y II  (Perforated Landscapes I and II, 2009) by Patrick Hamilton (Chile, 1974), whose dalliances venture into his well-known photographic shots and manipulations of building materials in the series Proyectos de arquitecturas revestidas para la Ciudad de Santiago (Architectural projects re-covered for the City of Santiago, 2008) or Posters (2008), and returns to the landscapes, not only to manipulate them but to turn them into three-dimensional objects, based on repetition and reflection, as in the case of his most recent piece Escape al Paraíso (Escape to Paradise, 2014) and Spatula #1 (2015).

Playing with repetition, The less things change, the less stay the same (2013) by Alejandro Almanza Pereda (Mexico, 1977), a work that obtained an honorific mention at the XVI Bienal de Fotografía in 2014 at the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City, here we see a series of moments in an exercise of constructive transformation of materials, tinged with nostalgia, which will be reactivated in Geometría Imperfecta(Imperfect Geometry, 2012) of Darío Escobar (Guatemala, 1971), but where instants are even more ephemeral as light is the main composition and appeal, or in the case of Untitled (2002) where memory is contained in the  oil stains.

At first sight, the photography Dot Ball (1992/1996) of Gabriel Orozco (Mexico, 1962) could be a ready-made of a balloon in the middle of nature. In reality the manipulation of an object within its context gives it a particular placement, which is one of the more evident features of portraiture. Although we usually refer to a portrait as the likeness of a person, the truth is that a person’s own objects also speak about their specific characteristics; they show us the “observing subject,” as is the case of the series Equilibrio (Equilibrium) by Patrick Hamilton and Volume XIV (2008) of Sebastián Preece (Chile, 1972).

The human figure is revisited in the gestures of Alexandra Grant (United States, 1973). In her series Shadows, a collaboration with the actor and writer Keanu Reeves, the technical manipulation creates a game of colors, shadows, and movement. This, on the other hand, is hidden in the work by Richard Prince (United States, 1949) where the manipulation is referred to as a physical object—Bill Powers’s novel What we lose in flowers (2012). The pin-up style female nude, behind a strip that reminds us of DVD titles, gives a new meaning to the idea of mixed media. compare hotel prices The human figure is also the protagonist in Sandra Monterroso’s performance documentation (Guatemala, 1974), Tu Ashé Yemaya(2015), presented in the 12 Bienal de La Habana, and in the light boxes of Isabel Ruiz (Guatemala, 1945) in the series Río Negro (1988), where photography is on the verge of gesture. Finally, the exhibition closes with a gaze looking at another gaze, that of Inés Verdugo (Guatemala, 1983) in her work Continuidad (Continuity, 2015).

 While at the beginning of photography the end of painting was predicted, today the photographic image has become such a generalized practice that “we are all photographers.” However, photography is still a specialized field where questions of light, focus, and perspective are endless challenges to overcome.

October 27, 2015 Eduardo Costa: Acciones en la calle https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/eduardo-costa-acciones-en-la-calle/

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Artists: Vito Acconci, Artur Barrio, Rosemarie Castoro, Eduardo Costa, Cris Gianakos, Victor Grippo, Stephen Kaltenbach, Leandro Katz, Rosemary Mayer, Ana Mendieta, Marta Minujín, Hélio Oiticia, John Perreault, Regina Vater.

Acciones en la calle: Street Works in New York and Latin America circa 1970
Curator: Gillian Sneed
October 26 – December 4, 2015
Amelie A. Wallace Gallery
SUNY College
New York, NUY, USA

“Acciones en la Calle” considers the conceptual and performative strategies employed by artists in the 1960s and ’70s that rejected institutional spaces in favor of the street as the context and subject of their work. The exhibition’s point of departure is the six-part Street Works (1969-1970), a series of events during which numerous artists utilized urban public spaces in New York City’s streets as their performance and exhibition venues.

While New York is often considered the birthplace of this genre, street actions had also taken hold in Latin America, and relationships between Latin American and U.S. artists, critics, and curators developed. Latin American artists who sought exile from dictatorships or had been awarded grants came to New York, while many U.S. artists traveled to Latin America.

“Acciones en la Calle” demonstrates resonances and disjunctions between the works and their political, practical, and theoretical concerns. While the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War protests provided the backdrop against which street works emerged in the U.S., in Latin America limited art markets and repressive regimes left only the streets as venues for artistic intervention. These artists investigated the complex intersections of political repression, violence, and social marginalization in ways that challenged the traditional “center/periphery” model so often employed in canonical accounts of Latin American and U.S. conceptual art. Curator Sneed explains: “The relevance of these works could not be more urgent today, as activists across the Americas have returned to the streets to take action.”

The works in this exhibition revolve around three themes related to the urban setting: SiteDrift, and DebrisSite considers street works that mark or highlight the location where they unfolded; Drift engages works that wander through urban networks to produce dérives, or flows; and Debris explores what is revealed about a city’s inhabitants by the refuse that accumulates on their streets.

October 27, 2015 Erica Muralles Hazbun: Cualquier otra realidad https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/erica-muralles-hazbun-cualquier-otra-realidad/

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Artist: Erica Muralles Hazbun

Cualquier otra realidad / Any other reality
October 15 – November 5, 2015
Sol del Rio Gallery
Guatemala City, Guatemala

Solo show by Erica Muralles Hazbun.

October 26, 2015 Andrea Canepa: El público https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/andrea-canepa-el-publico/

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Artists: Belén, Andrea Canepa, Mauro Cerqueira, Miki Leal, Juan López, Maider López, Carlos Maciá, Tobias Rehberger, Fernando Renes y Miguel Ángel Tornero.

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Curator: Virginia Torrente
September 18 – October 18, 2015
Centro Federico García Lorca
Granada, Spain

Group show.

October 26, 2015 Horacio Zabala: Dark Mirror https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/horacio-zabala-dark-mirror/

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Artists: Álvaro Barrios, Eduardo Berliner, Luis Camnitzer, Mario Cravo Neto, Antonio Dias, Paz Errázuriz, León Ferrari, Guillermo Kuitca, Marta María Pérez Bravo, Liliana Porter, Miguel Ángel Rojas, Melanie Smith and Horacio Zabala.

Dark Mirror: Art from Latin America since 1968
September 7, 2015 – January 31, 2016
Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
Germany

Topics such as the literal and metaphorical boundaries of freedom, gender identity, social criticism and political power as well as reflections on nature vs. urban existence will be examined via more than 150 works. These come from all genres of art – including installations, objects, paintings, photographs, videos and works on paper – and will be shown in an exhibition space encompassing 1100 square meters. This extensive selection of works, from the largest and most important institution devoted to contemporary Latin American art in Europe: the Zurich-based Daros Latinamerica Collection, not only sheds light on parallels to the history of European art but also on specific Latin American developments, particularly since the 1960s.

The works by such artists as Álvaro Barrios; Eduardo Berliner; Luis Camnitzer; Mario Cravo Neto; Antonio Dias; Paz Errázuriz; León Ferrari; Guillermo Kuitca; Marta María Pérez Bravo; Liliana Porter; Miguel Ángel Rojas; Melanie Smith and Horacio Zabala provide a striking picture of Latin American art’s creative diversity and energy.

With respect to its beginnings in 1967 as well as its focus on groups of works by major artists, there are conceptual parallels between the Daros Latinamerica Collection and the holdings of the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. The examination of the artistic continent of Latin America in the Dark Mirror exhibition also serves, in this context, as a laboratory for a global expansion of the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg’s collection.

October 14, 2015 Gabriel Sierra: Numbers in a Room https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/gabriel-sierra-numbers-room/

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Artist: Gabriel Sierra

Numbers in a Room
September 20, 2015 – January 4, 2015
Sculpture Center
New York, USA

By modifying and extending the guiding information of the exhibition space, Sierra will restructure the lower level galleries, effacing and confusing distinctions between the architecture, the institution, and the works that comprise the exhibition. The combination of alternative and existing floor plans, signage, and objects in the space all refer to the codes for viewing and maneuvering through the context of an exhibition.

Increasingly layered in Sierra’s presentation, the various structures comprising an exhibition in an institution create a mirroring effect, where each thing recalls another thing. This indexical accumulation makes it unclear exactly where the exhibition begins and ends, bringing into question the semantics of the various navigational prompts within art institutions. The exhibition structure asks that the visitor adjust to its new form.

Sierra (born 1975, San Juan Nepomuceno, Colombia) is based in Bogotá, Colombia and has had solo exhibitions at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (2015) and Peep-Hole in Milan (2013). Recent group exhibitions include the 56th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2013); The Ungovernables, New Museum Triennial, New Museum, New York (2012); and the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011).

October 14, 2015 Elena Damiani: Testigos: un catálogo de fragmentos https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/elena-damiani-testigos-un-catalogo-de-fragmentos/

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Artist: Elena Damiani.

Testigos: un catálogo de fragmentos / Sediments: an assemblage of remains
Curated by Cecilia Delgado and Amanda de la Garza
September 5, 2015 – February 7, 2016
MUAC Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo
Mexico City, Mexico

La propuesta de Elena Damiani forma parte del programa curatorial Intemperie Sur, que parte de la idea del intersticio como hendidura que media entre dos partes de un mismo cuerpo. Opera desde la posibilidad de vincular el adentro y el afuera del museo, por ello propone que las intervenciones artísticas sucedan en terrazas y patios.

La instalación Testigos: un catálogo de fragmentos se presenta como un interludio espacio-temporal. Conformada por dos esculturas en travertino que aluden a la naturaleza discontinua del tiempo y a la aparición de espacios liminales dentro de éste, Damiani revela los intersticios que el propio material contiene. Estas fisuras -hiatos o lagunas en el tiempo geológico- son los puntos de interés crítico, ya que representan la evidencia de ciertos quiebres, filtraciones y discordancias, factores que señalan sutilmente la existencia de un ‘tiempo perdido’.

En los vacíos es donde se formula un espacio para el cuestionamiento de la continuidad y la estabilidad de lo que entendemos como espacio-tiempo. Si bien, se considera que el tiempo ayuda a revelar la esencia de las cosas: la apariencia de una ilustración cuyos bordes han sido manoseados por un número de personas, el tono oscurecido de un árbol o la rugosidad de una piedra son testigos silenciosos que en su composición material contienen una serie de capas de información que representan un transitar del tiempo.

La primera escultura es una serie de 34 piezas talladas en travertino, son prismas cortados a la vena provenientes de la misma piedra; este corte permite ver las diferentes capas de sedimentación características de la composición de este material. Cada uno se encuentra dispuesto uno junto al otro de manera secuencial sobre el muro, recomponiendo el patrón de estratificación original de la piedra, el cual se ve interrumpido por una incrustación de resina translucida en cada una. La segunda, son dos losas de travertino cortadas a la vena que rotan en uno de sus vértices para incorporarse la una con la otra ubicadas sobre el piso. El área donde se superponen es remplazada por un vidrio del mismo espesor de manera que las capas estratigráficas queden a modo de espejo.

En su conjunto, la instalación hace referencia a dialécticas de linealidad, ruptura y yuxtaposición, de superficie plana y volumen, de adentro y afuera; señalando la potencialidad de los materiales para retener y desplegar información o dejar que ésta se filtre a través de los huecos en las superficies segmentadas. Damiani integra a la instalación resina y vidrio en las fracturas del travertino, destacando la notoria intrusión de elementos ajenos entre los sedimentos naturales, generando así pequeños vanos o paréntesis que exponen una serie de quiebres en la continuidad de la composición morfológica de la piedra. La artista expande las posibilidades del collage como un medio para la escultura y la instalación, presentando una tensión dialéctica entre el todo y sus partes, donde la composición de las obras dispuestas en el espacio señalan la naturaleza fragmentaria, propia del collage, a través de los segmentos y las capas que se acoplan presentándose como un nuevo todo.

October 9, 2015 Paula de Solminihac: Los nombres Secretos https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/paula-de-solminihac-los-nombres-secretos/

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Artist: Paula de Solminihac.

Ceramix, Art and ceramics from Rodin to Schütte
Curated by Camille Morineau and Lucia Pesapane
October 16, 2015 – January 31, 2016
Bonnefantenmuseum
Masstricht, The Netherlands

Officielle
October 21-25, 2015
Paris, France

Les Noms Secrets (Hidden Names)
October 10 – November 7, 2015
Galerie DIX9
Paris, France

El reciente proyecto de Paula de Solminihac, Los Nombres Secretos, recupera residuos de materiales del trabajo de taller y recortes de sus cuadernos de trabajo, para producir obras que evocan vestigios arqueológicos y transforman los detritus de la experiencia artística en obras sometidas a la lógica de las operaciones alquímicas.

Restos de arcilla seca y hojas de los cuadernos que la artista usa a diario como laboratorio creativo, fueron combinados utilizando un método que intenta restituir los materiales a su condición inicial, la humedad de la arcilla y el vacío de la página en blanco. En concreto, mientras las arcillas fueron envueltas en trapos viejos y enterradas en arena y agua para devolverles la humedad, en las hojas de los cuadernos se orillaron a lápiz los espacios libres de anotaciones y dibujos, a fin de perfilar los vacíos y así poner de manifiesto las formas residuales del trabajo de exploración visual consignado en los cuadernos.

Su trabajo de investigación en torno a la cerámica lo realiza poniendo atención a los procesos y al trabajo sobre la materia, haciéndose parte del análisis de las dinámicas tecnológicas de la arqueología contemporánea, que en lugar de clasificar los objetos por sus rasgos formales, prefiere analizar los procesos a partir de los cuales los objetos han llegado a ser lo que son. A diferencia de las obras anteriores de Paula de Solminihac, donde la atención estaba puesta en el paso de lo crudo a lo cocido para producir mapas mentales o constelaciones de letras modeladas, actualmente centra su atención en el estado crudo-seco de la arcilla, y en su tránsito a lo crudo-húmedo y a lo calcinado como antesala de la descomposición de la materia.

El resultado es un conjunto de obras a base de capas o cortezas superpuestas, ya sea de materiales concretos como la tierra, ya sea de elementos simbólicos como las ideas que retornan una y otra vez en los cuadernos, todo esto hasta conformar un todo sin costuras entre la vida y el trabajo. Durante octubre del 2015, Los Nombres Secretos, tres cuerpos de obras relacionados entre sí, se presentará simultáneamente en el Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, Holanda, en una gran muestra colectiva sobre cerámica contemporánea curada por Camille Morineau y Lucia Pesapane; en una muestra individual en galería Dix9, de París, y en un solo Project en la feria de arte contemporáneo Officielle, también en Paris.

Los Nombres Secretos / Ceramix

Organizada por tres instituciones europeas se presentará en el Bonnefantenmuseum en Maastricht, Holanda (16 de octubre 2015 al 5 de febrero, 2016), Maison Rouge, Fundación Antoine de Galbert, Paris y la Cité de la Céramique de Sèvres (2016).

Se mostrarán 13 bultos de arcilla negra que se hicieron amortajando papeles de arcilla sometidos simultáneamente a procesos de secado y humectación durante varios meses, haciendo reaccionar la materia de distintas formas. Junto con las piezas de cerámica se muestran dos fotos, una de un trozo de tela que se usó de envoltura en el proceso y otra de una ceniza de diario minúscula que sobrevivió al fuego de cocción.

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Los Nombres Secretos / diarios de una transformación

Para su primera exhibición en Francia en la galería Dix9, Paula de Solminihac presenta una serie de objetos de cerámica y papel dispuestos taxonómicamente como evidencias de un proceso. Lo que se mostrará es un encadenamiento de piezas disímiles; en concreto: Soft Shells, una cuelga de trapos de algodón y lino usados como envoltorios; Archeological matter, serie de 24 clasificaciones de piedras de arcilla de colores modeladas espontáneamente en arena y agua; Diary pages, una serie de trabajos en papel con formas circulares que aluden a organismos vivos de estructuras complejas como la Victoria Amazónica, un loto gigante, y la Armillarea, un hongo que es el organismo mós grande del mundo y que vive oculto bajo tierra; Fungi print, 4 impresiones serigráficas de patrones de hongos que se estamparon en las telas usadas. Las reproducciones, hechas con tinta fluorecente, solo pueden ser vistas en la oscuridad y por un tiempo limitado hasta que se apaga la tinta; y, finalmente, Hard Shells, un collar de papel y lino que simboliza los procesos de rescate alquímico de lo desechable mediante su transmutación material y figurativa.

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Los Nombres Secretos / Officielle

Para Officielleartfair, feria de arte contemporáneo que se realiza en París entre los días 21 y 25 de octubre, la artista ha diseñado un Solo Project en donde mostrará libros de arcilla y composiciones a partir de las hojas de sus cuadernos, una suerte de bitácora de papeles de distintas composiciones que ha ido acumulando en el tiempo.

En los tres paneles que conforman el espacio habrá un librero con 10 libros de arcillas de distintos colores y una columna hecha por el despliegue de uno de ellos, un segundo panel con 10 trabajos en papel y el tercer panel con tres fotografías.

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October 9, 2015 Pia Camil, Nicolás Consuegra, Elena Damiani, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Amalia Pica, Pablo Rasgado, Gabriel Sierra and Clarissa Tossin: United States of Latin America https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/united-states-latin-america/

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Artists: Pablo Accinelli, Edgardo Aragón, Juan Araujo, Felipe Arturo, Nicolás Bacal, Milena Bonilla, Paloma Bosquê, Pia Camil, Bevenuto Chavajay, Marcelo Cidade, Donna Conlon & Jonathan Harker, Nicolás Consuegra, Minerva Cuevas, Elena Damiani, Mariana Castillo Deball, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Federico Herrero, Voluspa Jarpa, Runo Lagomarsino, Adriana Lara, Engel Leonardo, Valentina Liernur, Mateo López, Renata Lucas, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Nicolás Paris, Amalia Pica, Pablo Rasgado, Pedro Reyes, Adrián Villar Rojas, Gabriel Sierra, Clarissa Tossin, Carla Zaccagnini.

United States of Latin America
Curated by Jens Hoffmann and Pablo León de la Barra
September 18, 2015 – January 3, 2016
Museum of Contemporary Art
Detroit, MI, USA

The exhibition United States of Latin America brings together more than thirty emerging artists from Latin America, many of whom will be exhibiting in the United States for the first time.

The show is based on an ongoing conversation between two curators, Jens Hoffmann and Pablo León de la Barra, who for a number of years have exchanged research and information about artists, artworks, and the overall development of the art world from Mexico to Argentina and the many countries in between. The exhibition is an extension of this dialogue into the galleries of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit via artworks suggested in dialogue format.

United States of Latin America features a wide range of works in a variety of mediums, for instance a series of photographs about housing in Havana, a film about the effects of gang violence in Mexico, sculptures reflecting on the involvement of the CIA in Latin American dictatorships, drawings of historical monuments from the future, a floor map about the selling of Brazilian rubber to the United States, boulders from a Colombian river that have been turned into flip-flops, and paintings about the interplay of modernist houses, tropical vegetation, and utopian architecture. The individual artworks touch upon themes such as geography, history, urbanism, memory, colonialism, architecture, war, modernism, social inequality, regionalism, and power. Given how Latin America’s realities oscillate between the colonial and the contemporary, between severe economic hardships and enormous financial expansions, between flourishing democracies and suppressive dictatorships, and between great progress and immense regression, the exhibition presents an intentionally fragmented survey, a deliberately disjointed overview, of the region and the art being made there. It allows the viewer a glimpse into a reality that may seem geographically near, but is in many ways far away and unfamiliar.

The curators invited a number of writers and curators from throughout Latin America to contribute to a glossary of terms that articulate the region’s historical landscape and conceptual syntax. This glossary will be published in the exhibition catalogue along with a conversation between the curators, texts on all of the artists, images of the exhibited artworks, and a roundtable discussion featuring a number of curators based in Latin America.

Developed in collaboration with Kadist Art Foundation, United States of Latin America is curated by Jens Hoffmann, MOCAD senior curator at large, and Pablo León de la Barra, guest curator. A range of public programs and educational activities will run concurrently with the exhibition, including a public conversation with the curators, lectures by some of the participating artists, film screenings, and performances.

October 6, 2015 Marco Maggi: Unfolding https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marco-maggi-unfolding/

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Artist: Marco Maggi

Unfolding
September 10 – October 24, 2015
Josée Bienvenu Gallery
New York, NY, USA

Like in the Venice pavilion, Maggi separates the two basic elements of drawing. He draws with paper on the walls in the main space, and presents an installation of pencils in a separate area. “Drawing is a dialogue with a superficy and a certain superficiality. It is a superficial discipline that allows oneself to take distance from the depths of thinking in order to de-multiply an empathy for the insignificant. Drawing for me is like writing in a language that I don’t understand. I don’t believe in messages or ideas. Ideas have the tendency to become fixed and aspire ultimately to the status of ideology.” (Marco Maggi, 2015)

A portable kit composed of thousands of elements cut-out from self-adhesive paper becomes an insignificant alphabet folded and pasted onto the walls during the months preceding the exhibition. The diminutive papers are disseminated or connected following the traffic rules and syntax dictated by any accumulation of sediments. Some areas throughout the gallery are infected with color, the edge of the wall in red, blue or yellow, like the margins of a misprinted sheet of paper. The colonies of stickers on the walls enter in dialogue with the light upon them. Myriads of shadows and infinitesimal incandescent projections aim to slow down the viewer. The main ambition of the project is to promote pauses and make time visible.

In Putin’s Pencils, ten pencils are pointed against the wall, held by the tensions of bowstrings, ten arrows ready to be projected. The trajectory of these Soviet era color pencils is frozen, almost going backward in time. Leading to the project room, a ladder made of Fanfold, the already obsolete perforated computer paper, grows upward and downward from two dimensions to three-dimensional space in a symbiosis of hardware and software. Inside the room, two individual panels of cutout stickers face each other. Another wall installation, Stacking Quotes (Black Cachet), suspends bound sketchbooks with fragments of colored stickers pressed within their pages. These small referential stickers act as words cut out from a larger message, recoding the original context.

Born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1957, Marco Maggi lives and works in New Paltz, NY and Montevideo, Uruguay. His work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America in galleries, museums, and biennials. This year, he represents Uruguay at the 56th Venice Biennale, on view through November 22. His first monograph was published on this occasion. Maggi’s work is also on view at the concurrent exhibition Déplier Marco Maggi at Galerie Xippas, Paris. In 2013, he received the Premio Figari (Career Award). Selected exhibitions include Drawing Attention, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO (2015); Embracing Modernism: Ten Years of Drawings Acquisitions, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York (2015); Functional Desinformation, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2012); Optimismo Radical, NC-arte, Bogota, Colombia (2011); New Perspectives in Latin American Art, 1930–2006, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008); Poetics of the Handmade, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2007); Fifth Gwangju Biennial, Korea (2004); VIII Havana Biennial, Cuba (2003); 25th Sao Paulo Biennial, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2002); and Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2001). Public collections include The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; The Drawing Center, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach; El Museo del Barrio, New York; Cisneros Collection, New York; and Daros Foundation, Zurich.

October 6, 2015 Martin Pelenur: Primordial Meditations https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/martin-pelenur-primordial-meditations/

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Artists: Claudio Vera and Martin Pelenur.

Primordial Meditations
September 17th – October 24th, 2015
Artemisa Gallery
New York, NY, USA

It is embedded in human nature to be thoughtful and innovative for survival. Collectively, a dialogue surrounding this concept is excavated from Vera’s and Pelenur’s parallel bodies of work, to raise thought provoking questions that are inherent to humanity’s progression on earth, as well as, within society. How can humanity move forward in connection with the land, and how does one’s consciousness allow this process to unfold? Such primordial concerns with existence have continued through ancient times into contemporary civilization. To investigate Vera and Pelenur in this vein brings to light the association of physical and cerebral conditions, which are key to the balancing act that humanity must perform throughout time.

Claudio Vera’s newest body of work is intensely contemporary and sensual, evolving seamlessly from his most recent series of wooden sculptures. Vera’s works on paper are created through a similar, physically intensive process of carving blocks of wood; however, instead of sculpting the artist deconstructs flat wooden surfaces and turns them into topographies, territories, physical maps, where we can wander endlessly. Vera has consciously altered his medium of choice – a conceptual reflection on deliberate transformation that exists in the structures of nature, the cosmos, and the ideas of contemporary science explored by humankind. Vera’s roots are linked to the Latin American tradition of the “School of the South,” as the artist studied for many years under one of Joaquín Torres García’s most famous pupils, Julio Alpuy. Like his teacher, Vera’s work embraces and dissolves boundaries, revealing an intimate relation between mankind and the natural world, derived from a deep understanding of organic structures and systems.Martin Pelenur’s newest body of work manifests itself through his use of paint and other synthetic mediums on paper: some forms are painted dense and heavy on the surface, thick with pigment, yet others take on fragile and crystalline structures that seem to emulate the delicate nature of inner thought. Still more, a final group of works are made with commercial packaging tape arranged in lattice form on paper. Each variation of Pelenur’s work shows a progressive creation of simple forms via the human mind. In 2006, the artist started his own self-promoted “Pelenur Scholarship,” based out of his studio Ciudad Vieja – translated as “Old City.” Pelenur’s approach to scholarship is untraditional, and his actions in doing so become an extension of his ongoing practice as an artist who explicitly devotes himself to the research of painterly materials and their collaboration with the “mental drift” that is an integral part of the evolution of society. For Pelenur, the act of painting is an experiment in thought and the inner human discourse that is methodic and repetitive when studied in depth. Even more so, perhaps his superficially manufactured scholarship is reflected in his preferred use of synthetic materials, as opposed to organic, when exploring the progressive nature of human thought.
October 2, 2015 Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen: The Gap https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/carla-arocha-stephane-schraenen-gap/

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Artists: Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen, Francis Alÿs, Gaston Bertrand, Amédée Cortier, Raoul de Keyser, Walter Leblanc, Bernd Lohaus, Luy Mees, Gert Robijns, Timothy Segers, Boy and Erik Stappaerts, Philippe Van Snick, Jef Verheyen, Pieter Vermeersch.

The Gap: Selected Abstract Art from Belgium
Curated by Luc Tuymans
September 9 – December 6, 2015
Parasol unit
London, UK

Focusing on the notion of abstraction in twentieth-century and contemporary Belgian art and the varying sources of influence and inspiration among the artists of two generations, Tuymans has selected fifteen artists whose work either articulates a relationship to abstraction or takes as its cue the definition of abstraction. Although the artists themselves have emerged from different periods and motivations, a clear formal relationship between the selected works is apparent, and thereby reveals a current and earlier interest in abstraction that has not lost its relevance over recent decades.

Luc Tuymans, himself a figurative painter who constantly seeks to extend the traditional boundaries of his practice, has specifically selected these artists for the individual nature of their practice and the paradoxical way each of them uses their medium. Presented in the two gallery floors of Parasol unit, their works collectively investigate the potential, formal and conceptual tensions within the notion of abstraction.

Works by the earlier generation of artists represented in the show can be loosely situated within geometric abstraction and abstract constructivism, influenced by artists such as Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) and groups such as De Stijl (founded 1917) and the ZERO movement of the 1950s and 60s, as well as the American Colour Field painters. Whereas the more recent works by the younger generation of artists reconstruct and reinterpret the Modernist ideas and concerns from today’s artistic point of view. Ultimately, this exhibition highlights the diversity of artistic practice within abstraction, while revealing intergenerational influences and allowing viewers to explore and be challenged by the depth and limits of abstraction.

October 2, 2015 Mario Navarro: Aesthetical Irregularities https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/mario-navarro-aesthetical-irregularities/

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Artist: Mario Navarro

Aesthetical Irregularities
September 18, 2015
Proyecto Paralelo
Mexico City, Mexico

Navarro extracts fragments from the exhibition space thus creating voids and duplicates that that echo each other. The artist understands the void as a loss or as something missing, but as a place where it is possible to multiply reality over and over. The void works just as another constructive element that operates by pointing to the limits of forms and things.

September 25, 2015 Amadeo Azar: La tormenta que imaginamos https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/amadeo-azar-la-tormenta-que-imaginamos/

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Artist: Amadeo Azar

La tormenta que imaginamos
September 18 – October 30, 2015
Nora Fisch
Buenos Aires, Argentina

¿Qué pasa cuando un artista pinta en acuarela la modernidad? ¿Pueden las formas del arte moderno inventarse otra vez, o descubrirse como si hubieran pasado siglos olvidadas y perdidas para deslumbrar con aliento renovado? ¿Cómo puede volverse a ellas libre de vicios? ¿O volverlas tema sin hacer revisionismo, sin ahondar en el fracaso del gran proyecto moderno y de la revolución? ¿Sin caer en un conceptualismo que se pretenda superador? Sumergido en su taller, Amadeo Azar emprende una aventura infinita hacia lo profundo de su interés por las formas de la modernidad guiado por el encantamiento romántico y puntilloso con el que se entrega a su trabajo de artista, fundamentalmente de pintor. Y de su combinación aparentemente incompatible de tema y método, resulta un trabajo delicado y conmovedor en el que las formas supuestamente anónimas y prácticas, neutras y absolutas de la modernidad, se despliegan en imágenes donde la naturaleza de la acuarela -veloz, difusa y transparente- las carga de ánimo y hace visibles en una atmósfera de gran intimidad.

Si a partir del camino abierto por la abstracción, el artista moderno intensifica su búsqueda por obras que signifiquen la pura invención y, por ende, la pura verdad, el trabajo de Azar retoma, a través de ellas, el camino de la ilusión y la referencialidad. Sus pinturas de esculturas de Naum Gabo, Enio Iommi, Gyula Kosice, de obras de Raúl Lozza, son imágenes de imágenes. Lo que presentan no son ya el movimiento, el volumen o el color irrumpiendo en el espacio, sino radiografías exquisitas que traen a la vista algo para su reconocimiento. Con estos estudios, Azar penetra no sólo en la intimidad de una obra sino también en el proceso de invención de quien la creó, hace de la pieza que mira un retrato psicológico, la recorre y reproduce para entender, desde el hacer, su forma, sus brillos, sus líneas, sus volúmenes, sus quiebres; para representarla en toda su materialidad y, por qué no, en su espiritualidad. Fantasmales, las pinturas -algunas incluso fotografiadas e impresas sobre el mismo tipo de papel sobre el que él pinta- parecen eternizar, aunque en composiciones más oscuras, su luminosidad.

En el otro extremo de esta serie de trabajos, que se reproducen como espejismos, Azar parece probar la modernidad por sí mismo. Aunque con toda la carga del siglo pasado en sus manos y en sus ojos de artista, perdido en el ensimismamiento en el que se entrega a pintar, algunos de sus papeles buscan conquistar como se hizo antaño el plano puro de pintura como habiendo llegado otra vez al punto en que la materia exige no ser más que ella misma. Y, silenciosas, se asocian a estas imágenes casi fotográficas de obras reconocidas, papeles donde la acuarela logra plenos audaces en que sólo ella se hace escuchar. Crujiendo sobre el papel, sin embargo, no hay en ellos exclusiva precisión, uniformidad y pureza de color; por el contrario, es imposible no sentir en ellos la evocación de la niebla, o de una bruma de paisaje romántico o renacentista. Si, por un lado, estos plenos intensifican la relación con las fuentes que inspiran el trabajo de Azar, y se alinean con ellas, por otro, parecen defender el valor de lo inacabado, difuso, sugerente y abierto frente a la obra concluida y perfecta.

Una serie de esculturas -piezas que recuerdan los primeros trabajos constructivistas de Vladimir Tatlin que combinan planos y volúmenes de materiales diversos-, también se animan a probar estos momentos iniciáticos de las vanguardias. Combinando libros, recortes de diarios, partes de yeso, restos de papeles pintados, Azar arma volúmenes en los que incluso la pintura se integra al espacio, poniéndola nuevamente a prueba. Continuando con el principio del arte abstracto de ser fiel a los materiales, estas piezas integran al trabajo el flujo de lo que rodea al artista en su taller y tal vez buscan compartir, en el acto de su descubrimiento y composición, algo del júbilo inventivo que los guiaba.

Si la modernidad pretendía redefinir la sensibilidad colectiva, la obra de Azar renueva nuestra sensibilidad hacia ella. En el tratamiento personal, íntimo y minucioso que da a este proyecto que se cantó concreto y puro, lo homenajea andando sobre sus propios pasos con silencio y más de su propia y única delicadeza.

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Images courtesy of the artist.
September 25, 2015 Elena Damiani: All the World’s Futures https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/elena-damiani-worlds-futures/

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Artists: Jumana Emil Abboud, Adel Abdessemed, Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, Abounaddara, Boris Achour, Terry Adkins, Saâdane Afif, Chantal Akerman, John Akomfrah, Karo Akpokiere, Meriç Algün Ringborg, Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Kutluğ Ataman, Maja Bajevic, Ernesto Ballesteros, Sammy Baloji, Rosa Barba, Georg Baselitz, Eduardo Basualdo, Petra Bauer, Walead Beshty, Huma Bhabha, Christian Boltanski, Monica Bonvicini, Sonia Boyce, Daniel Boyd, Ricardo Brey, Marcel Broodthaers, Tania Bruguera, Teresa Burga, Keith Calhoun & Chandra McCormick, Cao Fei, Nidhal Chamekh, Olga Chernysheva, Tiffany Chung, Cooperativa Cráter Invertido, Creative Time Summit, Elena Damiani, Jeremy Deller, Thea Djordajdze, Marlène Dumas, e-flux Journal, Melvin Edwards, Inji Efflatoun, Antje Ehmann & Harun Farocki, Maria Eichhorn, Walker Evans, Harun Farocki, Emily Floyd, Peter Friedl, Coco Fusco, Marco Fusinato, Charles Gaines, Ellen Gallagher, Ana Gallardo, Dora García, Theaster Gates, Isa Genzken, Gluklya, Sônia Gomes, Katharina Grosse, Gulf Labor, Rupali Gupte & Prasad Shetty, Andreas Gursky, Hans Haacke, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Newell Harry, Kay Hassan, Thomas Hirschhorn, Carsten Höller, Nancy Holt & Robert Smithson, IM Heung Soon, Invisible Borders: Trans-African Photographers, Tetsuya Ishida, Ji Dachun, Isaac Julien, Hiwa K., Samson Kambalu, Ayoung Kim, Alexander Kluge, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Runo Lagomarsino, Sonia Leber & David Chesworth, Glenn Ligon, Gonçalo Mabunda, Madhusudhanan, Ibrahim Mahama, David Maljkovic, Victor Man, Abu Bakarr Mansaray, Chris Marker, Kerry James Marshall, Helen Marten, Fabio Mauri, Steve McQueen, Naeem Mohaiemen, Jason Moran, Ivana Müller, Lavar Munroe, Oscar Murillo, Wangechi Mutu, Hwayeon Nam, Bruce Nauman, Cheikh Ndiaye, Olaf Nicolai, Chris Ofili, Emeka Ogboh, Philippe Parreno, Pino Pascali, Adrian Piper, Lemi Ponifasio, Qiu Zhijie, Raha Raissnia, Raqs Media Collective, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Mykola Ridnyi, Liisa Roberts, Mika Rottenberg, Joachim Schönfeldt, Massinissa Selmani, Fatou Kandé Senghor, Gedi Sibony, Gary Simmons, Taryn Simon, Lorna Simpson, Robert Smithson, Mounira Al Solh, Mikhael Subotzky, Mariam Suhail, Sarah Sze , The Propeller Group, The Tomorrow, Rirkrit Tiravanija , Barthélémy Toguo, Xu Bing , Ala Younis

56 International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale, All the World’s Futures
Curated by Okwui Enwezor
May 9 – November 22, 2015
Giardini and Arsenale -La Biennale
Venice, Italy

Rather than one overarching theme that gathers and encapsulates diverse forms and practices into one unified field of vision, All the World’s Futures is informed by a layer of intersecting Filters. These Filters are a constellation of parameters that circumscribe multiple ideas, which will be touched upon to both imagine and realize a diversity of practices. In 2015, the 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia will employ the historical trajectory of the Biennale itself, over the course of its one hundred and twenty years existence, as a Filter through which to reflect on both the current “state of things” and the “appearance of things”. All the World’s Futures will take the present “state of things” as the ground for its dense, restless, and exploratory project that will be located in a dialectical field of references and artistic disciplines.

September 24, 2015 Alexander Apostol, Leyla Cárdenas, Nicolás Consuegra & Elena Damiani: En y Entre Geografías https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alexander-apostol-leyla-cardenas-nicolas-consuegra-elena-damiani-en-y-entre-geografias/

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Artists: Adolfo Bernal, Alex Cerveny, Alexander Apostol, Anna Bella Geiger, Armando Miguelez, Bouchra Khalili, Camille Henrot, Carolina Caycedo, Christy Gast, Dora Mejia, Elena Damiani, Jose Castrellon, Leyla Cardenas, Libia Posada, Luis Hernandez Mellizo, Manuela Ribadeneira, Margarita Pineda, Milena Bonilla, Monica Paez, Nicolas Consuegra, Oscar Farfan, Paola Monzillo, Sebastian Fierro, Tania Bruguera, Tulio Restrepo.

En y Entre Geografías / In and In Between Geographie
Curated by Emiliano Valdés
September 2 – November 9, 2015
MAMM Museo de Arte Moderno
Medellín, Colombia

After almost four decades of existence, the Medellín Museum of Modern Art begins a new phase with the opening of its Expansion in September. For the opening, the Museum will present En y entre Geografías (In and In Between Geographies) among eight other exhibitions. In and In Between Geographies brings together a group of international artists who incorporate in their practices research and physical, cultural and political thinking aspects that determine the location of human beings and how such aspects affect life conditions, including subjective parameters like desire and intellectual production. The exhibition is structured in three sections that address mobility in the early 21st century through a variety of research approaches: formal, political, and metaphorical.

September 24, 2015 Felipe Mujica: Two-person exhibition https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/felipe-mujica-two-person-exhibition/

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Artists: Felipe Mujica and Herbert Weber

Felipe Mujica and Herbert Weber
October 9 – November 7, 2015
Christinger de Mayo
Zurich, Switzerland

Two-person exhibition.

September 23, 2015 Magdalena Fernández: Solo show https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/magdalena-fernandez-solo-show/

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Artist: Magdalena Fernández

Magdalena Fernández
Curated by Alma Ruiz
October 3, 2015 – January 3, 2016
MOCA Pacific Design Center
West Hollywood, CA, USA

Magdalena Fernández is the first major museum exhibition of the artist’s work presented in the United States. Organized by Alma Ruiz, Magdalena Fernández features six videos and one site-specific installation at MOCA Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. A well-known and influential Venezuelan artist, Fernández has built her practice upon the foundation of Latin American modernist abstraction that took root in her native country at the beginning of the 20th century. Fernández’s multidisciplinary work incorporates light, movement, and sound, following traditions established by renowned compatriot artists Gego (1912-94), Alejandro Otero (1921-90), and Jesús Rafael Soto (1923-2005). Fernández’s artistic practice is deeply connected to the natural world, especially the tropical fauna and flora of Caracas, as well as to formal modernist sensibilities. Her extensive background in graphic design—acquired as a student at the Instituto de Diseño Fundación Neumann, and later as a designer in the studio of minimalist Italian architect-designer A.G. Fronzoni (1923-2002)—has greatly influenced the visual, sensorial, and experiential aspects that distinguish her work.

The artist has stood out as one of the most innovating artist of contemporary geometric abstraction. Her multidisciplinary work conjugates light, sound and contemporary criteria of space and use of materials, with some formal concepts of the traditional legacy of optical and geometrical abstraction. Fernández’s video-artistic practice explores the possible relations between abstraction and nature. In her work, the artist proposes a dialogue of visual and sensorial perceptions with space, transforming geometry and abstraction into nature for the senses.

Image: Magdalena Fernández, 1pmS011, 2011, video installation, dimensions variable, photo by Ricardo Jiménez, courtesy of Centro Cultural Chacao and the artist. Sayago & Pardon Collection.
September 22, 2015 Nuno Ramos: Houyhnhnms https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/nuno-ramos-houyhnhnms/

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Artist: Nuno Ramos.

Houyhnhnms
August 29 – November 15, 2015
Pinacoteca de Sao Paulo
Sao Paulo, Brazil

São mais de 20 obras entre pinturas, relevos, desenhos e esculturas de grandes proporções produzidas ao longo de nove meses e que agora ocupam o quarto andar da Estação Pinacoteca. Com exceção de Cavaloporpierrô, já montada em 2014 no Instituto Iberê Camargo de Porto Alegre, todos os trabalhos apresentados são inéditos.

As cinco pinturas encontradas na exposição retomam o uso maciço da vaselina como base das cores, procedimento que Nuno Ramos desenvolveu no fim da década de 1980 e abandou no começo da década seguinte. Quatro relevos e sete desenhos completam a mostra. Feitos a partir de chapas e tubos de metal, tecidos, plásticos e tinta a óleo sobre madeira, os relevos apresentam elementos tridimensionais que prolongam ou contrastam os movimentos sugeridos pela pintura. “Os relevos e as vaselinas se complementam. Os desenhos, por sua vez, formam uma série dedicada a Proteu, conhecido na mitologia grega como o deus da metamorfose. Cada um traz carimbado o nome de uma das transformações pelas quais Proteu passou no canto IV da Odisséia”, explica o curador Lorenzo Mammì.

A exposição apresentará ao público ainda esculturas como a CavaloporPierrô e a Casaporarroz, além de réplicas destas obras fundidas em bronze e alumínio e vídeos dirigidos por Nuno Ramos e Eduardo Climachauska. As duas são conhecidas como ‘dádivas’, conceito antropológico usado por Nuno e desenvolvido por Marcel Mauss que fala sobre trocas em sociedade que não visam lucro. “Uma troca maluca, assim como a exposição, que é exatamente um intercâmbio de elementos, sem que haja necessariamente uma equivalência entre eles. Trabalhos que, em diálogo uns com os outros, sugerem o acúmulo de significados”, disse Nuno Ramos.
September 21, 2015 Iosu Aramburu: Modernidad Histérica https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/iosu-aramburu-modernidad-histerica/

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Artist: Iosu Aramburu

Modernidad Histérica
September 9 – October 15, 2015
80m2 Livia Benavides
Lima, Peru

I
Hacia 1903, Heinrich Mann describió la obsesión de su época (y la de su hermano Thomas) con el renacimiento italiano como un renacimiento histérico. Esto es, un renacimiento inventado por el siglo XIX para proyectar sus propios deseos y frustraciones. El título de este proyecto trasplanta esa referencia 100 años en el futuro para pensar la invención contemporánea de la modernidad de mediados del siglo XX como un espacio poroso, de proyección de deseos y frustraciones contemporáneas. El pasado reciente convertido en un terreno histérico, capaz de adaptarse a las formas que nuestro tiempo necesita o cree necesitar.

II
Entre 1947 y 1949 la Oficina Nacional de Planificación Urbana, a cargo de Luis Dórich y con el apoyo de Josep Lluís Sert, Paul Lester Wiener y Ernesto Nathan Rogers, desarrolló el Plan Piloto de Lima. Un plan para organizar el crecimiento de la ciudad y separar sus distintas funciones de manera racional. Para el centro de la ciudad, el plan proponía identificar y conservar las construcciones coloniales más importantes; el resto de construcciones serían reemplazadas por edificios altos sobre pilotes ubicados hacia el centro de las manzanas, liberando espacio entre las torres que sería usado por áreas verdes y plazas cubiertas. Para ejemplificar este nuevo uso del espacio se realizó una maqueta con un segmento de 12 manzanas del centro de la ciudad, ubicadas entre el Jirón De la Unión y la Avenida Tacna y los Jirones Huancavelica y Conde de Superunda. La maqueta no solo mantenía algunos de los edificios coloniales como una parte del convento de San Agustín, sino también algunos de los edificios neocoloniales que habían sido inaugurados hace poco, como el Palacio Municipal de Harth-Terré.

September 21, 2015 Nicolás Gómez: Parque estacionario https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/nicolas-gomez-parque-estacionario/

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Artist: Nicolás Gómez

Parque estacionario
September 18 – November 8, 2015
Museo de Arte de Pereira
Pereira, Colombia

En la Sala Principal del Museo el Artista Nicolás Gómez Echeverri, nos presenta una serie de proyectos y piezas que hacen parte de la investigación que el artista realiza en torno a la historia de la pintura y su legado en la comprensión colectiva del paisaje. Estos trabajos no se apoyan en la pintura para hacer una ficción del espacio contemplado, Por el contrario, parten de los códigos pictóricos existentes en los espacios recorridos a diario, que en su manifestación dan cuenta de un potencial simbólico de efecto en nuestras vidas.

September 18, 2015 Elena Damiani, Amalia Pica: Future Light: Escaping Transparency https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/elena-damiani-amalia-pica-future-light-escaping-transparency/

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Artists: Pablo Accinelli, Doug Ashford, Claire Barclay, Rana Begum, Elena Damiani, Shezad Dawood, Annika Eriksson, Matias Faldbakken, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Ane Hjort Guttu, Tom Holert, Philippe Parreno, Amalia Pica, Bik Van der Pol, Yelena Popova, Walid Raad, Haegue Yang.

Future Light: Escaping Transparency
Curated by Maria Lind
June 11 – October 4, 2015
MAK Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna
Vienna Biennale 2015 – Ideas for Change
Vienna, Austria

How come some features of the old Enlightenment have crept back and are now being revisited in art, activism, and theory? Why now, after just about a century problematizing, questioning and opposing its legacy? Perhaps it is an ever more economized, fragmented, privatized, and surveilled existence where, for instance, taxpayers are forced to compensate for the crimes of financial speculation and the gap between the rich and the poor is rapidly increasing. It now becomes enticing to return to some fundamental notions and phenomena inherited from the struggle for universal emancipation: the light of reason and rationality, the individual subject, and the public sphere. They point to a wish to explore vision from its very basics—as if to try to see anew, to radical transformations of desire and to challenges to ownership and property relations as we know them. And to do so while not losing sight of the future, in the midst of parallax views, in light of the hyper-contradictions of our time. A future beyond pre-emptive and algorithmic forecasting. Art has after all this capacity to function as part seismograph and part sniffer dog, detecting things not yet seen, gelled and shaped in other parts of society, creating new imaginaries. Whether utopian or dystopian, or an unclear mix of the two.

These basic notions in radically mutated forms seem to indicate a future affected by an emerging movement toward a new enlightenment, conscious of the violent heritage of the old one in whose name atrocities have been committed over the centuries. It is post-enlightenment, not as in “radical rupture” but as in “working through” some of its characteristics. This time it is acknowledging the tensions and contradictions of the enlightenment baggage, trying not to give up on the future while being embedded in the current condition of “retrotopia” where the past in general and “memorialism” in particular loom large. Thus, three strands of thought and action have crystallized within the framework ofFuture Light: non-penetrating light, the individual subject as reworked by the politics of queer-feminism and its polymorph desires, and the public spherereconceived through and as commons and commoning. Each strand is taking shape in a different institutional and spatial setting, accompanied by a reader entitled Future Light and the mini-symposium Politics of Shine, and partly prepared in a closed workshop in October 2013 as well as in a series of public MAK Nite Labs at the MAK.

Within contemporary art, instead of the penetrating light that gives clarity and transparency, there is the reflected and refracted light that creates opacity, abstraction, and shadows. It is the light that goes on and off, that does not serve as a searchlight and yet is able to nurture new beginnings. Besides conditioning human visual perception, its new forms—for example the low-power LED light—are having other literal effects on the look and taste of plants as well as the physical and medical conditions of humans and animals. Furthermore, the future remains a point of orientation in many of the artworks. All this is being played out in the group exhibition at the MAK. Existing paintings, videos, sculptures, and drawings by seventeen artists is making up an installation without walls but with plenty of natural light.

Theory and practice in the name of LGBT and queerness have for some time reshaped notions of the individual, subjectivity, and desire. If traditional notions of gender rely on heteronormative patriarchal formations of desire, then this linchpin is now being challenged in ways hitherto unseen, affected by synthetic extensions of identity such as hormonal drugs. Under the rubric of LOVING, REPEATING, Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz are presenting three film-based works at Kunsthalle Wien. The installations convey filmed performances where the tensions between the individual and the collective carry a high degree of theatricality. While curtains and fumes create opacity, glitter and wigs indicate glamour. The characters who feature in these dramas are consciously multi-sided, defying normality, including the law and economy. Neither being entirely historical nor present, they project ahead in a truly anachronistic manner, to new and unrealized forms of enjoyment. Today many artistic and other projects revive the notions of “commons” and “commoning” in response to failures of capitalism and the increasing withdrawal of the welfare state. How will the Vienna Biennale of 2049 resurrect the voices of the citizens’ initiatives that have appeared during the past 130 years? With The Report, STEALTH.unlimited and Stefan Gruber together with Paul Currion shed light on how the achievements of these initiatives have been essential to the development of the city, yet have often been obscured by the political requirements of Vienna’s urban ambitions. Straddling the line between fiction and non-fiction, The Report will ask what it means to be a citizen of the smartest of all smart cities. It will be released as a limited printed edition in September 2049.

In a new film Marysia Lewandowska is exploring the commons as experienced through the kindergarten as an early testing ground for sharing, belonging, privacy and withdrawal. The project was triggered by the work and life of the Viennese architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897–2000), in which many of the contradictions of the 20th century are played out, and involves the voice of Di Zhang, a young architect in Beijing for whom “the communism of commerce” is a lodestar. Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri are arranging an “unworkshop” around the politics of food and food production, which have been central concerns for the artists in their work on commons and commoning. The design, research and art studio Metahaven, who have developed the notion of “black transparency”, have co-conceptualized and designed the e-reader Future Light and the handout which connects the various parts of the overall project Future Light.

September 18, 2015 Esvin Alarcón Lam: Línea de horizonte, o la tensión en múltiples puntos https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/esvin-alarcon-lam-linea-de-horizonte-o-la-tension-en-multiples-puntos/

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Artist: Esvin Alarcón Lam

Línea de horizonte, o la tensión en múltiples puntos
September 3, 2015
The 9.99 Gallery
Guatemala City, Guatemala

Solo show by Esvin Alarcón Lam.

September 17, 2015 Diana de Solares: El ojo que ves no es… https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/diana-de-solares-el-ojo-que-ves-es/

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Artist: Diana de Solares

El ojo que ves no es…
August 25 – October 2, 2015
Galería de Arte, Universidad Rafael Landívar
Guatemala City, Guatemala

Solo show by Diana de Solares.

Image: Diana de Solares, “Súbitamente un mundo frente al mundo comenzaría a transpirar.” (Construcción suave no. 3) / “Suddenly a World Before the World Would Begin to Transpire.” (Soft construction no. 3)”, 2014, Sports shoe laces, construction iron, Variable dimensions.
September 17, 2015 Christian Camacho Reynoso: Noche y dibujo https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/christian-camacho-reynoso-noche-y-dibujo/

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Artist: Christian Camacho Reynoso

Noche y dibujo
September 10, 2015
Cooperativa Cráter Invertido
Mexico City, Mexico

a diferencia de la pintura, no requiere de luz; a diferencia de la escultura, no requiere de espacio.

Una plática sobre los vínculos posibles entre el dibujo y la noche, acompañada de la activación de una pieza reciente.

September 16, 2015 Ricardo Alcaide: Not Much Further https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ricardo-alcaide-much/

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Artist: Ricardo Alcaide

Not Much Further
September 18, 2015
Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo
Mexico City, Mexico

Podríamos pensar que existe una línea que divide lo inservible y lo útil, lo proyectado y lo alcanzado. Pero esa división no es real cuando deambulamos por una ciudad o recordamos una historia. Es en ese punto de suspensión donde se sitúan las reflexiones de Ricardo Alcaide.

Acostumbrado a mirar desde el modernismo venezolano, su mirada crítica se ha ido trasladando por otros entornos urbanos, ejercitando la agudeza de descubrir las promesas de lo que se imaginaba un futuro mejor en lo que está a punto de desaparecer.  En Not Much Further la sensación de atracción e incomodidad y la indefinición a través de la recuperación estética de formas modernistas, replantean imposiciones y disfunciones de la sociedad actual.

September 16, 2015 Lucila Amatista: Vida Primaria https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/lucila-amatista-vida-primaria/

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Artist: Lucila Amatista

Vida Primaria
Curator: Valeria González
August 20 – October 16, 2015
Ro Galería de Arte
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Lucila Amatista (Buenos Aires, 1978) presenta una selección de acuarelas y cerámicas que nos muestran entidades que no pueden ser definidas como una especie del reino animal o vegetal. Organismos que viven en un mundo rebosante de vida, tan monstruoso como bello, silencioso e inmóvil. La  forma de exhibición propone una mirada crítica sobre las ciencias naturales y sus métodos de investigación y exposición.

Como plantea Valeria González en el texto que acompaña la exposición:“Hagamos el esfuerzo de comprender que, si las manchas de pigmento acuoso –lo mismo que los trozos de arcilla- crecen pacientemente a través de mínimos matices y se multiplican flotantes sobre planos ingrávidos, no se trata simplemente de decisiones cromáticas y compositivas de una artista, sino de su esfuerzo por proceder con la materia del mismo modo en que la vida se auto produce microscópicamente. (…) Y así, la obra de Lucila Amatista podrá comprenderse, también, en sus implicancias éticas y políticas”.

Texto de la exposición

En uno de sus espacios de creación, Lucila Amatista genera lo que podrían ser los objetos o los rastros de un extraño personaje. Primorosas cajas donde ha atesorado rarezas naturales; o su mesa de observación, detenida en un instante, donde los especímenes, antes de ser guardados, participan de un cierto desorden en el que podemos espiar las curiosas relaciones entre las cosas que su mente imagina. Se trata, sin duda, de un coleccionista al margen de las ciencias, o de un tiempo anterior, en el que los gabinetes de curiosidades aún no habían sido atravesados –desmantelados- por el orden racional de las clasificaciones biológicas y geológicas.
Podríamos resumir en el nombre de Mark Dion todo un espacio del arte contemporáneo dedicado a la apropiación crítica de los saberes de las ciencias naturales y sus dispositivos de display. Este distanciamiento conceptual está lejos de la escala íntima, el cuidado artesanal y el espíritu amateur con que Lucila Amatista dota a su personaje.
Sin embargo, no importa cuán caprichoso o personal, se trata de un orden humano aplicado a especies naturales. Pero los organismos vivos, a diferencias de las ideas, se organizan a sí mismos y se auto reproducen. En un segundo espacio de creación, la artista no procede representando formas de la naturaleza, sino intentando emular su dinámica de génesis y multiplicación celular. He aquí el sentido primero –ya no de la cerámica y la acuarela como medios artísticos- sino del agua y la tierra como el sustrato desde donde se origina la vida primaria.
Si una semilla es capaz de hacer estallar a un muro ¿qué sentido tiene preguntarse por su forma? La única pregunta importante por hacerle a la semilla es ¿hasta dónde irás?. Esta es la lección que nos trae Deleuze para comprender la visión de Spinoza: no una jerarquía de seres organizados bajo el dominio de la mente humana –Dios creador por encima del mundo- sino un Dios-energía repartido en cantidades diferenciales de potencias que se expanden, combinan y cesan en un gran plano inmanente.
Hagamos el esfuerzo de comprender que, si las manchas de pigmento acuoso –lo mismo que los trozos de arcilla- crecen pacientemente a través de mínimos matices y se multiplican flotantes sobre planos ingrávidos, no se trata simplemente de decisiones cromáticas y compositivas de una artista, sino de su esfuerzo por proceder con la materia del mismo modo en que la vida se auto produce microscópicamente.
El esfuerzo no será menor si tenemos en cuenta que el destino último de las ciencias no es producir saber sino legalizar, mediante patentes de propiedad intelectual, la posesión empresaria de las capacidades generativas de los organismos vivos, separando poblaciones enteras del acceso a su propio medioambiente. Y así, la obra de Lucila Amatista podrá comprenderse, también, en sus implicancias éticas y políticas.

Valeria González

September 15, 2015 Marco Maggi: Drawing Attention https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marco-maggi-drawing-attention/

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Artist: Marco Maggi

Drawing Attention
June 19 – November 1, 2015
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
Kansas City, Kansas, USA

At the center of this exhibition, featuring Uruguayan artist Marco Maggi, is his ambitiously scaled paper installation Great White Dialogue (2000) which reveals an encoding of the world in macro and micro, linear and aerial perspectives. From a distance, the stacks of thousands of sheets of paper (24,549 total) that are set out in a grid onto the floor suggest a landscape, circuit boards, or an architectural model for an imagined city. Viewed more intimately, delicate sculptural forms have been cut and raised from the top layer of paper, creating shadows that extend along the paper’s surface. The perplexing abstract language of Maggi’s tiny incised paper sculptures promotes longer viewing time and shifts our bodily relationship to an intimate viewing experience.

Accompanying Maggi’s sculptural installation is a related two-dimensional work, Global Myopia (2001), made by carefully pressing into aluminum foil. The network of impressions made to the malleable metal’s surface acts as the artist’s method of drawing, developed from his interest in the printmaking technique of plate etching.  He creates a patchwork of lines that impart a sense of movement across the surface of the piece. The pairing of these works emphasizes Maggi’s ability to call attention to the transformation of everyday materials he often uses, such as coated office paper, aluminum foil, apple skins, and plexiglass, as detailed and poetic expressions of the expanded language of contemporary drawing.

Marco Maggi was born in Montevideo, Uruguay. He earned his MFA from the State University of New York, New Paltz, and had his first solo museum exhibition at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in 2001. Maggi is representing Uruguay with a site-specific installation of paper and pencils, Global Myopia II, on view through November 22, 2015, at the Venice Biennale in Italy. The Uruguayan pavilion is one of the twenty-nine national pavilions located in the Giardini della Biennale.

September 15, 2015 Octavio Abúndez: El futuro no es lo que solía ser https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/octavio-abundez-el-futuro-es-lo-que-solia-ser/

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Artist: Octavio Abúndez.

El futuro no es lo que solía ser
September 4, 2015
Museo de Arte Raúl Anguiano (MURA)
Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

La exposición individual multidisciplinaria de Abúndez propone una reflexión multidireccional acerca del futuro de las sociedades. El futuro, visto como problema, posibilidad y topos (lugar), alimenta las investigaciones más recientes del artista que se vinculan a su anterior exploración fenomenológica y del episteme. Desde la creación de un manifiesto político hasta la invención de un futuro alterno, la apropiación de diálogos cinematográficos o un resumen sumamente tendencioso de la Historia, Abúndez propone al visitante posturas encontradas.

La exhibición estará compuesta en su mayoría por piezas inéditas y nunca exhibidas en Guadalajara, acompañadas por un par de piezas seminales de 2006 y 2008. Esta muestra se divide en dos partes, la primera es un análisis del futuro desde tres perspectivas: el futuro como posibilidad, el futuro como ficción y el futuro como consecuencia. La segunda parte muestra dos vertientes, la emocional y la intelectual al enfrentarnos con la responsabilidad de formar el futuro.

El proyecto consta de dieciocho piezas entre dibujo, instalación, vídeo, fotografías, escultura, pintura, entre otras.

 

September 14, 2015 Diana de Solares & Tepeu Choc: La desintegración de la forma https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/diana-de-solares-tepeu-choc-la-desintegracion-de-la-forma/

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Artists: Alfredo Ceibal, Christian Dietkus Lord, David Sánchez, Diana de Solares, Diego Sagastume, Edgar Orlaineta, Ronny Hernández Salazar, Sebastian Preece and Tepeu Choc.

La desintegración de la forma
September 3, 2015
The 9.99 Gallery
Guatemala, Guatemala

Even at its inception and during its heyday in the mid-sixties and early seventies, conceptual art was difficult to define. No one knows who started it, which artist did what and when, what were his or her philosophy, goals and policies. None of those present remember much; each person has its own history and scholars and critics have been left to try to make head or tail out of the movement—among them, many who did not live through those times and did not witness those events. That is why American curator and art critic Lucy R. Lippard in her book Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972 tries to reconstruct that story—readily admitting not being able to rely much on her memory—to give us a context of the artistic era in which she lived. According to Lippard she concentrated her efforts to write “a critical memoir of a small group of young artists’ attempts to escape from the frame-and-pedestal syndrome in which art found itself by the mid-1960s.”

The artists in “La desintegración de la forma” have also looked for ways to express themselves by making art that need not be framed or put on a pedestal; their work is ephemeral, cheap, and unpretentious, where the idea is paramount while the material form is secondary. For example, Diana de Solares’s work made of iron and twisted wires, shoestrings, electrical cords, pieces of pottery and other found materials are veritable poetic tangles, or drawings in space as defined by the Venezuelan artist Gego (1912–1994). They rest directly on the floor or hang from the ceiling, casting dancing shadows on the wall. Rejecting the idea of ​​highlighting the work by placing it on a base or pedestal Solares eliminates that invisible barrier that separates the art from the viewer, thus denying it a special status. The works of Edgar Orlaineta, also suspended from the ceiling like a Calder mobile, have the appearance of a three-dimensional puzzle with each element playing a vital role in the final composition. In contrast to Solares’s sculptures that deal with formal aspects, the materials employed by Orlaineta are selected based on the artist’s interest in the work of American graphic designer Alvin Lustig (1915-1955), and more specifically in the book covers that Lustic designed for the publishing house New Directions during the 1940s. Although you’d think that the focal part of the piece is the narrative contained in the book that is included in each of the works and whose title provides the name for the work (in this case A Season in Hell, from the series New Directions, 2015), what actually counts for Orlaineta is the modernist design of its cover with its harmonic composition, its emphasis on abstraction and complementary colors, and its minimal use of typography. It was this rigor that gave fame to Lustig, who believed that good design should permeate all aspects of a person’s life, an idea that persists until today in the belief that form is important in the functionality of design in general.

The graphic design of the magazine covers is barely glimpsed in the work of Christian Dietkus Lord who obscures them with a series of painted circular compositions based on the Zen practice of Ensō painting. This practice dictates that the circle should be drawn with a single stroke, which once made cannot be altered. The gesture highlights the character of its creator and the context of its creation in a short and contiguous period of time. Traditionally this type of painting is done in black ink on very thin white paper. In Northern Shell ( 2011) Dietkus Lord uses a variety of colors to draw concentric circles deliberately obscuring the text that reveals the magazines’ content, including Attitude, a magazine that specializes in articles about homosexuality as a way of life for a post-AIDS generation.

The irregular circles that appear in the Transparencies (2015) of Alfredo Ceibal have their origin in the craters of volcanoes and the lakes that form inside them. The artist defines these shapes as “abstract mantras,” and depending on the limpidness of the body of water, they can be defined as “benign pools” or “malignant pools.” They are also places that invite meditation for their altitude and geographical location, as well as for their exuberant and less contaminated nature that make us feel part of a cosmic whole and of a world at peace. Ceibal’s series of drawings entitled Dialogues (2015) represents vague human forms of communication. According to the artist they denote different types of conversations that take the form of “language, ritual, dance, music, literature, body language, and the gaze, to understand each other.” To Ceibal “the great value of dialogue can not be underestimated as it is the crucial component for communication and equality in human relations.”

Communication so important for the proper functioning of society is interrupted in the work of Ronny Hernández Salazar. Vol-can (2014) is a file cabinet with open drawers filled with sand. The accumulation has formed a heap of sand, in the form of a volcano, burying the papers supposed to be archived there. Vol-can is a metaphor for the lack of justice; it represents court cases that have been forgotten, suspended in time, waiting for a judgment that may never come. The fragility of life is reflected in El final de las palabras (The end of words, 2004) by David Sánchez in which air produced by a fan spreads marble dust over the floor forming a thin white layer upon which visitors leave foot track made while walking on it. With its continued air movement the fan erases them so that others can make them again. To record and to erase is an exercise that could be repeated ad infinitum where the human presence is evidenced on a marble dust canvas analogous to the tombstones that accompany the graves. Other artists in the exhibition are Diego Sagastume with images showing the moisture condition of the asphalt, a time-ravaged wall, and rust on a ventilation duct that reflects a sunset, and a cast concrete floor; Sebastián Preece with a photograph of a decomposed book that was part of an important library but its disappearing due to neglect and the passing of time; and Tepeu choc with a work made of sift mesh and colored threads, a work he describes as the X-ray of a sculpture. Forms of communication, pseudo-alphabets, font types, abstractions that overflow, fragile materials that disappear over time, these are some of the ongoing concerns of the artists in “La desintegración de la forma.”

 

September 14, 2015 Sandra Nakamura: Analogías temporales https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/sandra-nakamura-analogias-temporales/

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Artists: Sandra Nakamura, Claudia Martínez Garay and Arturo Kameya.

Analogías temporales
August 11 – September 18, 2015
Wu Galería
Lima, Peru

Analogías temporales reúne dos proyectos que habiendo acontecido en contextos históricos diferentes, guardan relación en el momento de hacer contacto el uno con el otro.  El azul de la distancia (2015) de Sandra Nakamura es un conjunto de impresiones hechas a partir de una fotografía de Frank Hurley titulada Endurance (Tenacidad), tomada durante la fallida Expedición Imperial transantártica de Ernest Shackleton en 1914: las imágenes suspendidas del techo y ordenadas consecutivamente en el espacio, de manera ligeramente ondulante, van de mayor a menor contraste terminando en la gradual desaparición de la imagen fotográfica. Por su parte la serie de fotografías impresas en lenticulares de Arturo Kameya y Claudia Martínez, pertenecen a la serie Mass illusion (2012), fotografías de Mass Gamescoreanos de los años 50, donde grupos de jóvenes gimnastas componen de manera colectiva imágenes con carteles en mano, formando figuras que simbolizan la República Democrática Popular Coreana de Kim II-Sung y que son leídas de diferente manera según el ángulo de visión.

Ambos proyectos, desarrollan procesos de reapropiación de fotografías ya existentes, desde donde se propone forzar la evocación de una temporalidad hallada en la imagen original. Ésta se vuelve un recurso metafórico para evidenciar ilusión, así como el devenir heroico del trabajo colectivo y  en un sentido casi opuesto: la subordinación del deseo individual por el grupal. Las múltiples lecturas posibles en el contraste de ambos proyectos, evidencian a su vez condiciones propias del medio fotográfico y la imagen: revelado, temporalidad, reproductibilidad. Se trata de la analogía que existe no sólo entre los proyectos, sino también entre la poética visual que excede el medio de la fotografía convencional, lo que acontece dentro de cada imagen y nuestra propia experiencia.

August 28, 2015 Alexander Apóstol: Yamaikaleter https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alexander-apostol-yamaikaleter/

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Artist: Alexander Apóstol

Yamaikaleter
August 13 – September 27, 2015
CAPC Contemporary Art Museum of Bordeaux
Bordeaux, France

The CAPC contemporary art museum of Bordeaux continues its program The Screen: Between Here and Elsewhere dedicated to films and videos by international artists, the museum will present from august to september the film Yamaikaleter made by the venezuelian artist  Alexander Apóstol.

This program is conceived by the guest curator, Anne Sophie Dianant.

Alexander Apóstol’s work is concerned with the consequences of South America’s political and cultural heritage. Using film, video and photography, the artist often introduces the relations between architecture and city-planning with regard to history. The film Yamaikaleter draws inspiration from Simón Bolivar’sThe Jamaica Letter, written in English on 14 May 1815, in which the Venezuelan statesman, an emblematic figure in the emancipation of the Spanish colonies in South America, developed his ideas.

Because the legacy of The Jamaica Letter has often been used to support any manner of political tendency, the artist has it read out loud by residents of a poor Caracas neighborhood, themselves leaders of different political groups (chavistas and anti-chavistas). These protagonists do not understand English, so the reading swiftly turns into a form-focused performance, a parody of a charisma-free discourse which seems devoid of meaning, but where we rediscover the corporal language and the intonation usually adopted by leaders. The artist proposes a deconstruction of the political discourse, keeping just the elements and codes to do with representation—the body language and the vocal intonation which punctuate the film.

Commissioned by the Goethe-Institut in 2009, Yamaikaleterwas screened at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011.

Alexander Apóstol was born in 1969 in Barquisimeto, Venezuela. He lives and works between Madrid and Caracas. His solo exhibitions include Centro de la Imagen, Lima, Peru, 2011; MUSAC, Castilla y León, León, 2010; Arratia+Beer Gallery, Berlin, 2010; Harvard University, Boston, 2007 and Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, 2006. He has taken part in the following group exhibitions: Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today, 2013; Manifesta 9, Limburg, Belgium, 2012; 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, 2011; The End of Money, Witte de With, Rotterdam, 2011; Photographic Typologies, Tate Modern, London, 2010-11; Atopia: Art and the City in the 21st Century, Centre de Cultura Contemporània, Barcelona, 2010. He was awarded the prize of the Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio, Italy, 2012.

August 28, 2015 Guido Ignatti: Vista interior de una cámara https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/guido-ignatti-vista-interior-de-una-camara/

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Artist: Guido Ignatti

Vista interior de una cámara
August 11 – 30, 2015
Centro Cultural Recoleta
Buenos Aires, Argentina

La muestra permite una lectura narrativa en relación al lugar donde está montada, contiene una escena que juega con la ficción y el enunciado conceptual de su sitio específico. La sala 10 oficia de cámara, un espacio aislado, quizá sagrado. Aunque el público puede ingresar a su interior solo por uno de sus accesos, el resto de las aberturas están bloqueadas por tapiados de madera que recuerdan su condición de claustro; que señalan su función concreta y simbólica de lugar íntimo donde se atesora un valor intangible. Lo cierto es que adentro, no hay más que soledad y la materialidad rústica de los tablones de madera. La cámara ha sido profanada. Su secreto ya no existe. Solo queda su atisbo aurático, las sombras de lo que fueron objetos de culto: ¿obras de arte?

August 26, 2015 Raquel Rabonivich: Collaborative Performance https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/raquel-rabonivich-collaborative-performance/

Emergences 9, Port Ewen, low tide

Artists: Raquel Rabinovich, Jule Manna, Linda Mary Montano.

7 Hour Collaborative Glandathon: Dance, Pray, Bless at Nancy Donskoj’s
August 29, 2015
The Storefront Gallery
Kingston, NY, USA

A SEVEN HOUR EXPERIENCE GIVING GRATITUDE TO THE 7 GLANDS

Actions:

. Manna will move and dance for seven hours

. Montano will pray sounds for seven hours

. Rabinovich will give offerings (mud drawings) from her hands to everyone for one hour (6-7pm)

Each hour will reference one of the seven glands.

Image: Raquel Rabinovich, “Emergences (Hudson River)”, 2012-2014, Series: Emergences, Site-Specific Sculpture, On-site stones, Dimensions variable, Lighthouse Park, Port Ewen, New York, USA, Collection Town of Esopus, Photo credit: Camilo Rojas.
August 26, 2015 Jaime Ruiz Otis: XIX Bienal Plástica de Baja California https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/jaime-ruiz-otis-xix-bienal-plastica-de-baja-california/

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Artists: Jaime Ruiz Otis, Pablo Llana, José Hugo Sánchez, Mario Alberto Rodríguez Herrera, Toni Larios, Miguel Ángel Jiménez, Diana Andrea Fuentes Salinas, Alejandro Jara López, Luis Alderete, and many more.

XIX Bienal Plástica de Baja California
June 29 – December 2015
Centro Estatal de las Artes de Tijuana
Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico

Exposición de 60 obras de diferentes formatos, de 33 artistas plásticos de la región, en la Galería de Exposiciones Internacionales del Centro Estatal de las Artes Tijuana (Ceart Tijuana).

 

August 25, 2015 Luis Roldán: Rompecabezas https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/luis-roldan-rompecabezas/

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Artist: Luis Roldán

Rompecabezas
Curated by Alejandro Martín
July 24 – October 25, 2015
Museo La Tertulia
Cali, Colombia

Son tan distintas las obras que ha realizado Luis Roldán durante su vida que en una primera mirada cuesta entender que sea la misma persona quien las haya hecho. ¿Pero qué es ser una misma persona? Hay distintas formas de entender la identidad: una salida es buscar aquello común, aquello que es siempre igual, y otra asumir la complejidad, viendo las partes con cuidado y estudiando las formas en que se conectan y se relacionan. Ante el conjunto de las piezas, al ser pensadas como una unidad, es en quien las aprehende donde se produce el clic que genera la conexión.

El trabajo de Roldán se configura en conjuntos de obras en las que las piezas se agrupan de modos muy diferentes. Es posible reunirlas en series, a la manera clásica, como sucede con su serie de pinturas Reflexiones (1989) y la de esculturas-pinturas Eidola (2015), pero también es posible hacerlo en conjuntos muy heterogéneos que más bien es posible pensar como “rompecabezas”, entre los cuales están aquellos que ocupan las salas principales de esta muestra: Circunstancias (2009) y Secreta prudencia (2014). En estos “rompecabezas”, Roldán presenta a la vez dibujos, pinturas, collages, instalaciones y objetos intervenidos que, reunidos, dan cuenta de su exploración tras una cierta pista, del seguimiento de una serie de intuiciones en cadena a partir de un impulso inicial. Al ver las piezas juntas, el espectador es quien debe armar el todo, atender a los detalles y dejarse guiar por su sensibilidad para llevarse consigo una emoción o una inquietud, más que un mensaje o una idea.

Circunstancias parte de una anécdota de En busca del tiempo perdido de Marcel Proust. En este libro se cuenta el último día de la vida de Bergotte, el escritor, y la forma en la que una crítica de arte que lee lo impulsa a visitar en el museo la Vista de Delft, de Vermeer, para buscar un detalle que allí se menciona y que no había notado en un cuadro que él creía conocer muy bien. Esa pequeña pared amarilla que mira con cuidado por primera vez lo lleva a pensar: “Así debería haber escrito yo. Mis libros son demasiado secos, tendría que haberles dado capas de color, que mi frase fuera preciosa por ella misma, como ese pequeño panel amarillo”. Esa pared amarilla, que tiene eso inasible que hace la obra de arte, hace eco de la frase musical que obsesiona a Swann, otro de los personajes de la novela, y a través de los dos motivos Proust va dando forma a su concepción de la belleza: en particular, sobre cómo ella se nos presenta y nos somete de modo implacable y caprichoso a la vez [1].

Secreta prudencia, por su lado, va configurándose al rededor de la lectura del libro Los tiempos de Stalin, de Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko (1920-2013), quien fue hijo de uno de los líderes revolucionarios bolcheviques traicionados, perseguidos y ejecutados por el gobierno de Stalin. El autor, que a su vez fue víctima del encerramiento injusto en campos de trabajo por trece años, intenta reconstruir en su libro los horrores sucedidos bajo el poder de Stalin y cuyo rastro ha intentado ser borrado de la historia. A partir de allí, Roldán produce obras que crean una situación inquietante, en las que se hacen presente la mirada policiva, la represión y las distintas estrategias para sobrevivir. Pero es clave notar cómo, si bien en la instalación hay elementos de representación literal como la gorra soviética o las gafas que nos hablan de la casi total ceguera de Antonov, la exploración del artista en todos los casos se apoya en esos gestos para dar un salto y crear otras piezas, en las que cada una crea su propio enigma, realiza su propia exploración con los materiales y las formas o da cuenta de un particular hallazgo o conexión.

En la serie Sueños (2003), Roldán cose sobre papel dibujos con hilos cargados de grafito que crean distintas estructuras dispersas y que también pueden ser vistas como códigos o partituras. Al seguir la metáfora sugerida por el título, uno puede tomarlos como diagramas de una consciencia intermitente: esquemas para pensar el yo no como una línea continua, sino como una línea que puede atenuarse y subrayarse, que a veces duda, que da vueltas, que se bifurca. Parte de esos Sueños son los Rotos (2005). En este caso, el papel, que era una superficie continua sobre la que sucedía el dibujo, se rasga y las líneas de hilo se tornan telarañas, marañas. La situación se troca: ahora el fondo no es el papel sino el espacio, el dibujo se curva, se tuerce y se hace tridimensional y ya no nos preguntamos por la unidad de la línea, sino de la superficie. Esos papeles quebrados están ahora a punto de separarse y permanecen frágilmente unidos por los hilos. La ruptura ya no es discontinuidad, sino quiebre y nos enfrentamos al vilo, a la tensión, al suspenso.

Esta exposición busca pensar los fragmentos, las rupturas, los quiebres y las formas. Invita a imaginar cómo a partir de allí se pueden hilar memorias o relatos, ligar intuiciones o emociones, trazando líneas que intenten unir, pero que son siempre conscientes de lo vulnerables que son los lazos que crean.

[1] «A la idea filosófica de “método” opone Proust la doble idea de “coacción” y de “azar”. La verdad depende de que demos con algo que nos obligue a pensar y a buscar lo verdadero. El azar de los hallazgos, la presión de las coacciones son los dos temas fundamentales de Proust. Es precisamente el signo el que establece el objeto de un hallazgo, el que ejerce sobre nosotros esta violencia. El azar del encuentro es lo que garantiza la necesidad de lo pensado»
(Deleuze [1971]. “Proust y los signos”. Ideas y Valores. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia).

August 25, 2015 Mario Navarro: Salon ACME https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/mario-navarro-salon-acme/

SEDE

Artists: Alberto Conrcuera, Bill Abdale, Carlos García Noriega, Diego Sierra Alta, Federico Martínez, Isauro Huizar, Ivan Krassoievitch, Javier Barrios, Jerónimo Reyes, José Luis Rojas, Juan Caloca, Karian Amaya, Laura Meza Orozco, Mario Navarro, Mauricio Cadena, Morelos León, Pablo Dávila, Paola Cortázar, Rolando Jacob, Sebastián Vizcaíno, Sofia Byttebier, Sofía Echeverry, Xavier de María.

SALÓN ACME
August 22 and 23, 2015
Wythe Hotel
Brooklyn NY, USA

Salón ACME is a platform that exhibits the work of new and established artists, either Mexican or foreign, encouraging the country’s artistic production.

 

August 20, 2015 Amadeo Azar: Name It by Trying to Name It https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/amadeo-azar-name-trying-name/

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Artists: Amadeo Azar, Daniel Barroca, Matt Bua, Onyedika Chuke, Annette Cords, Marcelo Moscheta, Zach Rockhill, and Lauren Seiden.

Name It by Trying to Name It
July 17 – August 30, 2015
The Drawing Center
New York, USA

Initiated in 2014, Open Sessions is a new program at The Drawing Center through which a large group of artists consider their relationship to drawing as medium, process, and metaphor. Working together over a two-year period, Open Sessions artists participate in ongoing studio visits and discussions, punctuated by small group exhibitions at The Drawing Center, as well as other self-organized shows in New York and abroad.

Name It by Trying to Name It: Open Sessions 2014-15 includes all artists in the program, giving the first floor of the museum over to an exploration of contemporary drawing, encompassing performance, video, sculpture, and installation, as well as traditional drawing forms. The show’s numerous collaborations, in which ideas and materials are shared, emphasize the medium’s flexibility and process-oriented nature. The exhibition will evolve over its six-week run, as some artworks enter and exit in two-week cycles, while others remain constant throughout the show’s run. Taken as a whole, Name It by Trying to Name It presents a window into nearly two years of thinking about drawing.

August 20, 2015 Miguel Rothschild: XXI. Rohkunstbau – Apokalypse https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/miguel-rothschild-xxi-rohkunstbau-apokalypse/

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Artist: Miguel Rothschild

XXI. Rohkunstbau – Apokalypse
June 21 – September 6, 2015
Roskow castle
Postdam-Mittlemark, Germany

This year marks the twenty-first edition of the Rohkunstbau exhibition. Themed apocalypse  and set against the historic backdrop of Schloss Roskow in the District of Potsdam-Mittelmark, the exhibition presents nine artists and an artist duo from eight nations.

The notion of transition serves as the focus of the examination of apocalypse. Every end brings a new beginning. This choice of theme for the XXI. Rohkunstbau is loosely tied to Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. But instead of being an exact interpretation of Götterdämmerung, the fourth and final part of the Ring, the exhibition draws on Wagner’s notion of an end and subsequent beginning. Wagner has served as inspiration for Rohkunstbau’s exhibition since 2011. In previous exhibitions artists have been invited to address themes of Power (2011), Morals (2013), and Revolution (2014), now followed by Apocalypse for 2015.

August 19, 2015 Chiara Banfi & Marcius Galan: Exposição de Acervo 2015 https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/chiara-banfi-marcius-galan-exposicao-de-acervo-2015/

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Artists: Amilcar de Castro, Ana Maria Tavares, Daniel Senise, Cristina Canale, Carlito Carvalhosa, Cinthia Marcelle, Chiara Banfi, Laercio Redondo, Marcius Galan, Miguel Rio Branco, Nelson Leirner e Rodrigo Matheus.

Exposição de Acervo 2015
June 26 – August 1, 2015
Silvia Cintra + Box4
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Com trabalho de 12 artistas representados pela Silvia Cintra+Box4, a “Exposição de Acervo 2015 ” traz um panorama diversificado da arte contemporânea brasileira.

August 19, 2015 Gabriel Acevedo Velarde: Estado Sincopado https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/gabriel-acevedo-velarde-estado-sincopado/

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Artist: Gabriel Acevedo Velarde

Estado Sincopado, Concierto y charla
August 11, 2015
Tupac Asociación Cultural
Lima, Peru

Estado Sincopado es mi proyecto de banda musical, hasta hora de una sola persona, yo. Hago letras a partir de diferentes fuentes, casi todas referentes a aspectos del contexto social o político peruano, a manera de collage. En esto hay algo de los cut-ups de William Burroughs y de cierta tendencia del hiphop de rimar palabras más por su sonoridad que por su sentido, como en el trabajo de Victor Vásquez (Kool A.D.). En los conciertos, proyecto videos que explican de dónde viene cada fragmento y yo canto sobre bases musicales pre-elaboradas, añadiendo elementos electrónicos en vivo. (Gabriel Acevedo)

Sobre Gabriel Acevedo Velarde

Gabriel Acevedo Velarde nació en Lima, Perú, en 1976. Después de vivir por distintos periodos en Ciudad de México, Sao Paulo y Berlín, regresó para vivir en Lima en enero del año pasado. Entre sus exposiciones individuales destacan: “Ciudadano Paranormal” (Museo Reina Sofía), “Interruptions on decrees and stages” (Mori Art Museum), “Quorum Power” (Museo Carrillo Gil, Ciudad de México), y ”Cone Flow” (Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas). Ha participado en las siguientes exposiciones colectivas: Bienal de Lyon, Bienal de Sao Paulo, Trienal de Guangzhou, Auto-Kino (Temporäre Kunsthalle, Berlin), entre otras.

August 18, 2015 Emilia Azcárate, Marta Chilindrón, Diana de Solares & Mariela Scafati: Folding: Line, Space & Body https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilia-azcarate-marta-chilindron-diana-de-solares-mariela-scafati-folding-line-space-body/

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Artists: Regina Aprijaskis, Emilia Azcárate, Valerie Brathwaite, Feliza Bursztyn, Marta Chilindrón, Mirtha Dermisache, Diana de Solares, Noemí Escandell, María Freire, Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt), Anna Bella Geiger, Mercedes Elena González, Ana Mercedes Hoyos, Elizabeth Jobim, Judith Lauand, Ana Maria Maiolino, Marta Minujín, Mercedes Pardo, Liliana Porter, Margot Römer, Lotty Rosenfeld, Ana Sacerdote, Fanny Sanín, Adriana Santiago, Mariela Scafati, Antonieta Sosa, and Yeni & Nan.

Folding: Line, Space & Body / Latin American Women Artists Working Around Abstracion
Curated by Aimé Iglesias Lukin
July 9 – August 21, 2015
Henrique Faria Fine Art
NY, NY, USA

Folding is the action through which a line turns into a figure, a plane becomes tridimensional, and a painting becomes an object. And beyond all these actions, we see how representation becomes presentation.

Since the historical avant-garde, the quest for an art that transcended the representation of reality has led artists to create abstract art and to focus on the material objecthood of a painting or sculpture. This exhibition presents the work of Latin American women artists from the 1950s through the present day, showing the different ways in which they worked with abstraction and geometry to explore the space of the artwork and that of the spectator, as mediated by the body.

Latin American abstraction has gained recognition worldwide in the last decade. Exhibitions like “Inverted Utopias,” curated by Mari Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea in 2004 and “The Geometry of Hope,” curated by Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro in 2007, presented the diverse abstract movements that developed in the Post War Latin American metropolis, from Joaquín Torres García and Escuela del Sur in Montevideo, to Arte Concreto Invención and Madí in Buenos Aires, the Ruptura group in São Paulo and the work of Alejandro Otero and Jesús Rafael Soto in Caracas.

In all of these avant-garde scenes, women artists gained—not without struggle—a place of recognition and a social circle in which they could develop their profession with relative tolerance. Still, except a few exceptions like Gego, Lygia Clark and Lygia Pape, it is mostly male artists we see represented in museums and art history books. This exhibition does not intend to resolve that problem, which is of a much larger scale, but aims to present some of their production and to explore the formal and creative connections among this diverse group of artists from the continent. This show also chooses to escape the historical understanding of abstraction, which is referred to here not as the Post-war movement but more broadly as a creative strategy that has continued through the decades. In this way, Judith Lauand’s planimetric work of 1960 can be seen alongside the contemporary pyramidal sculptures of Marta Chilindrón, and the use of the grid in 1950s and 1960s abstraction can be observed in Anna Bella Geiger’s video Passagens II from 1974 or in Emilia Azcarate’s Sudoku series from 2009.

The earliest-made piece in the show is that of Uruguayan artist María Freire, who co-founded in 1952 the group Arte No-Figurativo along with her husband José Pedro Costigliolo, Antonio Llorens and other artists. Works like Composición vertical (1956), show her interest in orthogonal compositions and planar superimpositions, which along with her use of line demonstrate her interest not simply in abstraction and space but more specifically in dynamism. In a similar spirit, but resulting in a very different work, Judith Lauand’s Concrete 178 (1960) presents a flat geometric composition, in monochrome grays, that through a careful use of lines and planes suggests a volumetric and angular surface. Known as the “Dama do concretismo,” Lauand was the only female member of Brazil’s Grupo Ruptura, and created unique works through a very personal use of geometry, mathematics and space.

In contrast, Mercedes Pardo’s acrylic painting Untitled (c. 1975) explores space recession not through line but using color fields. The Venezuelan artist, who was a pioneer of abstract art in Venezuela along with her husband Alejandro Otero, focused on a sensorial use of color in abstract compositions to achieve the autonomy of painting. Along with Pardo, the other representative of geometric abstraction from Venezuela in this exhibition is Margot Römer, whose triptych from the series Plomos Despojados (1995) uses the panel subdivisions to present three variations of a rectangular structure by alternating the color distribution. A similar emphasis in color is seen in Acrylic No. 7, painted in 1978 by Colombian artist Fanny Sanín, who creates a complex arrangement of intersecting rectangles of different purple hues. This simple alteration of tone in one color still allows Sanín to create a rich composition of receding planes that suggests rhythmic movement and dynamism. Indeed, movement is directly incorporated in Essai de Couleur Animée, a film made by Ana Sacerdote in between 1959 and 1965 in which she interposes geometric chromatic compositions, animating their shapes.

The case of Regina Aprijaskis exemplifies the difficulties of being a woman artist and of combining work and personal life. The Peruvian artist was developing a fruitful career and became interested in abstraction in the 1950s and 1960s after two trips to New York, but abandoned painting in 1970 following the coup d’état in Peru two years earlier, to work alongside her husband in his factory. Her 1996 acrylic painting Negro, rojo y blanco demonstrates how her interest in geometric abstraction stayed intact after a 26-year hiatus, at the same time the choice of the Peruvian flag’s colors seems to speak directly about her country’s political and social struggles.

Other works in the show leave color aside and refer to the white monochrome also with the means of exploring geometry and space.  That is the case of Ana Mercedes Hoyos’ 1970s series Atmósferas, where subtle variations of white hues suggest surfaces on the canvas. Similarly, Anna Maria Maiolino’s Light Image (1971) depends on a simple square embossing on paper to invoke the tradition of the monochrome. The square is also the theme of Gego’s Dibujo sin papel 79/14, made in 1979. Famous for her Reticuláreas, or net sculptures, in this work the Venezuelan artist uses wire and metal to frame a piece of the wall, allowing the shadow to become part of the work, continuing the integration of work and exhibition space that allowed her work to spatially affect the spectator.

The relationship between the gallery space and the visitor’s body became a main topic of interest for artists in the late 1960s, notably within Minimalism and among Western artists, but similar creative inquiries were being made in Latin America. Argentinean artist Noemí Escandell created sculptural projects such as Rectangles and Squares and Volumes, Bodies and Displacements, both from 1966, in which basic geometric shapes are combined in odd dispositions to affect the tridimensional perception of the object. In Venezuela, Antonieta Sosa was doing similar work with pieces like Stable-Unstable (1967/2014), which put into question geometry and the laws of gravity while simultaneously presenting organically aesthetic objects.

The body would later be presented directly, rather than invoked, in the work of artists such as Liliana Porter and Yeni & Nan. The Argentine is represented with her 1973 work Untitled (Line), in which her finger is photographed as interrupting a line, one that transcends the frame of the work onto the real space of the wall. In the Polaroid series Cuerpo y línea (1977), the Venezuelan duo Yeni & Nan position their bodies along the geometric designs of a tennis court, evolving the linear and geometric tradition of their home country to include performance and body art.

The urban space is also the canvas chosen by Brazilian conceptual artist Anna Bella Geiger, whose video Passagens II (1974) shows her body creating diagonal trajectories in the grid-like formation of the steps of a stairway. In a similar approach, Lotty Rosenfeld’s ongoing series Geometría de la línea, begun in 1979, intervenes the infinite number of broken white lines that divide a road with intersecting, transversal lines, in a formal but also powerfully political performance associated to her participation in the CADA group protesting the dictatorship in Chile. The relationship between geometry and power is explicit in Marta Minujín’s The Obelisk Lying Down (1978). The work, created for the first Latin American Biennial in São Pablo, presents the geometrical structure of the famous monumental form lying down, allowing spectators to walk through it in a democratizing and desacralizing gesture.

In the exhibition we also encounter more expressive uses of abstraction, where experimentation with materials led to more free-flowing forms. This is the case of Mirtha Dermisache’s graphisms from the 1970s, where the lines drawn by the Argentine artist sinuously move to create abstract texts. The abstract sculpture Untitled (1981) by Colombian artist Feliza Brusztyn, who in 1967 created the famous series of motorized sculptures Las histéricas, also combines dissonant materials into visually striking, amorphous objects. Trinidanian artist Valerie Brathwaite opts for anti-geometric shapes in her Soft Bodies, a series initiated in 2011, where the hanging and floor fabric sculptures play fluidly between the borders of figuration and abstraction.

After all these decades, geometry is still very much present in the work of younger artists. Sometimes the continuity takes place by claiming geometric abstraction directly, like Mercedes Elena González’s series September 1955 (2014), which re-conceptualizes the cover of the inaugural issue of the art and architecture magazine Integral to reevaluate the legacy of modernism in Venezuela. Others adapt geometric abstraction into new formats, like the wood piece Untitled (Free Construction No. 1) (2005) by Diana de Solares. In the case of Elizabeth Jobim’s Wall (2015), geometric shapes invade the wall and floor, overlapping each other and creating optical layers. Emilia Azcárate’s Untitled (Sudoku), from 2009 takes the grid of that game as influence and codifies numbers into colors, allowing her to create a meditative abstraction that juxtaposes the game’s problem with its solution. Formally opposite to this grid but equally colorful is Adriana Santiago’s Untitled from the series Maracaibo (2015), which combines pompoms into a frame in a playful and appealing tactile composition. The work of Marta Chilindrón retakes the tradition of dynamic planes and shapes of Gego and Lygia Clark but includes color as a key part of her manipulable works such as 27 Triangles (2011). Finally, Mariela Scafati goes back to the original questions of abstract painting in her works Tu nombre completo and Nueve minutos exactos, both from 2015, which literally –through bondage ropes— and conceptually –by transforming them into objects— tense the possibilities of what a painting can be: not a representation but an object, a body itself.

These interactions between the artwork, its surrounding spaces and the bodies that interact with it are present through the sixty years in which these artworks were created. The formal explorations initiated by the historical avant-gardes have not, as proven by the younger generation, exhausted themselves. This group of women artists from Latin America offer a wide range of answers to these questions, all personal but also collective. The line and the plane not only folded but became the body, expanding the shape of art above and beyond.

Aimé Iglesias Lukin

August 18, 2015 Gabriel Sierra & Clarissa Tossin: MetaModern https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/gabriel-sierra-clarissa-tossin-metamodern/

METAMODERN

Artists: Conrad Bakker, Constantin Boym, Kendell Carter, Jordi Colomer, William Cordova, Elmgreen & Dragset, Fernanda Fragateiro, Terence Gower, Brian Jungen, Olga Koumoundouros, Jill Magid, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Dorit Margreiter, Josiah McElheny, Edgar Orlaineta, Gabriel Sierra, Simon Starling, Clarissa Tossin, Barbara Visser, and James Welling.

MetaModern
May 30 – August 30, 2015
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
Scottsdale, AZ, USA

The fresh and provocative artworks presented in MetaModern refer literally and conceptually to modernist design objects of the mid-century. These historic objects have gained the status of icons. It is a testament to their enduring power that they now catalyze a generation of artists too young to have experienced modernism firsthand.

The notion of modernist design and architecture had its genesis in Europe, particularly during an intense decade of experimentation at the Bauhaus beginning in Weimar, Germany, in 1919. Function and utility were the school’s ethos, while the use of modern materials, honesty of form, and an embrace of abstraction were its hallmarks. World War II shifted the activity to this side of the ocean, as European practitioners, including Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Richard Neutra emigrated to the United States and joined the faculties of American architectural schools. Modernism was held as truth by the generations of students they trained: emerging in the 1960s and ’70s, these young designers felt they had arrived at a place beyond style. Modernism was the pure and true mode in which to design everything from typography to furniture to architecture.

When architects, those removed by several generations from the birth of modernism, came to maturity as designers––Frank Gehry, Charles Moore, and Robert Venturi––they challenged all that modernism had embraced. Their vocabulary included fanciful embellishment, applied color, decorative patterning, and references to historical styles.

Now, over 90 years after the revolution at the Bauhaus, modernism continues to spark a passion in designers and collectors. The prices of signature objects of the classic modernist era are soaring, and its buildings are being restored and valued as historical monuments. Although vintage Eames rockers have been integrated into contemporary high-end living rooms, they are quite different in these new eclectic contexts. Similarly, artists who incorporate iconic modernist designs in their work today often produce recombinations and modifications that result in an entirely unique mix––or meta, meaning beyond, changed, self-referential, and abstracted from another concept. Using classic elements in new configurations, these artists are making original works of art that comment on the claims of the past in light of the complexities of the present.

The artists in this exhibition, most of whom were born in the 1960s, adopt the actual vocabulary of the modern movement to question the content of its style and its relationship to history. Their work challenges the tenets of modernism head on. Often ironic and witty, the works in this exhibition offer a thoughtful critique of innumerable issues that extend across the fields of design and history.

August 12, 2015 Dario Escobar: Summer Hang https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/dario-escobar-summer-hang/

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Artists: Ana Bidart, Linus Bill + Adrien Horni, Jonathan Callan, Jacob El Hanani, Dario Escobar, and Julianne Swartz.

Summer Hang
Through August 12, 2015
Josée Bienvenu
New York, USA

Ana Bidart explores the possibilities and more so, the impossibilities of drawing. She brings found objects together in space and across time, and her works establish a tangible record of ephemeral relationships encountered. With Disappointment she reconstitutes meaning in the potential interaction between a compass, that does not draw, and a coiled wire, that is precariously suspended.

Swiss artists Linus Bill and Adrien Horni create collages and paintings with powerful aesthetics, bold gestures and brave dimensions. Bill and Horni produce work by assembling smaller collages, which later become part of a larger collage. They only determine a final result after countless trials and manipulations to the images (physically and digitally). With NY P.5 TL, the pair continues their ongoing explorations of process, form, and presentational strategy by combining inkjet printing, silkscreen, painting, drawing, and assemblage.

Jonathan Callan explores the relationship of disembodied knowledge to embodied experience and materiality, working with publications – books, maps, and photographs – as a source material.Entertaining is made up of 72 separate pages from a cookbook, isolating a single dish or ingredient on each page and removing everything else with sandpaper. Together the dishes (though legible as food when close up) appear as strange planets or discs in space. Some of the dishes are isolated and then completely removed, leaving a ghostly blank. Along with all the pieces where a single aspect of a page is highlighted, Entertaining explores the illustrative notion of the self, the removal of context and the substitution of a painterly space. In fact the background can often seem rendered with pastel or even fresco, and Callan likes to think of Entertaining as a composition of drawings.

Jacob El Hanani’s work draws upon the tradition of micrography in Judaism, a technique utilized in decoration and transcribing holy texts. El Hanani creates highly intricate works, like Circle and Line, through the painstaking repetition of minuscule marks repeated thousands of times using ink on paper or canvas. He draws these images without magnification; in order to reduce eyestrain, he rests every ten minutes. The end result is a work of extraordinary detail that appears to be a pattern from a distance, and speaks of the passage of time and the link between the microscopic and the infinite.

Dario Escobar is renowned for his sculptural re-contextualization of everyday objects. His work explores concepts of cultural and historical hybridity ultimately attempting to reexamine Western art history from a Guatemalan perspective.  Reticula, part of Dario Escobar’s “ultramoderno” project commenting on the failed utopia of modernism in Central America, 50 pool triangles made in Taiwan becomes a relief, and its composition follows a modern grid. Escobar’s work, characterized by the use of materials charged with historical and symbolic meaning, is articulated in a minimalist language like in Yellow Composition, a linseed oil drawing, and the wall sculpture.

Julianne Swartz’s sound works explore the entanglement of subjectivities and sensations through multilayered arrangements. In Alma’s Blanket Israel, sounds are harvested from the everyday: fragments of recordings from people, nature, instruments and environments. Some are intimate, some generic, some identifiable, and some obscure. These sounds, entwined together, weave in and out of aural focus to make a symphonic collage. The dense textile of woven and knotted, colored electrical wires, forms a series of functional circuits that distribute four channels of sound to the numerous speakers interleaved in the weaving.

August 12, 2015 Jorge Pedro Núñez: Fantasy https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/jorge-pedro-nunez-fantasy/

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Artist: Jorge Pedro Núñez

Fantasy
August 6, 2015
Ignacio Liprandi Arte Contemporáneo
Buenos Aires, Argentina

…La tecnología historiográfica también nació con una distorsión inicialmente politizada: la convención de las periodizaciones de la historia se tomó prestada de la historiografía política y así se tradujo en la museología moderna. Los últimos trabajos de Jorge Pedro Núñez (Caracas, 1976) ponen en cuestión la lógica misma del museo. El marco o la vitrina, modalidades convencionales del parergon, de la delimitación del campo que contiene el signo artístico en su interior, son utilizados como un espacio de confrontación entre elementos históricos concatenados….

Manuel Sagade

August 6, 2015 Barbarita Cardozo: Tigersprung https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/barbarita-cardozo-tigersprung-2/

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Artist: Barbarita Cardozo

Tigersprung
July 16- August 23, 2015
Museo Iglesia Santa Clara
Bogotá, Colombia

Esta exposición parte de una revisión a las colecciones del traje del siglo XVIII y XIX de algunos museos de la ciudad y el concepto Tigersprung de Walter Benjamín, que propone una mirada a los trajes de la época, para abordar de manera contemporánea temáticas propias de la moda: el vestuario, el accesorio y la imagen. La exposición presenta un recorrido por trajes creados por Cardozo, en colaboración con la diseñadora de modas Olga Piedrahíta; accesorios históricos de las colecciones del Museo Colonial, Museo de la Independencia – Casa del Florero y de colecciones privadas de moda; y acuarelas inspiradas en las acuarelas de usos y costumbres.

August 6, 2015 Emilia Azcárate, Sigfredo Chacón, Emilio Chapela, Osvaldo Romberg, Eduardo Santiere & Horacio Zabala: Grafías y ecuaciones https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilia-azcarate-sigfredo-chacon-emilio-chapela-osvaldo-romberg-eduardo-santiere-horacio-zabala-grafias-y-ecuaciones/

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Artists: Emilia Azcárate, Artur Barrio, Jacques Bedel, Coco Bedoya, Luis F. Benedit, Paulo Bruscky, Jorge Caraballo, Sigfredo Chacón, Emilio Chapela, Guillermo Deisler, Mirtha Dermisache, Anna Bella Geiger , León Ferrari, Jaime Higa, Eduardo Kac, Leandro Katz, Guillermo Kuitca, David Lamelas, Marie Orensanz , Clemente Padín, Claudio Perna, Federico Peralta Ramos, Dalila Puzzovio, Juan Pablo Renzi, Osvaldo Romberg, Juan Carlos Romero, Eduardo Santiere, Mira Schendel, Pablo Suarez, Horacio Zabala, and Carlos Zerpa.

Grafías y ecuaciones
June 1 – August 5, 2015
Henrique Faria Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, Argentina

¿En qué momento una letra se convierte en una figura, un garabato en un signo, una línea en un significante, una imagen en una palabra, un poema en un dibujo, una consigna política en una afirmación de lo sensible? ¿En qué momento, en qué preciso momento, nuestra percepción se disloca para entrar en una zona de turbulencia en la  que se entreveran signos y figuras? Grafías y ecuaciones es una exploración en las obras de artistas que transitaron por esa zona de turbulencia donde las divisiones convencionales entre palabra e imagen ya no funcionan.

Las grafías de las obras que se exhiben en esta exposición son también ecuaciones: equivalencias y analogías que hace la imaginación para encontrarse con la diferencia, lo irreductible o el sinsentido en un laberinto de trazos metafísicos, políticos o plásticos. Sea como medición previa para cualquier obra, sea como traducción irrisoria o paródica, sea como pasaje de un sistema a otro, la diferencia entre signo lingüístico e imagen visual colapsa para dar lugar a un campo experimental que nos impulsa a una indagación por el Sentido y, al mismo tiempo, a una exploración de los sentidos.

Gonzalo Aguilar

August 5, 2015 José Dávila & Ricardo Rendón: In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/jose-davila-ricardo-rendon-girum-imus-nocte-et-consumimur-igni/

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Artists: Bas Jan Ader, Carlos Amorales, Joseph Beuys, Monica Bonvicini, Stefan Brüggemann, Jeff Burton, Anne Collier, Jose Dávila, Moyra Davey, Carroll Dunham, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Olafur Eliasson, Tracey Emin, Cerith Wyn Evans, Claire Fontaine, Garea, Gelitin, Liam Gillick, Felix González Torres, Thomas Hirschhorn, Jim Hodges, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Dennis Hopper, On Kawara, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, Gabriel Kuri, Abigail Lane, Gonzalo Lebrija, Jesús León, Robert Longo, Sarah Lucas, David Lynch, John McCraken, Sarah Morris, Ugo Mulas, Luis Felipe Ortega, Jorge Pardo, Liliana Porter, Richard Prince, Tobias Rehberger, Daniela Rossell, Thomas Ruff, Alan Saret, Hedi Slimane, Dash Snow, Mungo Thomson, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Luis Emilio Valdés Rodríguez, John Waters, Ricardo Rendón, and many more.

In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni
July 11 – October 4, 2015
Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo
Mexico City, Mexico

Con más de cien obras de la Colección Jumex, In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni explora varios acercamientos a la curaduría que nos ayudarán a entender las elecciones implícitas en los actos de formar yactivar una colección de arte. Además de participar en la selección de obras para la exposición, los artistas Bernadette Corporation, Nicolas Ceccaldi y Peter Wächtler también fueron comisionados para crear piezas inspiradas en obras de la Colección Jumex.

July 23, 2015 Ivan Navarro: Storylines https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ivan-navarro-storylines/

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Artists: Paweł Althamer, Julieta Aranda, Matthew Barney, Kevin Beasley, John Bock, Carol Bove, Ernesto Caivano, Mariana Castillo Deball, Maurizio Cattelan, Trisha Donnelly, Shannon Ebner, Simon Fujiwara, Ellie Ga, Gerard & Kelly, Simryn Gill, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Rachel Harrison, Camille Henrot, Juliana Huxtable, Rashid Johnson, Matt Keegan, Agnieszka Kurant, Mark Leckey, Lee Bul, Zoe Leonard, Glenn Ligon, Sharon Lockhart, Nate Lowman, Mark Manders, Ryan McGinley, Josephine Meckseper, Zanele Muholi, Iván Navarro, Catherine Opie, Gabriel Orozco, Laura Owens, Katie Paterson, R. H. Quaytman, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Xaviera Simmons, Taryn Simon, Alexandre Singh, Agathe Snow, Ryan Trecartin, Danh Vo, Sharif Waked, Jonas Wood, and Haegue Yang.

Storylines: Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim
June 5 – September 9, 2015
Guggenheim Museum
NYC, NY, USA

Visual art has always been closely associated with storytelling. In Western culture, painting and sculpture initially evolved to illuminate narratives of religion, patronage, and power. Over the centuries, genre scenes, still lifes, and portraits—often created as intricate allegories for religious or historical subject matter—became popular as the narrative role of art expanded. In the twentieth century, with the advent of abstraction as a radical break with the past, many artists associated with the avant-garde rejected the figurative and, hence, eliminated explicit narrative content. In the United States and Europe, this tendency culminated during the 1960s and 1970s in Minimal painting and sculpture that foregrounded geometric abstraction and in Post-Minimalism’s examination of process and materiality. The 1980s witnessed a resurgence of figurative art, much of which harked back to expressionistic styles of the 1920s and 1930s.

During the 1990s, a generation of younger artists embraced the concept of storytelling to articulate the politics of identity and difference, investing both abstract and representational forms with narrative content. Storylines opens with key examples from that decade, which serve as thematic anchors and highlight the museum’s own exhibition history. Most of the works on view, however, were created after 2005 and offer an expansive view of the new paradigms for storytelling forged during the past ten years to communicate ideas about race, gender, sexuality, history, and politics, among other trenchant themes.

Bringing together over one hundred works from the Guggenheim’s contemporary collection, Storylines examines the diverse ways in which artists today engage narrative through installation, painting, photography, sculpture, video, and performance. For these artists, storytelling does not necessarily require plots, characters, or settings. Rather, narrative potential lies in everyday objects and materials, and their embedded cultural associations. In projects created through extensive research, acts of appropriation, or performance, the artists in Storylines uncover layers of meaning, turning to individual experience as a means of conveying shared stories, whether real or fictional.

The recent narrative turn in contemporary art cannot be separated from the current age of social media with its reverberating cycles of communication, dissemination, and interpretation. Seemingly every aspect of life is now subject to commentary and circulation via digital text and images. These new narrative frames highlight the roles that each of us can play as both author and reader, foregrounding the fact that meaning is contingent in today’s interconnected and multivalent world. As a means of celebrating this dynamic, the museum has invited writers to contribute reflections—in prose or poetry—on selected works in Storylines. Engaging the rich historical relationship between literature and art, the resulting polyphony signals the diverse interpretive potential that lies within each object on display. Visitors may access these texts using the Guggenheim app or in booklets located throughout the museum.

July 21, 2015 Marcius Galan: Inmaterialidade https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcius-galan-inmaterialidade/

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Artists: Brígida Baltar, Carlito Carvalhosa, Fabiana de Barros & Michel Favre, José Damasceno, Laura Vinci, Marcius Galan, Marcos Chaves, Paola Junqueira, Paulo Vivacqua, Waltercio Caldas, Anthony McCall, Ben Vautier, Bruce Nauman, Ceal Floyer, François Morellet, James Turrell, Keith Sonnier and Ryan Gander.

Inmaterialidade
Curated by Adon Peres and Ligia Canongia
July 2 – September 27, 2015
SESC Belenzinho (Leste)
Belem, Brazil

A mostra de arte contemporânea traz diferentes artistas cujos trabalhos evocam a desmaterialização, a sublimação da matéria, ou, artistas que têm o impalpável como elemento principal do trabalho – som, luz, ar, palavra.

July 21, 2015 Lucia Koch: Solo show https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/lucia-koch-solo-show/

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Artist: Lucia Koch

Lucia Koch, let there be a set X
July 10 – September 4, 2015
Christopher Grimes Gallery
Santa Monica, CA, USA

Throughout her career Lucia Koch has become known for her interventions within existing architecture, either through her use of sculpture, photography, video or colored filters. In this, her second exhibition with the gallery, she will intersect the entire space with a gradient printed on fabric — something that moves in space but is constant, subtle, transformative and never repeating. In addition, ordinary windows will be replaced with colored panels disrupting one’s expectation, and images of small, empty containers enlarged to architectural scale disassociate the photographs from their references and challenge how we relate to space. Through all of these strategies, Koch elevates basic elements of architecture to effect change in one’s immediate atmosphere and physical surroundings.

Lucia Koch (b. 1966, Porto Alegre, Brazil) lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. She has recently participated inProspect 3, New Orleans, LA (2015), curated by Franklin Sirmans; Cruzamentos: Contemporary Art in Brazil, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2014); A Sense of Place, Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco, CA (2014); and Re-emerge: Towards a New Cultural Cartography, 11th Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates (2013). She has been included in the 11th Biennale de Lyon, France (2011); 27th Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (2006); 2nd, 5th and 8th editions of the Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil (1999, 2005 and 2011); and the 8th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey (2003). Her work has been included in such exhibitions as, Another Place, Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo, Brazil (2011), andWhen Lives Become Form, Yerba Buena Center for Arts, San Francisco, CA (2009), which was also on view at Contemporary Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2008). Koch’s work is in the collections of such institutions as Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil and Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil, among others. In 2016 she will be the subject of a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

July 16, 2015 Barbarita Cardozo: Tigersprung https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/barbarita-cardozo-tigersprung/

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Artist: Barbarita Cardozo

Tigersprung
July 16 – August 23, 2015
Museo Iglesia Santa Clara
Bogotá, Colombia

Para Benjamin, las arcadas, como objeto histórico significativo e “imagen del deseo y del sueño del colectivo”,xiv son también el Jano de doble rostro: lo que él llama la “ambiguedad de las arcadas”xv las transforma en lo que, en el sugerente término empleado por su asociado y comentarista Theodor Adorno, es una “imagen dialéctica”,xvi apuntando en dos direcciones al mismo tiempo y expresión tanto de la opresión (por la ideología del consumismo) y de la liberación (dentro de la utopía de la abundancia).

Christopher Rollason

July 16, 2015 Gabriel de la Mora: Tres pies: el enigma de la sucesión. Envejecimiento y retiro https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/gabriel-de-la-mora-tres-pies-el-enigma-de-la-sucesion-envejecimiento-y-retiro/

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Artists: Alejandra Avilés, Gabriel Boils, Virginia Colwell, Rodolfo Díaz Cervantes, Miguel Fernández de Castro, Helena Fernández Cavada, Renato Garza, Sonia Hedstrand, Gonzalo Lebrija, Gabriel de la Mora, Víctor Lerma y Mónica Mayer, Carla Rippey, Ling Sepúlveda.

Tres pies: el enigma de la sucesión. Envejecimiento y retiro
Curaduría: Víctor Palacios y Felipe Zúñiga
June 20 – September 20, 2015
Casa del Lago
Mexico City, Mexico

Exposición colectiva que aborda desde distintas perspectivas artísticas, la experiencia humana del envejecimiento y el retiro. ¿Qué sucede cuando llegamos a esa edad? ¿En qué ocupan su tiempo las personas jubiladas? ¿Es el retiro una medida económica más que humana? ¿Cómo moldea ésta nuestro presente y nuestra visión del futuro?

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Foto cortesía de Gabriel de la Mora

July 13, 2015 Guido Ignatti: Sistemas de recuperación de la catástrofe https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/guido-ignatti-sistemas-de-recuperacion-de-la-catastrofe/

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Artist: Guido Ignatti

Sistemas de recuperación de la catástrofe
July 7 – August 7, 2015
Nora Fisch Arte Contemporáneo
Buenos Aires, Argentina

La instalación de Guido Ignatti presenta una serie de macetas caídas y rotas, como símbolo de un auge venido a menos, sus plantas con destino incierto están ahora sometidas a una serie de medidas para su recuperación, sostenidas por sistemas de alambres y flejes que las erigen nuevamente. Vienen acompañadas por instructivos para su multiplicación por sistema de esquejes. Las piezas que componen esta instalación funcionan como una metáfora del momento posterior a una tragedia y las posibilidades de recuperarse por medio de un tratamiento que circunstancialmente podría ser traumático. Cada pieza es una obra viva y en cierto modo performática, que se completa con un plan de acción tendiente a la supervivencia de la especie. Esta muestra es una precuela ya que se va a realizar en una escala mayor en el contexto de una exhibición individual de Ignatti en el Museum of Contemporary Art de Denver, Colorado, Estados Unidos, donde el artista presentará cuatro grandes instalaciones a mediados del 2016.

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July 13, 2015 Jaime Ruiz Otis: Coordenadas/Frecuencias/Fisuras https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/jaime-ruiz-otis-coordenadasfrecuenciasfisuras/

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Artist: Jaime Ruiz Otis.

Coordenadas/Frecuencias/Fisuras
July 11 – August 22, 2015
Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo
Mexico City, Mexico

Por más de diez años, Jaime Ruiz Otis ha empleado como método de trabajo la exploración de los contenedores de residuos industriales en las maquiladoras de Baja California. Como resultado, este artista ha conformado una vasta y heterogénea colección de objetos y materias primas con los que produce su obra. Entre estos materiales se encuentran miles de calcomanías utilizadas para identificar las características de aparatos electrónicos y de cómputo, cuyos sobrantes o series defectuosas son desechados en grandes volúmenes.

Una característica constante en la obra de Ruiz Otis ha sido la identificación de los momentos en que la eficiencia de los procesos mecánicos e industriales es interrumpida: la mano humana, aunque invisible, se vuelve necesaria. Sin embargo en Coordenadas / Frecuencias / Fisuras, en vez de observar el accidente, este artista mecaniza sus propios movimientos y labor compositiva intuyendo patrones visuales derivados de las características de cada calcomanía. Este ejercicio de repetición constituye un mantra del que se despliegan formas caleidoscópicas y juegos ópticos variables, de acuerdo con las distancias y perspectivas desde las que se aprecien.

July 9, 2015 Marcius Galan: Empty House Casa Vazia https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcius-galan-empty-house-casa-vazia/

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Artists: Waltercio Caldas, Lygia Clark, Raymundo Colares, Adriano Costa, Alexandre da Cunha, Amílcar de Castro, Willys de Castro, Antonio Dias, Marcius Galan, Fernanda Gomes, Jac Leirner, Rodrigo Matheus, Paulo Monteiro, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape, Mira Schendel, Tunga, and Erika Verzutti.

Empty House Casa Vazia
Jun 27 – August 28, 2014
Luhring Augustine
NYC,  NY, USA

Empty House Casa Vazia is a sculpture exhibition featuring a cross-generational group of Brazilian artists whose works engage the legacy of 1950s Neoconcretism. Challenging the rationalism and universal objectivity of early abstraction, the artists associated with this movement sought a means of expression beyond an object’s immutable formal properties, and embraced a phenomenological, at times participatory, approach in their efforts to expand the vocabulary of sculpture.Empty House Casa Vazia does not aim to tell a genealogical story. Rather, the exhibition forefronts the experiential here-and-now of the works presented, as well as sets the stage for diverse dialogues between iconic historical works and recent statements in contemporary sculpture. These conceptually rigorous and sometimes unassuming works offer critical insight into questions of materiality, tactility, and space. They are drawn together by a shared artistic language that emphasizes an economy of means and, most importantly, by a poetic, often playful sensibility.
July 9, 2015 Gabriel Acevedo Velarde: Pasillo de documentos e imágenes promocionales https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/gabriel-acevedo-velarde-solo-show/

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Artist: Gabriel Acevedo Velarde.

Pasillo de documentos e imágenes promocionales
July 7 – August 14, 2015
80m2 Livia Benavides
Lima, Peru

“Cuando las puertas del ascensor se abrieron en el piso 22, no podía ubicar la relación entre este hall y la posición del edificio respecto a la entrada. De hecho, olvidé por unos instantes cómo había llegado ahí. La panorámica de la ciudad soleada entraba por amplias ventanas levemente cubiertas de polvo reluciente. ¿Era este el ministerio desde donde se podía ver el mar a lo lejos? ¿Era aquí donde estaban los estudios del primer canal de televisión? “Por aquí, por favor”, me dice el encargado.

Hay un espacio en común entre el mundo de deseos subjetivos y la experiencia de las instituciones modernas, como el estado o el museo. Es un estado de “quasi-escenografía” en donde estas dos dimensiones se distorsionan mutuamente. Ahora, por ejemplo, tuve varios encargos: concebir la imagen institucional del canal de televisión estatal, diseñar la portada de un libro sobre un caso histórico de corrupción y hacer una exposición individual. Hace unos días, mientras corría al lado del mar, pensaba que todo esto demandaba simultáneamente responsabilidad ciudadana y un enfoque personal.

Mientras el encargado me llevaba a través de pasillos de oficinas cerradas, yo trataba de grabar en la memoria todo lo que veía. Esos segundos se convirtieron en horas, días, tal vez años de imágenes, algunas vívidas, otras filtradas por casets de VHS o Betamax. En algún momento mi sonrisa se detuvo frente a la cara del Jefe de Personal, que me dijo que no, no se puede. Gracias de todas maneras, respondí sin dejar de sonreír, pues sabía que en realidad no necesitaba su permiso. Sólo quería conocer el edificio por dentro.” – G.A.V

July 8, 2015 Iván Navarro & Ishmael Randall Weeks: New Ways of Seeing https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ivan-navarro-ishmael-randall-weeks-new-ways-seeing/

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Artists: Claudia Alvarez, Afruz Amighi, Rina Banerjee, Christian Ruiz Berman, Sanford Biggers, Cui Fei, Leonardo Drew, Rashawn Griffin, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Wenda Gu, Ginny Huo, Tamiko Kawata, Iván Navarro & Courtney Smith, Kambui Olujimi, Cecilia Paredes, Soo Sunny Park, Yinka Shonibare, Nari Ward, and Ishmael Randall Weeks.

New Ways of Seeing: Beyond Culture
May 10 – July 12, 2015
Dorsky Gallery – Curatorial Programs
Long Island City, NY, USA

New Ways of Seeing: Beyond Culture features works by emerging and seasoned artists of African/ African American, Asian/Asian American, Latino/ Hispanic, and Middle Eastern heritages who are changing and expanding the vocabulary and agendas of the art world by injecting ideas from their world cultures and experiences. These proactive artists utilize materials and imagery in innovative ways that address themes including race, gender, ritual, craft, and language. Their materials often challenge existing associations and subvert expectations. They break down barriers to create new mythologies. Their works conflate the local and global, past and present, fact and fiction. These artists are “transcending the limits of individual cultures.”1

The phrase “New Ways of Seeing” acknowledges that many past and present interpretations of culture are flawed, incomplete, or even false. As we know, scholars from ancient to Post-Colonial and Postmodern times had different views and agendas, often excluding women. In another direction, cultures borrow from, adapt, and change each other in myriad ways.

July 8, 2015 Ricardo Alcaide: One Phenomenon Among Others https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ricardo-alcaide-one-phenomenon-among-others/

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Artist: Ricardo Alcaide

One Phenomenon Among Others
July 4 – 25, 2015
Baró Jardins – Baró Gallery
Sao Paulo, Brazil

Com base na experiência e percepção de como a sociedade funciona e lida com os problemas causados pelas condições de vida modernas nas grandes cidades, o trabalho recente de Ricardo Alcaide tem criado diferentes paralelos entre a combinação de princípios da arquitetura modernista com a precariedade que se manifesta na vida cotidiana, revelando o progresso na sociedade como vago, perdendo rapidamente a sua forma.

Em sua terceira exposição na galeria Baró, One Phenomenon Among Others (Um fenômeno entre outros), Ricardo Alcaide apresenta suas mais recentes pinturas realizadas sobre paneis de MDF com tinta industrial. No processo, o artista constrói estruturas temporárias de madeira sobre o suporte para criar limites e divisões que conformam a composição, posteriormente removidas. Trata-se neste caso de uma aproximação fictícia de partes de mobiliário desmanchado que retém a memoria da estrutura já inexistente. Eis aqui um “ato de desconstrução” no processo real que conta como o ponto mais relevante deste trabalho. A recriação abstrata revela esta descontrolada e imprecisa condição e reflete  – novamente – sobre a falência do progresso associado com a estética moderna dentro de seu discurso. O resultado pode ser percebido formalmente como pura abstração com possíveis leituras do neoconcretismo, mas o que reside por trás disso são anedotas e formas simbólicas da dura realidade de hoje e de seu “progresso” subdesenvolvido.

July 6, 2015 Bernardo Ortiz: 180615 https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/bernardo-ortiz-180615/

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Artist: Bernardo Ortiz

180615
June 18 – July 31, 2015
Casas Riegner
Bogotá, Colombia

En varios de sus escritos Gilles Deleuze dejó consignado que el pensamiento se produce a partir de un campo de posibilidades, de allí se deriva lo que denominó “la imagen del pensamiento”: aquello que nos permite hacerlo visible o enunciable. De forma similar, Bernardo Ortiz busca develar en su obra soportes y recursos que posibilitan la experiencia visual: la imagen como resultado de una amalgama de soluciones técnicas y materiales — como texto hecho de capas— se hace presente en dibujos, instalaciones e intervenciones.

Para 180615, su más reciente exposición individual en Casas Riegner, Ortiz continúa explorando entre posibilidades o límites que, de forma particular, se hacen evidentes en el arte: lo perceptible y lo imperceptible, lo reproducible y lo irreproducible, lo actual y lo potencial, lo real y lo ficticio. Haciendo uso de soluciones formales que van desde sobreponer dibujos, intervenir los soportes con distintas capas de gouache o perforaciones, contrastar colores afectando la legibilidad de las palabras, o reuniendo trazos hechos a mano con impresos — al igual que trazos precisos con pinceladas despreocupadas— el artista busca acercar lo conceptual a lo material. De tal forma, la muestra compone una narrativa marcada por gestos, referencias y acentos, que además emplea como recurso la ruptura de escala, ubicando dibujos de gran tamaño sobre diferentes soportes como una gran estructura en madera de balso.

De forma particular, en 180615 también están presentes técnicas en desuso como la digitalización de imágenes en TeX (1) y las impresiones heliográficas, métodos que enfatizan la cualidad fotográfica de la imagen y aluden a procesos obsoletos que evidencian sus límites: tanto la fotografía, la pintura, el dibujo como la proyección, están compuestas por unidades mínimas. Así, la reproducción, la copia, el dibujo del dibujo o la foto del dibujo, convergen borrando los límites entre técnicas, conceptos y discursos.

Si a cada época han correspondido diversas formas de producir una imagen, Ortiz se da a la tarea de crear instantáneas en las que se hacen perceptibles sus mecanismos. Después de todo, la experiencia visual, que muchas veces parece reducida a la imagen, es el producto de un complejo sustrato.

Bernardo Ortiz (Bogotá, 1972) estudió Artes Plásticas, Filosofía y Literatura. Ha realizado muestras individuales en Bogotá, São Paulo y Sevilla, y ha participado en renombradas exposiciones internacionales entre las cuales se destacan: II Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, Lyon, Francia (2011); Air de Lyon, Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2011); 30 Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil (2012); Prix Canson Nominees Exhibition, Petit Palais, París, Francia (2013); Marking Language, Drawing Room, Londres, Inglaterra (2013); 11 Bienal de Monterrey, Monterrey, México (2014); y 12 Bienal de Cuenca (2014).  Su obra hace parte de importantes colecciones como la del Museo de Arte Moderno de Nueva York, Tate Modern (Londres), Deutsche Bank (Frankfurt), Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (Nueva York), Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP, París) y Kadist Art Foundation, (París).

(1) Software de diseño gráfico de gran popularidad en la década del 70 para digitalizar imágenes.

July 6, 2015 Marcolina Dipierro, Bruno Dubner, Guido Ignatti, Julián León Camargo & Carola Zech: About Line https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcolina-dipierro-bruno-dubner-guido-ignatti-julian-leon-camargo-carola-zech-line/

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Artists: Gaspar Acebo, Marcolina DipierroBruno Dubner, Sofía Durrieu, Bruno Gruppalli, Julián León CamargoGuido Ignatti, Kirsten Mosel, Andrés Sobrino, Carola Zech.

About Line
July 3, 2015
Espacio Kamm
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Group show.

July 1, 2015 Marcius Galan, Bernardo Ortiz & Eduardo Terrazas: NOW! https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcius-galan-bernardo-ortiz-eduardo-terrazas-now/

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Artists: Kim Allen, Kari Altmann, Marcela Armas, Jeremy Bailey, Diego Berruecos, Zach Blas, Mariana Castillo Deball, Marcelo Cidade, Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker, Sterling Crispin, Debora Delmar Corp., de_sitio, Claudia Fernández, Francisco Fernández, Radamés “Juni” Figueroa, LaToya Ruby Frazie, Melissa Furness, Coco Fusco, Marcius Galan, Anna Bella Geiger, Cristóbal Gracia, David Hartt, Karl Haendel, Sarah Anne Johnson, André Komatsu, Robert Longo, Jorge Macchi, Laleh Mehran and Chris Coleman, Erick Meyenberg, Adam Milner, Nuria Montiel and Fernando Palma, Daniel Monroy Cuevas, Aliza Nisenbaum, Fernando Ortega, Bernardo Ortiz, Adam Pendleton, Tania Pérez Córdova, Jorge Satorre, Joaquín Segura, Matt Scobey, Skawennati, Eduardo Terrazas, and Ryan Trecartin.

NOW!
July 14–August 30, 2015
2015 Biennial of the Americas
Denver, CO, USA

The 2015 Biennial of the Americas is the third iteration of this international festival of ideas, art and culture in Denver, Colorado. The theme of the 2015 Biennial of the Americas is NOW! Today we stand on shifting ground, with one foot in a new geological era and one foot lingering on the structures of the past. The 2015 Biennial of the Americas will dive deep into our present circumstances, seeking to understand contexts, conditions, and challenges across the western hemisphere today.

Artistic program
Artists featured in the 2015 Biennial of the Americas from North, South and Central America and the Caribbean create visual art, music and dance in response to current issues and questions. They address specific situations where they live, as well as concerns shared across borders such as violence, environmental issues, technology, and social justice. Mexico City will form a particular focus in the program following the Biennial of the Americas Mexico City Summit held in June 2014.

Program highlights
The artists in the central exhibition of the Biennial of the Americas, Now? NOW! at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver capture complexities of now in the Western Hemisphere. The exhibition Oíd el Sueño de una Palabra / Listen to the Dream of a Word at the Biennial Pavilion in Downtown Denver results from a collaboration facilitated by Mexico City curatorial collective de_sitio. They invited a group of practitioners from different disciplines to interact with Museo Comunitario del Valle de Xico, a small, yet exemplary community organization in a marginal outskirt southeast of Mexico City. Vis-à-vis: Biennial Ambassadors Residency Exhibition at McNichols Civic Center features four ambitious new projects by artists Matt Scobey (US), Melissa Furness (US), Cristóbal Gracia (Mexico) and Daniel Monroy Cuevas (Mexico) developed through the 2015 Biennial Ambassadors Program. Aimed at nurturing creative links and deepening artistic dialogue across the Americas, the program focused for 2015 on connecting Denver and Mexico City through a series of ten-week residency exchanges run by contemporary art organizations ArtPlant and SOMA. Major public commissions by Mexico-based artists Erick Meyenberg and Marcela Armas examine the connection between Denver’s present, past and future.

Opening week festival and arts professional preview
July 14 to 19, all-day programming precedes evening symposia, and late night events celebrate the opening of Biennial venues. New this year is the Biennial Pavilion, a site for talks, workshops and performances, programmed with events throughout the summer.

Other highlights include a week-long residency of public performances and workshops by Brazil’s Companhia Urbana de Dança, presented in collaboration with the Newman Center for the Performing Arts, and a rare presentation of Matthew Barney’s latest film, River of Fundament, co-presented by the Clyfford Still Museum and Denver Art Museum. Biennial Night @ Civic Center, a major outdoor music and performance festival, features appearances by Jeremy Bailey (Canada), Black Violin (US), Wonderbound (US), and others.

The Artistic Director and Curator of the 2015 Biennial of the Americas is Lauren A. Wright.

Image: Robert Longo, Full-Scale Study for Five Rams (Ferguson, Hands Up: November 30, 2014), 2015. Charcoal on unique digital pigment print in 3 parts, 104 x 150 inches. Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York.
June 29, 2015 Francisco Ugarte: Paisaje Sugerido https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/francisco-ugarte-paisaje-sugerido/

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Artist: Francisco Ugarte

Paisaje Sugerido
May 15 – July 3, 2015
Curro y Poncho
Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico

The exhibited pieces have an interest in documenting changes within the natural environment in a specific time frame. Therefore, they are not meant to be observed necessarily from beginning to end, but to be seen like a scene through a vain.

Francisco Ugarte’s work is based on the grounds of architecture, mainly during the creative process: the proposal is generated from a deep focus in the environment, and a subsequent response to it. Using a variety of media including site-specific interventions, video, installation, sculpture and drawing, his work can be understood as a phenomenological exercise in which reality is comprehended through contemplation and perception of things.

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June 26, 2015 Rosario López Parra: Los Acueductos https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/rosario-lopez-parra-los-acueductos/

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Artist: Rosario López Parra.

Los Acueductos
July 5 – November 6, 2015
La Oficina del Dcotor, Casas Riegner
Bogotá, Colombia

Este proyecto desarrollado a partir de un archivo fotográfico de obras de ingeniería civil, “se basa en el poder de la fotografía como documento, pero también como objeto escultórico. Es decir, las fotografías recuperadas, independientemente que fueran obras de ingeniería sanitaria, proponen una apertura en el pensamiento contemporáneo de la escultura. Se leen como obras tridimensionales de gran envergadura que trascienden su funcionalidad y, en su emplazamiento, señalan un territorio apropiado y fragmentado del paisaje circundante”.

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June 26, 2015 Marcolina Dipierro: Acuerdo Formal https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcolina-dipierro-acuerdo-formal/

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Artists: Marcolina Dipierro and María Carballo.

Acuerdo Formal
June 2 – July 10, 2015
Fondo Nacional de las Artes
Buenos Aires, Argentina

En una fotografía existe la tensión que proviene del no saber qué viene antes o después, uno está suspendido en la ficción de ese instante único, atrapado en el medio de algo que se hace y se deshace.

‘Acuerdo Formal’ es una imagen que refleja este instante precisamente. La sala parece estar multiplicándose ocultamente hasta que entramos y presenciamos su estado congelado en disyuntiva. Como un cristal de hielo cuyos dos elementos se ordenan radicalmente con el aumento de la presión, así la arquitectura de la misma se expande en una acumulación geométrica de tabiques y goma, una configuración que es sólo una de sus posibilidades infinitas.

Construímos pisos para sostener las paredes que nos circundan y cortamos agujeros para movilizarnos entre ellas. Dipierro y Carballo toman estos elementos estructurales, los componentes básicos de todo recinto arquitectónico, como su punto de encuentro. La sala tradicional es por definición un espacio neutro o “no espacio” que permite que los observadores se absorban en una obra de arte sin sentirse conscientes de una restricción física. Las artistas responden precisamente a este modelo familiar y lo invierten. Mediante la réplica meticulosa del piso y paredes como únicos materiales, nos presentan un espacio compuesto solamente de su arquitectura, enfatizando la materialidad de aquello que normalmente se ignora.

Al toparse con los tabiques y tener que esquivar los desniveles del piso, somos conscientes de que la narrativa de la instalación se relaciona con nuestros cuerpos y cómo nos trasladamos por ella.

Vemos cómo una simple operación arquitectónica puede hacernos reconsiderar una sala familiar y darnos una textura diferente de aire, luz, y sonido.

-Claudia Cortinez

June 26, 2015 Graciela Hasper, Fernanda Laguna, José Luis Landet, Adriana Minoliti, Mariela Scafati, Pablo Siquier & Eduardo Stupía: My Buenos Aires https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/graciela-hasper-fernanda-laguna-jose-luis-landet-adriana-minoliti-mariela-scafati-pablo-siquier-eduardo-stupia-buenos-aires/

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Artists: Roberto Aizenberg, Nicanor Araoz, Marcela Astorga, Hugo Aveta, Nicolás Bacal, Ernesto Ballesteros, Eduardo Tomás Basualdo, Diego Bianchi, Joaquín Boz, Marcelo Brodsky, Eugenia Calvo, Gabriel Chaile, Nicola Costantino, Ariel Cusnir, Julián D’Angiolillo, Flavia Da Rin, Marina De Caro, Andrés Denegri, Mirtha Dermisache, Sebastián Diaz Morales, Matías Duville, Leandro Erlich, Tomás Espina & Martin Cordiano, León Ferrari, Ana Gallardo, Alberto Goldenstein, Gabriela Golder, Max Gómez Canle, Sebastián Gordin, Jorge Gumier Maier, Luján Fúnes, Graciela Hasper, Carlos Herrera, Carlos Huffmann, Roberto Jacoby, Magdalena Jitrik, Fabio Kacero, Guillermo Kuitca, Fernanda Laguna, Luciana Lamothe, José Luis Landet, Martín Legón, Catalina León, Donjo León, Marcos López, Jorge Macchi, Adriana Minoliti, Marta Minujín with Mark Brusse, Guillermina Mongan, Margarita Paksa, Esteban Pastorino, Marcelo Pombo, Santiago Porter, “Middle School Liliana Maresca Project” (Lorena Bossi, Ariel Cusnir, Sebastián Friedman, Leandro Tartaglia, Dani Zelko) with the students of highschool n°44 of La Cava de Fiorito, Pablo Reinoso, Marisa Rubio, Mariela Scafati, Pablo Siquier, Elisa Strada, Eduardo Stupía, Pablo Suárez, Luis Terán, Valeria Vilar, and Adrián Villar Rojas.

My Buenos Aires
June 20 – September 20, 2015
Maison Rouge
Buenos Aires, Argentina

My Buenos Aires at la maison rouge continues a series of exhibitions that showcases the art scene in cities worldwide. The series was launched in summer 2011 with Winnipeg, Canada, followed in 2013 by Johannesburg, South Africa. Some regret what they see as a “standardized” art world, laying the blame at globalization’s door, and so this seemed the opportune moment to look at centres of creativity which, though out of the spotlight, enjoy a thriving art scene of works infused with the city, its territory, history and myths.

Buenos Aires, a mystery reinvented

A mirror city, established twice (in 1536 and then again in 1580), “Our Lady of the Fair Winds” stands on Río de la Plata, the “silver river” that gave the country its name. Buenos Aires extends over two hundred square kilometres and is home to three million porteños (“port-dwellers” in Spanish). The Greater Buenos Aires conurbation has a population of fifteen and a half million, making it Latin America’s third most-populated agglomeration after Mexico City and São Paulo.

Described by Malraux as “the capital of an empire that never existed”, Buenos Aires fuels many fantasies. The mere mention of tango or beef, of Borges or Maradona, of Argentinean beauties will plunge anyone, even someone who has never set foot in the city, into dreamy nostalgia.

The visual and cultural familiarity that greets a European visitor can disappoint those in search of instant exoticism and pre-packaged emotions. Yet this is precisely where its power of seduction lies; in the (un)acquaintance of what we find when we peel away the masks of this tentacular city, which in 1914 was home to as many immigrants as Argentineans and where still today 40% of its residents were born elsewhere.

Buenos Aires is a child of immigration, whether voluntary or forced; a city haunted by absence. To live there is to accept estrangement and to overcome loss. Hardly surprisingly then, Buenos Aires shares New York’s love of psychoanalysis, and has one therapist for 120 inhabitants.

Seductive, Buenos Aires is no less sombre. It bears the stigmata of violence endured, of uprooting, dictatorship and the mourning of the many disappearances including, since the financial and economic crisis of 2001, that of its own image as a “major European power” that would inexplicably have alighted on the American continent.

The public protests that arose following the 2001 crisis have shown a capacity for counterpower that has no equivalent in the history of modern nations. Even in the throes of crisis, strikes and the pillaging of recent decades, Argentineans continue to wield sarcasm, dark humour and irony as a remedy against resignation.

A chameleon city, Buenos Aires comes with all the accoutrements of a modern conurbation – urban violence, air and noise pollution – yet behind the jacarandas that line its avenues it conserves the extraordinary capacity to reinvent itself and to reveal, unabashedly and sometimes even brutally, the pressing need to live better.

An artistic community that stand together

Authors and actors from all disciplines have in them this extraordinary and also determined capacity for reinvention. In the visual arts, decades of crisis and “getting by” have at least forged a community of artists who, irrespective of rivalries and conflicting views, face adversity as one.

Artists have responded to the lack of infrastructures and learning opportunities by throwing open their studios, hosting charlas (group discussions) where ideas can be brought out into the open. Those who do manage to enter the global art market willingly put their own money into supporting local creation. The grant endowed by painter Guillermo Kuitca, for example, gave an entire generation of artists between 1991 and 2011 access to a studio, and to critical and technical support with which to develop their work. Bola de nieve (“snowball”), a free website set up in 2005 by Ramona magazine, is a database of images where each artist invites another, thereby forming an endless chain. 1,135 artists now show their work there. In a similar spirit, an artist might often recommend visiting another artist’s studio, even when this means putting off visits to his or her own studio to another day.

A compelling movement

In the space of a few years, the map of Buenos Aires contemporary art has undergone substantial transformation to become more evenly spread between the city’s various neighbourhoods. Little by little, the art scene is moving away from the centre. Ruth Benzacar’s gallery, now in its fiftieth year, is leaving the historic Calle Florida for new premises west of the Palermo neighbourhood. New venues are opening in the north, such as Hotel de Inmigrantes. Further north still, the Haroldo Conti Memorial Cultural Centre includes a sculpture park that pays tribute to the men and women who disappeared during the dictatorship, and a cultural centre showing contemporary art. Di Tella, a private university with a famous past, launched an experimental research programme in 2010 under the directorship of the historian and curator Inés Katzenstein. To the south of the city, new director Victoria Noorthoorn is revolutionising the Buenos Aires Modern Art Museum (MAMBA).

The microcentro remains the city’s nerve centre at the heart of its history, and is still the site of numerous art venues, including the Fundación Osde, and galleries. The disgruntled still march on Plaza de Mayo while artists have begun to install works under the obelisk. This reconfiguration of Buenos Aires’ art venues symbolises a city that is gaining momentum, spreading its wings ready to fly. The direction it will take remains to be seen.

Cultural Policy

The city’s Culture Department is behind a number of initiatives which support this quality cultural provision.

The Patronage Law has forged stronger ties between business and the worlds of art and culture by encouraging the private sector to become involved with projects of cultural significance for the city. In a similar vein, thanks to the creation and development of the city’s southern zone (Polo Sur), artists have been able to revive parts of Buenos Aires which for decades languished outside the main exhibition circuits. Initiatives such as the arts district (Distrito de las Artes), the art factory (Usina del Arte), and numerous theatres, cultural centres and exhibition spaces have breathed new life into the south of the city whose industrial landscape now offers something new.

For several years, the successful Tandem programme has enabled art and culture taking place in Buenos Aires to resonate with comparable projects in other capital cities around the world, including Madrid, Amsterdam, Medellín and Paris.

Taking art into public spaces, installing sculptures in the city’s squares, organising open-air performances, launching new circuits such as in Calle Florida or the Borges Xul Solar walking tour… these and other initiatives illustrate the fusion between tradition and modernity, and show how new generations are embracing the city and its mythology.

My Buenos Aires, the exhibition

My Buenos Aires runs counter to the romantic vision of Buenos Aires. Paula Aisemberg and Albertine de Galbert seek to offer visitors to la maison rouge neither a portrait of the city nor a “who’s who” of Argentinean artists, but rather a sensation, an experience of the dynamics at work in the Argentine capital.

The exhibition moves back and forth between political and private, public space, the domestic and the unconscious, exploring themes such as instability, tension and explosion, masks, encryption and the strange.

Along their way, visitors will encounter remnants of facades, mutant scaffoldings, car bonnets, motorway junctions, burned-out houses and headless statues. They will decipher coded languages to the gentle sway of the music rising from the city and the whir of fans. When night falls, they can settle onto an old sofa and listen to a raspy tango, pick their way through the patched-up ruins of a kitchen that’s acting as though nothing was wrong, or study their reflection in the black ink of a white marble basin. They will sink into a waking dream inhabited by strangely unnerving doubles and faceless people falling from the sky, only to wake in the muffled folds of a stucco wedding cake.

With more than sixty artists working in all media, from installation to painting, sculpture, video and photography, four generations are represented. Established names such as León Ferrari, Guillermo Kuitca or Jorge Macchi will join others to be discovered. More than 15 of them will travel to Paris to work on in situ installations.

My Buenos Aires is an invitation to plunge into the mystery of Buenos Aires without attempting to resolve it, and to experience the unsettling strangeness of its multiple personalities.

June 23, 2015 Dario Escobar: En otro orden / Another Order https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/dario-escobar-en-otro-orden-another-order/

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Artist: Dario Escobar

En otro orden / Another Order
June 25, 2015
The 9.99 Gallery
Guatemala City, Guatemala

“En otro orden” consists of nine sculptures, four paintings and ten drawings. The sculptures are presented in dialogue with American minimalist sculpture, not as a continuation of it, but as an exploration of its aesthetics and its socio-economic structure from an artistic and intellectual space. Escobar sculptures contrast with the austere minimalist works by inserting the industrial object, which had a fairly significant presence in contemporary sculpture in the 1990s

Minimalism was born in the sixties and is geographically focused on the island of Manhattan, New York. A purely American movement, Minimalism refers primarily to a type of sculpture or three-dimensional works made beginning in the1960, which emphasize the abstract and downplay the expressive, avoiding any embellishment or decoration. Among the most renowned exponents are Donald Judd, Ron Bladen, and Tony Smith who exploited industrial mass production and Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, and Robert Morris who chose to present the objects, as they were indistinguishable from found objects, generating an art that could be classified as non-art because of its aesthetic ambiguity.(1) Both currents show a preference for the object’s lack of content.

The sculptures in “En otro orden” identify with both developments and especially with the work of Donald Judd and Carl Andre. Still Life No. 4, Still Life No. 7, and Equilibrio No. 1, made from fabricated materials such as steel, plywood, and rubber, identify with the current represented by Judd. Judd’s preference for putting distance between him and the object by refusing to produce them himself was initially strongly criticized.(2) However, this position is now quite common and is inherent in the works of Escobar mentioned herein. For Judd it was a way of maintaining control over the material(3) and so it is for Escobar. But Escobar contaminates the minimalist spirit of his work with the addition of industrially manufactured objects that are easily recognizable as basketballs and baseballs. Escobar does not show the material in a “pure” state as would Judd but introduces a Duchampian gesture: the easily identifiable found object.

The Duchampian readymade is also evident in the works that have a closer relationship with the austere sculpture of Andre. Equilibrio No. 2, Untitled No. 1, Untitled No. 2, and Untitled No. 3 are made of wood beams and thick wood pieces in different sizes that rest directly on the floor, as is characteristic of Andre’s work. They are examples of a type of unadulterated sculpture. Their genesis is wood that Escobar found in a local sawmill and used as is, changing its configuration by rigging beams and square blocks in a vertical or horizontal orientation. The presence of basketballs and soccer balls balancing precariously on a fairly sophisticated play of balance is amusing and contrasts with the severity and lack of expressiveness of the wood. The spherical shapes temper the rigidity of the straight lines.

The same applies to Balance No. 3, the only work that is made of square steel plates. The 25 steel plates form a grid measuring 98 7/16 x 98 7/16 inches in the style of Andre, but unlike Andre’s grids, which tend to rest flush with the floor and were meant to be walked on, Escobar fragmented the grid by placing tennis balls under it. The balls subvert the geometry of the work by allowing a glimpse of the negative spaces beneath it; its hard surface is turned into a kind of false floor that precludes a direct physical relationship with the work because one cannot stand firmly on it.

Untitled No. 1 is an atypical work within the exhibition because its forms lack the exactness of the other works. The irregularity of the hoe handles reveal their hand-made origin: a found object used by Escobar to create a work which, despite its uniqueness, it has a relationship with Minimalism in the use of the repetition of forms. The incorporation of a baseball at the base of each vertical element accentuates its physical imperfection, makes it unstable, and adds to its anthropomorphic appearance because it resembles an animal’s leg. Untitled # 1 leans against the wall with the top of the hoe handles forming a straight horizontal line that contrasts with the bottom, which seems undulating and disorderly. While for Andre the transformation of the materials was unnecessary and the use of raw unadulterated materials essential in his questioning of what and who makes a work of art, Escobar is determined to destabilize again and again these and other principles of Minimalism from a non-hegemonic perspective and in relation to more recent artistic trends.

The exhibition is completed by ten drawings made with cinnabar pigment and graphite on paper and four small paintings on wood. The series entitled Dibujo que no obedece al contorno No. 1-10 (Drawing that does not obey the contour No. 1-10) shows solid geometries that do not fit into similar forms that are barely glimpsed due to the delicacy of the graphite line. Their solidity and forms have a certain kinship with certain sculptures by Tony Smith, as they do not easily reveal themselves but require time and attention as any work that is based on visual perception. The use of cinnabar pigment, employed by the Maya in ceramic painting, bestows them a unique and valuable attribute for the rarity of the material and its use in contemporary art. As their titles indicate Construcción Modular No.1-4 (Modular Construction No. 1-4) are geometric paintings that reflect the interest Escobar has for abstraction, usually expressed in his drawings, but continued in a series of paintings with movable panels begun in 2010. Close to Frank Stella’s objective paintings of the sixties, these works embrace geometry in order to eliminate the potential narrative of painting.(4)

The works in “En otro orden” openly converse with the American Minimalist movement and especially with its two pillars—Donald Judd and Carl Andre. With this Escobar attempts to open a dialogue that is pending in Central America, and certainly in Guatemala since the cultural disruption caused by the armed conflict that began in the sixties. It also tries responding with humor and perhaps a dose of boldness to an artistic expression that is characterized by a severe and plain aesthetic and to rethink, half a century later, the relationship that exists between the artist and the subject from Escobar´s own perspective.

(1) Kenneth Baker, Minimalism: Art of Circumstance (Abeville Modern Art Movements). New York: Abeville Press, 1988. p9.
(2) Ibid. p58.
(3) Ibid. p58.
(4) Ibid. p34.
June 23, 2015 Alice Quaresma: Além (Beyond) https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alice-quaresma-alem-beyond/

8

Artist: Alice Quaresma

Além (Beyond)
Curated by Mario Gioia
Fauna Galeria
São Paulo, Brazil

The current exhibit of Alice Quaresma is one of the most interesting ones, not only for its unstable and migrant character in the photographic process, but also for embodying, in a poetic and unique way, some pungent issues to the contemporary artist. In particular, we can highlight those that lean towards relationships, identity issues, uprooting, sense of permanence and displacement, among other powerful traits within her work.

In the Além (Beyond) exhibit, which represents a new debut for Fauna Gallery, now located in Vila Mariana _ a special locus within São Paulo art circuit _ the artist based in New York and who had much of her art education in London shows a series of photographs in which the boundaries and definitions of this language are consciously stretched, but do not fail to establish themselves within the photographic field. They are certainly expanded, since Quaresma seems to aim for what she refers to as “photo-objects”, while taking advantage of painting, drawing, collage and three-dimensional elements.

“The non-object designation is entirely appropriate to my work. […] There are certain types of artworks that belong to the same family. My work is neither architecture, nor sculpture or painting in the old sense “1, declared Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980) to Vera Martins in 1961. Mentioning the name of Oiticica, a reference in the Brazilian Neoconcretism, comes in handy in Quaresma´s visual and conceptual research for being a paradigm in this blur of boundary of means and pillar of art and languages, expanding the resonance of the national constructive project and, to this date, still influential to new generations of artists here (in Brazil).

It is now relevant to tell a little about Alice Quaresma’s journey. Graduated in painting in London, she began to experiment with photography in college, and then went through a phase of self-portraits and other phases of still life in the studio setting, with equipment and strategies focused on an impeccable technique. Later she got back to painting and, from there, managed to deconstruct her own photographic process using elements of other plastic arts and visual researches, guided by a formal detachment.

It is almost under an aegis of crisis _ seen not in the negative sense, but as a propeller for something new to be experienced and discovered under new prisms _ Quaresma’s journey is being built, and now unfolds in a persistent unease about what is photographic _ in a time of overflown circulation of this mean (photograph), something that brings ubiquity but also increasingly rarefied quality of its specificities _ and how it can be covered by subjectivity and a less tenuous presence.

“I am interested in dealing with time; but overlapping it, not linearly. When you see a blurred picture, it is simply the record of time in one click (only one image)”, she says. “Then the paint and many other materials that I have been using on my photographic images come in. I will always use materials, which I have not yet tested. At the moment, I have been using a lot of paint, oil sticks and colored tape.”

Then a more experimental approach comes in, as advocated by Oiticica and his peers, and that helps Quaresma in building a particular path, in which there were times when Demand, Hofer and Becher were decisive, but they stand just as some of the modules that constitute her work. “These interferences deal with the possibility of bringing casual traits. Hand Gestures bring more intuition and less control. The materiality brings moments of surprise by enriching the texture over the flatness of the photo paper.”

And there is this feeling of being a foreigner, from continuously dealing with the idea of not belonging and with the careful, yet not painful, construction of an affectionate memory, which can have great concreteness links, but also, only in images and records, something evanescent, undone. In this sense, they gain importance in Além artworks, such as: Encontro, Mudanças do Tempo e Vestígios (Encounters, Time Changes and Traces); which the titles reveal much of her indicial temporality in collapse. This is something that was already noticeable in her previous project, such as Raízes (Roots, 2013) _ blurred ocean, vigorous vegetation massifs now portrayed in black and white, once glorious public and private buildings and, at the time of the authorial registration, less solid and robust.

Moving against the almost incessant reproduction quality of the photo medium, Alice Quaresma’s unique creations seem to unveil, therefore, a new territory, to “beyond”. And here they echo in the inescapable collage thought of the Italian Luigi Ghirri (1943-1992): “Many […] have seen or considered these photographs as photomontages; just like I would call them, instead of photodémontage. To a large extent, the reality is increasingly transformed into a colossal photograph, and the photomontage has already happen; it is in the real world” 2.

Mario Gioia, June 2015

  1. OITICICA FILHO, Cesar, COHN, Sergio, VIEIRA, Ingrid (org.). Encontros – Hélio Oiticica. Azougue, Rio de Janeiro, 2009, p. 25.
  2. FABIANI, Francesca, GASPARINI, Laura, SERGIO, Giuliano, NOGUEIRA, Thyago (org.). Luigi Ghirri – Pensar por Imagens. Instituto Moreira Salles, São Paulo, 2013, p. 68
June 18, 2015 Clarissa Tossin: Unmapping the World https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/clarissa-tossin-unmapping-world/

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Artist: Clarissa Tossin

Unmapping the World -Book release & Conversation with Michael Ned Holte
June 13, 2014
Samuel Freeman Gallery
Los Angeles, CA, USA

Unmapping the World is organized around a set of works produced by Clarissa Tossin over a period of five years during artist residencies, and commissioned by Brazilian and North American art institutions. These works manifest the development of a poetics that employs a wide range of strategies in order to address contemporary issues. Tossin’s objects, videos, and installations explore a broad and intricate spectrum of desires, impasses, and utopias, while also establishing their own expressive logic, above and beyond these topics.

Driven by the curiosity of the artist-anthropologist, Tossin’s works are formed through analysis of the politics of space and urban spaces, as well as interrogations into the mappings and discourses of power, relationships of consumption and identity, circulations of symbols and ideas, and the role of architecture—particularly that of Brasília, a modernist monument that she has come to call ‘home.’

The book is bilingual, in English and Portuguese, and includes texts by Moacir dos Anjos, Michael Ned Holte, and Guilherme Wisnik. The publication has been made possible by a fellowship from the California Community Foundation.

June 15, 2015 Omar Barquet, Mauro Giaconi & José Luis Landet: Amplificar https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/omar-barquet-mauro-giaconi-jose-luis-landet-amplificar/

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Artists: Omar Barquet, Mauro Giaconi, and José Luis Landet.

Amplificar
May 30 – July 16, 2015
Document Art
Buenos Aires, Argentina

La simplicidad de la existencia: su agitación, su inquietud, su pena y su gozo, su espesor, su densidad, su cosa extensa, su tiempo convulso, desunido, su indisciplina, sus farfulladas, su inconciencia visceral y su lucidez no menos clavada al cuerpo… ̈Jean-Luc Nancy (1940).

Los artistas Omar Barquet (México), Mauro Giaconi y José Luis Landet (Argentina) se reúnen para plantear nuevamente una experiencia abierta, donde conceptos como paisaje, lenguaje y entorno son algunas de los ejes temáticos que traman esta propuesta.Ubicando al espectador como potencial protagonista y generando un espacio-terreno de juego, donde una serie de dispositivos lúdicos y simbólicos se disponen para ser activados, Barquet, Giaconi y Landet buscan desde la acción física e interactiva, amplificar el debate sostenido a larga distancia en forma de cadáver exquisito a través de medios de comunicación digitales.

June 15, 2015 Felipe Mujica: A reherasal by Felipe Mujica and Johanna Unzueta https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/felipe-mujica-reherasal-felipe-mujica-johanna-unzueta/

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Artists: Felipe Mujica, Margarita Azurdia, Jorge González, Ana Maria Millan, Javier Tellez and Johanna Unzueta.

A reherasal by Felipe Mujica and Johanna Unzueta
June 10, 2015
ISCP -International Studio & Curatorial Program
Brooklyn, NY, USA

Artists and Beta-Local collaborators Felipe Mujica and Johanna Unzueta will present original artworks and documentation of work by Margarita Azurdia, Felipe Mujica, Jorge González, Ana Maria Millan, Javier Tellez and Johanna Unzueta in ISCP’s exhibition galleries. The exhibition will reveal contrasts between Geometric Abstraction, with its idealistic and formalist characteristics, and more personal, exotic and political forms of expression. Works include a video of a flying body crossing the US-Mexico border in a semi-circle trajectory, a ceramic turtle resting over a neo-geo-style cube, and a group of photographs of Minimal-like sculptures and paintings with the artist fashionably posing next to them, among others. This presentation is a prelude “test-drive” or “rehearsal” for an exhibition scheduled for later this year in Santiago, Chile at Die Ecke Arte Contemporáneo.

June 10, 2015 Ricardo Alcaide, Darío Escobar & Gabriel de la Mora: Líneas de la Mano https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ricardo-alcaide-dario-escobar-gabriel-de-la-mora-lineas-de-la-mano/

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Artists: Esvin Alarcón Lam, Ricardo Alcaide, Darío Escobar, Gianfranco Foschino, Juan Fernando Herrán, Harold Mendez, Gabriel de la Mora, Ronny Quevedo, and Ana Maria Tavares.

Líneas de la Mano
May 12 – July 3, 2015
Sicardi Gallery
Houston, TX, USA

Featuring artists from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Venezuela, Líneas de la mano (lines of the hand, lifelines) takes as its premise the idea that geometries connect the quotidian moments of our daily lives. Indeed, a line connects two points, A and B, start and finish, end and beginning; lines are defined by this function of connection, even as they continue to move past the points they connect

The artists in the exhibition use the languages and conceptual frameworks of modernism and abstraction to suggest poetic connections: between people, between historical referents, between political experiences, and between places. The line as connector becomes a way of skillfully addressing fraught histories, and of weaving a set of relationships. Líneas de la mano also considers the tactility of each object. The works exhibited demonstrate a strong relationship to materials and their histories, from the scrap metal of Guatemalan buses, to the thick, sooty texture of an archival photograph transferred to aluminum, to the fabric retrieved from vintage radio speakers.

The exhibition title playfully alludes to palmistry; the connection is meant to highlight the actions of the hand, implicit in the creation of the work. Astrologer, numerologist, clairvoyant, and palm-reader Cheiro (William John Warner, 1866-1936) writes, “the hand… denotes the change going on in the brain, even years before the action of the individual becomes the result of such a change.”  Read in a different context, it is a compelling statement about the artistic process.

June 5, 2015 Silvia Gurfein: La fuerza débil https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/silvia-gurfein-la-fuerza-debil/

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Artists: Cecilia Biagini, Verónica Calfat, Ignacio Fanti, Pachi Giustinian, Mimi Laquidara, Martina Quesada, and Agustina Quiles.

La fuerza débil
Curadora: Silvia Gurfein
June 2 – July 10, 2015
Fondo Nacional de las Artes
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Dentro del marco del Ciclo Recorridos Descentrados, se presenta la muestra “La fuerza débil” curada por Silvia Gurfein.

Imagen: Cecilia Biagini, “Multiplicidad potencial”, 2012, Pintura vinílica sobre madera, 48 x 57 x 10 cm.
June 2, 2015 Mauro Giaconi: Estado fallido (État défaillant) https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/mauro-giaconi-estado-fallido-etat-defaillant/

estado fallido

Artist: Mauro Giaconi

Estado fallido (État défaillant)
May 15 – June 20, 2015
Bendana Pinel Art Contemporain
Paris, France

Siendo el dibujo su principal medio de investigación, expandiéndolo hacia la escultura, hacia el video y la instalación, Giaconi presenta en “estado fallido” una serie de obras que se desprenden de sus últimos años de investigación artística, donde la destrucción y la reconstrucción son un constante mantra que modifica, redefine y excava el entorno subjetivo del artista.

La arquitectura, el cuerpo, las fronteras y la memoria son algunas aristas de un bloque de obras con el que Giaconi se propone hacer foco en la tensión entre conceptos opuestos, reflexionando y desdibujando los límites entre construcción y destrucción, peso y levedad, nacimiento y muerte, sueño y despertar. Borroneando sus bordes, desgastándolos, modificándolos, es como Giaconi rasca y busca instancias liberadoras, energías redentoras, instantes de fe.

El termino “estado fallido” es acuñado por periodistas y politólogos para referirse a un estado soberano en crisis que deja de cumplir con las garantías básicas y que presentan un evidente fracaso social, político, y económico. Giaconi utiliza este termino fundiéndolo con su significado con literal, con la falla, con el estado de error, de accidente, de residuo, generando reflexiones en torno a la permanencia, a la vida y a la muerte.

Estado fallido, estallido de abrazos.

dibujar la piedra, desdibujar los muros

que son de todos, como los errores

cada quién que junte sus cenizas

que levante su propia fortaleza

donde quiera

donde quepa

para todos.

Estado fallido, muertos sin cuerpo.

nadie merece tumbas vacías

son llantos tan anchos que se muerden la cola.

desdibujemos el estado, el confort.

desdibujemos la patria

una para cada quien

donde quepa

para todos.

m.g.

June 2, 2015 Richard Garet: Sounds of Times Square https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/richard-garet-sounds-times-square/

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Artist: Richard Garet

Sounds of Times Square
June 1 – 30, 2015
Times Square Arts
NYC, NY, USA

For this “Midnight Moment” project Richard Garet proposes to use sounds captured from the area of Times Square as a tool to generate a visualization of the sonic environment. Then the artist will remove the audio leaving just the moving image signal creating an experience of sound through vision that would change and pulsate according to the properties of the sonic composite. The viewer then is pulled into lavish landscapes of continually reconfigured color and mood.

“In my processes establishing the material is key, and from there it becomes a reductive process where a vast number of possibilities and outcomes are explored until the work reaches proper momentum, purpose, and significance. Moreover, objectifying the ordinary and reinventing the character of found mundane things in life is very interesting to me.” -Richard Garet

Click here to see video

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More info here

May 29, 2015 Clarissa Tossin: How does it travel? https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/clarissa-tossin-travel/

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Artist: Clarissa Tossin

How does it travel?
May 29, 2015
Samuel Freeman Gallery
Los Angeles, CA, USA

How does it travel? brings together photographs, sculptures, prints, and site-specific works that analyze movements and their resulting displacements and transformations. She tracks materials, ideologies, and bodies that travel by foot, by car, by plane, and by her own hand. Using two primary nodes, Brazil and the United States, Tossin finds generative ground in transpositions that yield compelling misregistrations.

May 28, 2015 Gabriel Sierra: el título de la exposición cambia a cada hora https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/gabriel-sierra-el-titulo-de-la-exposicion-cambia-cada-hora/

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Artist: Gabriel Sierra

el título de la exposición cambia a cada hora
May 3 – June 28, 2015
The Renaissance Society
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL, USA

His project consists of a group of constructions to stand in or to walk over, which relate abstractly to the idea of inhabiting different moments of space and time. The exhibition features a cyclical title that changes hourly:

10:00 am    Monday Impressions. 

11:00 am    How the Outside Leaks into the Room.

12:00 ­pm    Smells Like 100 Years Old.

1:00 pm     The Room Is in My Eye. The Space under My Body.

2:00 pm     In the Meantime, (This Place Will Be Empty after 5:00 pm).

3:00 pm     An Actual Location for This Moment.

4:00 pm     Few Will Leave Their Place to Come Here for Some Minutes. 

5:00 pm     Did You Know Who Built Your House? 

Sierra is intrigued by the language of man-made objects and the dimensions of the spaces in which we live, work, and think. His practice employs a variety of techniques – from sculpture and spatial interventions to performance and texts – to examine how the human body functions in relation to its environment. Trained in architecture and design, and drawing on the history of Latin American Modernism, Sierra connects the perception of forms and materials to the construction of language, communication, and knowledge.

Sierra’s installation at the Renaissance Society features materials (for example, wood, stones, and plant matter) that have been isolated from their usual geographic situations, processed and domesticated for the context of the exhibition. By inviting visitors to walk over and among the constructions with no determined path, the artist sets up a series of areas that refer to the transitional space of the antechamber. They are not destinations in themselves, but passages of experience leading from one to another, momentary neutral zones.

The exhibition’s title will change every hour to frame the specific moment in which the visitor experiences the work. Like the various constructions Sierra offers, this shifting title experiments with the ways in which environments, and the exhibition in particular, are perceived across time.

An exhibition catalogue featuring essays by Douglas Fogle and Irene V. Small and documentation of the installation is forthcoming.

Gabriel Sierra (born 1975, San Juan Nepomuceno, Colombia) lives and works in Bogotá. Recent solo exhibitions include ggaabbrriieellssiieerrrraa at Kurimanzutto, Mexico City, Mexico (2013) and Thus Far at Peephole, Milan, Italy (2013). His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Do Objeto para o Mundo, COLEÇÃO INHOTIM, Itaú Cultutal, São Paulo (2015),Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative: Latin America, Guggenheim Museum, New York (2014), Impulse, Reason, Sense, Conflict at Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami (2014) and The 2013 Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2013).

May 27, 2015 Chiara Banfi: As Margens dos Mares https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/chiara-banfi-margens-dos-mares/

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Artists: Angela Ferreira, Arnaldo Antunes, Catarina Botelho, Chelpa Ferro, Chiara Banfi, Gabriela Albegaria, Guto Lacaz, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Maimuna Adam, Mauro Pinto, O Grivo, and Susana Gaudêncio.

As Margens dos Mares
May 8 – August 2, 2015
Sesc Pinheiros
Sao Paulo, Brazil

Com curadoria de Agnaldo Farias, a mostra reúne doze artistas de Angola, Brasil, Moçambique e Portugal, a fim de apresentar uma parcela da produção contemporânea destes países lusófonos. Os trabalhos apresentam interseções entre as artes visuais e a música, refletem sobre questões como memória, espaço e arquitetura por meio de instalações, fotografias, vídeos e objetos.

Um encontro entre artistas expoentes de Angola, Brasil, Cabo Verde, Guiné-Bissau, Moçambique e Portugal que busca apresentar por meio das artes visuais e da música uma expressão da cultura contemporânea destes países lusófonos: este é o horizonte de “As Margens dos Mares”, projeto que ocorre no Sesc Pinheiros entre 8 de maio e 2 de agosto com curadoria do crítico de arte e professor da FAU-USP Agnaldo Farias e direção musical do guitarrista, compositor e produtor norte-americano Lee Ritenour.

Realizada pelo Sesc e idealizada pela Sociedade Cultural Arte Brasil, a iniciativa reunirá uma exposição com obras de doze artistas que refletem sobre questões como memória, espaço e arquitetura a partir de instalações, fotografias, vídeos e objetos, além de encontros musicais inéditos com a presença de músicos dos países convidados. “A diluição dos contornos rígidos que, um dia, estabeleceram fronteiras entre linguagens artísticas expandiu caminhos para criadores. Imagens, sons, toques, cheiros e gostos hoje se misturam em composições sinestésicas que proporcionam reflexões sobre inquietações contemporâneas – esta profusão de experiências sensíveis constitui a linha mestra d’As Margens dos Mares”, explica o diretor regional do Sesc São Paulo, Danilo Santos de Miranda. “O projeto nasceu de uma música aparentada às jam sessions jazzísticas, nas quais instrumentistas de origens diversas entram em sintonia pela linguagem dos sons, timbres e ritmos”, conta Carmen Ritenour, diretora-fundadora da Sociedade Cultural Arte Brasil. “Suas marcas são a colaboração entre artistas consagrados e a oferta de diversas manifestações criativas ao público”, completa a diretora geral da iniciativa. ARTES VISUAIS.

A exposição, localizada no segundo andar do Sesc Pinheiros, contará com obras de Arnaldo Antunes, Guto Lacaz, Chelpa Ferro, Chiara Banfi e O Grivo (Brasil); Ângela Ferreira, Maimuna Adam e Mauro Pinto (Moçambique); Catarina Botelho, Gabriela Albergaria e Susana Gaudêncio (Portugal) e Kiluanji Kia Henda (Angola). “As instalações predominam e a música, incluindo ruídos, atua como elemento agregador da exposição, atravessando-a de ponta a ponta”, define o curador Agnaldo Farias, cujo trabalho é voltado ao rompimento das barreiras entre linguagens artísticas.

Ações educativas e programação integrada com debates, oficinas, intervenções e exibições de filmes enriquecem o período expositivo, de 8 de maio a 2 de agosto. Para o curador da exposição, Agnaldo Faria a mostra é um diálogo sinestésico. “São 12 trabalhos artísticos de Angola, Brasil, Moçambique e Portugal, que interagem no espaço de ‘As Margens dos Mares’. As instalações predominam, e a música, incluindo ruídos, atua como elemento agregador da exposição, atravessando-a de ponta a ponta”, define o curador que busca por obras que nascem do rompimento das barreiras entre linguagens artísticas. A noção de sinestesia e o estímulo de mais de um sentido norteou as escolhas da curadoria.

May 27, 2015 Magdalena Atria, Ricardo Rendón & Mariángeles Soto-Díaz: Multifarious Abstraction https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/magdalena-atria-ricardo-rendon-mariangeles-soto-diaz-ruben-ortiz-torres-multifarious-abstraction/

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Artists: Magdalena Atria, Ricardo Rendón, Mariángeles Soto-Díaz, Rubén Ortiz Torres, and Antonio Muñiz.

Multifarious Abstraction
Curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill
June 20 – July 25, 2015
Fabien Castanier Gallery
Culver City, CA, USA

Multifarious Abstraction is an exhibition that questions traditional understanding of the nature of abstraction as a modern field separate from reality. The five artists participating in Multifarious Abstraction present conceptually challenging, loaded and sometimes political explorations of abstract vocabularies in art, which point to unique ways to experience and think on contemporary culture. The five artists are from Latin America, where the division between high and low culture is not as central or as marked as in The United States and Europe. The abstraction proposed here moves away from modernist utopian ideals and pure aesthetics, to dialogue with industrial and popular culture, daily life, inner struggle, politics and gender.

Magdalena Atria is exhibiting free abstract compositions entirely made with plasticine. The artist, who has developed an extensive oeuvre with this material, addresses painting through a material which is malleable, fragile, common and familiar, to produce slowly complicated surfaces that embody “tension between the rational and the emotional, between the personal and the collective, between the existential and the banal, the formal and the symbolic.” Atria attempts to connect the ideal, manifested through abstraction, with the daily and existential dimensions of concrete reality.

Antonio Muñiz is an artist who explores by an intuitive method ways to free the mind and perception from predetermined responses. He employs fumage, a technique for producing organic forms with a burning candle at varying angles and distance from the canvas, thus creating an uncontrolled compositional structure. Muñiz pursues the “gray area”, a multidimensional space that is both symbolic and psychological and deconstructs conditioning dualities such as black/white, outsider/insider, and right/wrong. The artist states: “The gray area is a non-judgmental, non-linear space where we allow ourselves to interact with our environment, breaking free of duality and of conditioned responses.”

Ricardo Rendón’s work is informed by his interest in traditional trades and materials, which are for the artist places of “creative learning”. He states: “My work is presented as a system of questioning of the creative practice, of the execution, productive realization and notion of work.” His mediums range from industrial materials, to sand paper, felt and leather; and his techniques from perforating, cutting, nailing, grinding, sanding, gluing, to welding. For Multifarious Abstraction, the artist exhibits work from the two series: Work Area and Lighting Circuits, with materials such as copper and industrial felt. He transforms a plumber’s purposeful and precise procedure for joining copper tubes into the method for creating free standing sculptures which reflect both on traditional knowledge and on contemporary art’s expansive possibilities.

Mariángeles Soto-Díaz uses the language of abstraction as a way to materialize and connect ideas. Her work explores critically the legacies of modernism, echoing the particular modern historical traditions of Venezuela in dialogue with modernity and abstraction in contemporary culture. For this exhibition she will be showing the site-specific installation The Pink Elephant in the Room, to insert into the White Cube the discussion of gender and racial inequality in the art world. As the artist explains: “The Pink Elephant in the Room addresses the ‘invisibility’ of these issues through indulging in the color pink as a feminist statement while also re-signifying upon the language of abstract painting.”

Rubén Ortiz-Torres is a multidisciplinary artist who goes back to the late 1980s. His work, whether it be photographs, paintings, movies or sculptures, is informed by a hybrid and original combination of popular and mass culture. One of the key references in his work is the low rider and car industry cultures. In his recent work, he experiments with the auto industry’s most recent advances in car paint. For example, his piece Womb Envy (2014), is made with urethane and thermochromic paint and high-density foam. This orange piece in the shape of a pregnant tummy, when touched with your fingers, becomes marked temporarily in yellow on the work’s surface. His black Mexican and American flags made with urethane and chromo-luminescent paint, exhibited in the show, refer on the one hand to modern issues of anarchist ideology, and on the other, to how these national symbols, especially in the context of recent events in Mexico and the USA (The Baltimore riots), may allow the political minority standpoints in contemporary society to be embodied.

Cecilia Fajardo-Hill is a British/Venezuelan art historian and curator. Fajardo-Hill specializes in modern and contemporary art with a focus in Latin American art. She has a PhD in Art History from the University of Essex, England, and an MA in 20th Century Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, England. From 2005- 2008, Fajardo-Hill served as Director and Chief Curator for CIFO and the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, and from 2009-2012 served as Chief Curator at the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in Long Beach, CA. Presently, Fajardo-Hill is guest curator at the Hammer Museum, the Chief Curator of the Sayago & Pardon Collection and Abstraction in Action, and a visiting scholar at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. She is currently based in Los Angeles, CA.

May 27, 2015 Barbarita Cardozo: Remembranza https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/barbarita-cardozo-remembranza/

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Artists: Jenny Patricia Ariza, Jonathan Blanco, Nicolás Cadavid, Jennifer Cristancho, María Angélica Martínez, Rafael Prada, Rafael Valenzuela, Luis Carlos Reyes, Freddy Saúl Serrano, and Rossely Ramírez Villamizar.

Remembranza
Curated by Plegable Colectivo (Barbarita Cardozo y Laura Lucia Serrano)
May 8-29, 2015
Centro Cultural del Oriente
Bucaramanga, Colombia

Remembranza” es la segunda curaduría de Plegable Colectivo en donde el tema de interés gira en torno a la naturaleza, ésta vez, desde proyectos de artistas emergentes y jóvenes de Santander, que al apuntar a tan amplía variedad de connotaciones de tipo simbólico, conceptual, cultural o histórico, abren un espectro a las diferentes formas en las que nos relacionamos con ella.

Los recorridos mentales y de desplazamiento presentes en la mayoría de las piezas denotan la necesidad del ser humano por contemplar, estudiar, representar, registrar o apropiar la naturaleza.

May 26, 2015 Guido Ignatti: Bonzo https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/guido-ignatti-bonzo/

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Artists: Carlos Bissolino, Carlos Baragli, Daniel Callori, Julián León Camargo, Juan Giribaldi, Guido Ignatti, Julim Rosa, Leo Ocello, Luis Ortega, Sofi Quirno, Alejandro Taliano, and Natasha Voliakovsky.

Bonzo
May 16, 2015
Casa Uno
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Bonzo es un proyecto artístico que, gracias al apoyo de Metro Building, se aloja temporalmente en casas que serán demolidas, con el fin de establecer talleres de artistas y generar proyectos autónomos de investigación y experimentación en un tiempo denido por el propio lugar.

Las casas, ya deshabitadas y a la espera de su demolición, serán laboratorio de diversas experiencias. Cada casa albergará una propuesta determinada, y cada propuesta artistas, talleres e hipótesis de trabajo durante el tiempo en que esa casa espera para ser otra cosa.

Bonzo es cada una de las casas y todas a la vez. Cada espacio tendrá autonomía funcional y a su vez formará parte del proyecto total. Cada casa tendrá un núcleo creativo fuerte que será integrado por aquellos que quieran desarrollar un asunto en esa situación determinada, y que podrá incluir a los artistas responsables, a curadores y a invitados especiales que puedan potenciar la propuesta.

El ciclo de trabajo será entre cinco y ocho meses para los artistas que usen las instalaciones como taller/laboratorio y se evaluará cada caso particular en los artistas que propongan una muestra o acción especíca. Antes de la demolición, se harán al menos dos aperturas de cada casa con el fin de mostrar las producciones nales, así como también las que estén en proceso, tanto de los artistas en situación de taller como de los invitados especiales.

Cada nueva casa construida sobre un bonzo tendrá un espacio destinado a mencionar el proyecto que ahí se integró y a los artistas que lo compusieron, enlazando las etapas de la casa, como una transformación del espacio y como una memoria de lo sucedido.

Dependiendo de la propuesta de cada artista, algunos fragmentos u obras completas podrán resguardarse para formar parte del patrimonio del nuevo edificio.

Proyecto curaduría y gestión: Carlos Baragli, Juan Giribaldi y Guido Ignatti.

May 26, 2015 Chiara Banfi: Fiume achates https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/chiara-banfi-fiume-achates/

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Artist: Chiara Banfi

Fiume Achates
May 14 – June 13, 2015
Silvia Cintra + Box4
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Em sua terceira exposição individual na galeria, Chiara irá apresentar dois novos trabalhos. Uma grande instalação feita com pedras de rios e uma série de treze desenhos chamada “Achates”, com pedaços de Ágata incrustadas em partituras musicais. O título da exposição vem justamente do nome de um rio na Sicília, sul da Itália, onde foram encontradas as primeiras pedras de Ágata.

Como toda a questão da obra de Chiara se baseia nas relações possíveis entre música e arte, a artista chegou nas ágatas quando estava pesquisando equipamentos de som e vitrolas. A Ágata ė na realidade um tipo de quartzo, que ė usado nesses equipamentos como um estabilizador. A partir disso, Chiara coloca esse material nas partituras, como se cada mineral tivesse sua própria frequência, vibração e consequentemente som.

Já na instalação “Afluente”, que irá ocupar metade do espaço da galeria, a artista trabalha com pedras de rio compradas em lojas de paisagismo. Essas pedras são cortadas e Chiara cabeia todas com cabos RCA, que foram desenvolvidos na década de 40 para ligar vitrolas mono a amplificadores.

Embora não se trate de uma instalação sonora, fica clara uma sugestão, a memória do som dos rios que essas pedras poderiam carregar.

No dia 23 de maio, durante o CIGA (Circuito de Galerias promovido pela feira Art Rio), Chiara irá fazer na galeria um show com os músicos Domenico Lancellotti e Bruno de Lullo. Juntos eles formam a banda “Dissonambulos” que tem como principal objetivo explorar as diversas sonoridades que saem das esculturas sonoras criadas pela artista, permeando a apresentação com algumas canções que surgem e desaparecem nas ondas do som.

Image: Fiume 11, 2015, from the series Achates, 48x64x5cm, Agata, papel pautado e freijó, unique piece.
May 20, 2015 Marcius Galan: Akakor https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcius-galan-akakor/

Neoarte.net / Soluções fotográficas para o mercado de arte.

Artists: Agnieszka Kurant, David Lamelas, Elena Damiani, Felipe Cohen, Felipe Ehrenberg, Francis Alÿs, Frank & Robbert, Robbert & Frank, João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva, John Smith, Luis Ospina, Marcius Galan, Martin Creed, Nelson Leirner, Pilvi Takala, Raphael Hefti, Stefan Burger, and many more.

Akakor
Curated by Kiki Mazzucchelli and Maria do Carmo M.P. de Pontes
April 9 – May 23, 2015
Baro Galeria
Sao Paulo, Brazil

The exhibition Akakor looks at acts of charlatanism within the artistic realm.

Image: Installation view
May 20, 2015 Edgar Guzmanruiz: Chiaroscuro https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/edgar-guzmanruiz-chiaroscuro/

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Artist: Edgar Guzmanruiz

Chiaroscuro
May 16 – June 13, 2015
Galerie Weisser Elefant
Berlin, Germany

Für diese Ausstellung fotografiert der aus Kolumbien stammende Edgar Guzmanruiz Personen, die nur von einem Computer-Bildschirm beleuchtet werden, ebenso Stilleben im Licht von iPods. Mit ihren Hell-Dunkel-Effekten sind die Bilder von geradezu barocker Farbigkeit und Stimmung. Und auf diese kommt es dem Künstler vor allem an, als Kontrast zu den modernen Lichtquellen und deren Funktion als Dauerreferenz einer nächsten Generation Ego.

Das Zentrum der Ausstellung bildet ein „Teich“, in dem sich Narziss spiegelt und in sein eigenes Bild verliebt. So von Leidenschaft verzehrt, stirbt er und verwandelt sich in die Blume, die seinen Namen trägt. Damit führt Guzmanruiz immerhin eine Tradition fort, die seit der Renaissance von Künstlern wie Tintoretto, Caravaggio, Poussin und Olaf Nicolai geprägt wurde.

Letzterem kommt die Arbeit insofern nahe, als man sich selbst im künstlichen Teich spiegeln kann, doch besteht dieser aktualisiert aus Flachbildschirmen. Damit thematisiert er die Erkenntnis ganz direkt, dass wir uns verdoppeln in dem Augenblick, in dem wir uns verlieren. Eine Beobachtung neben dem Fotografieren der Porträts erweist, dass jüngere Menschen nicht mehr so lange still sitzen können, bis ein Bild von ihnen erstellt ist. Obwohl sie sich selbst betrachten, sind sie nur an flüchtigen Effekten interessiert.

Dies führt uns – über den Mythos von Narziss hinaus – zu Aktaion, der auf der Jagd nach Wild der Diana begegnet, badend in einem Weiher, und nackt. Zur Strafe für den Frevel verwandelt diese ihn in einen Hirsch. Und der wird sodann gerissen, ausgerechnet von Aktaions eigenen Hunden. Das Schicksal wendet sich gegen den, der es fordert ohne Konsequenzen zu bedenken. In Giodarno Bruno’s Buch der „Heroischen Leidenschaften“ sind die letzten Gedanken des Helden: „So spanne hoch ich die Gedanken jetzt / Zum Ziel. Allein sie wenden sich zurücke / Und reißen mich mit scharfem Biss in Stücke“.

Die Hunde des Aktaion können wir verstehen als die Geister, die man zur Hilfe rief und die doch ins Verderben führen: „und ohne Hoffnung kehrt ihr mir zurück“. – Wobei wir oben auch für den „scharfen Biss“ etwas willkürlich „Blick“ einsetzen könnten. Denn dies ist das Thema dieser Ausstellung: der Blick, der von sich selbst abgewendet überhaupt wieder etwas wie Hoffnung oder zumindest Ausblick eröffnen kann. Alle Technik, die unser Leben erleichtern soll, bleibt nur so weit sinnvoll, als sie humanen Zwecken, ja sagen wir es: Idealen dient.

Ralf Bartholomäus

May 19, 2015 Amadeo Azar, Silvia Gurfein, Ana Tiscornia & Guido Ignatti: Selección de trastienda https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/amadeo-azar-silvia-gurfein-ana-tiscornia-guido-ignatti-seleccion-de-trastienda/

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Artists: Marcelo Grosman, Sofía Bohtlingk y Alfredo Londaibere, Amadeo Azar, Julián Terán, Guido Ignatti, Silva Gurfein, Lux Lindner, Nicolás Gullotta, Ana Tiscornia and Tiziana Pierri.

Selección de trastienda
May 9 – June 12, 2015
Nora Fisch Arte Contemporáneo
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Group show, selected artists from gallery.

May 19, 2015 Omar Barquet, Pablo Rasgado & Omar Rodríguez-Graham: Pararrayos https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/omar-barquet-pablo-rasgado-omar-rodriguez-graham-pararrayos/

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Artists: Omar Barquet, Pablo Rasgado, Omar Rodríguez-Graham, Javier Areán, Veronica Bapé, Miguel Angel Cordera, Taka Fernandez, Agustín González, Jacqueline Lozano, Javier Pérez, Eric Pérez, Patricl Petterson.

Pararrayos
Curated by Christian Barragán
May 27 – July 2, 2015
Embajada de México en Alemania
Berlin, Germany

Group show with contemporary Mexican painters.

May 19, 2015 Cipriano Martínez: Failed Geometry https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/cipriano-martinez-failed-geometry/

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Artist: Cipriano Martínez

Failed Geometry
February 15 – May, 2015
Viloria Blanco Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

Solo exhibition by Cipriano Martínez.

May 19, 2015 Pablo Rasgado: Ellipsis https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/pablo-rasgado-ellipsis/

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Artist: Pablo Rasgado

Ellipsis
May 9 – June 6, 2015
Steve Turner Contemporary
Los Angeles, CA, USA

The show features five bodies of work from the last seven years. Rasgado’s works deal with such natural phenomena as gravity, light and energy along with their attendant results—time and ephemerality. He uses a variety of familiar materials—drywall, glass, tape, florescent bulbs, dirt, spiderwebs—to focus on that which is just beyond ordinary perception. In a sense, each work is a clock, recording decay and change over time. Deceptively simple, the works constitute a compendium of phenomena just beyond the grasp of material experience.

Pablo Rasgado (b. Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico, 1984) has had solo exhibitions at Steve Turner, Los Angeles (2011, 2012 & 2014); Arratia Beer, Berlin (2012 & 2014); OMR, Mexico City (2013); and Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City (2011). He has also had work in group exhibitions at CAM Raleigh (2014); The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2013); Ex Magazzini di San Cassian, Art Collateral Events, 55th Venice Biennale (2013); Herzlya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel (2013); Museo Carrillo Gil, Mexico City (2012); and Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City (2010). His work is owned by public collections including Wattis Foundation, San Francisco; Perez Art Museum, Miami; Jumex Collection, Mexico City; and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He lives and works in Mexico City.

May 8, 2015 Felipe Mujica & Jorge de León: Tocar Madera https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/felipe-mujica-jorge-de-leon-tocar-madera/

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Artists: Akira Ikezoe, Alberto Rodríguez Collía y Andrea Mármol, Buró de Intervenciones Públicas, Elisabeth Wild, Federico Herrero, Felipe Mujica, Jessica Kairé, Jesús “Bubu” Negrón, Johanna Unzueta, Jorge De León, Melvin Laz, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, Radamés “Juni” Figueroa, Regina José Galindo, Stefan Benchoam.

Tocar Madera
April 25, 2015
El Aserradero / Proyectos Ultravioleta
Guatemala City, Guatemala

After more than five and a half years and countless collaborations, exhibitions, presentations, excursions, concerts, workshops, lectures, derives, debates, talks, screenings, discussions, performances, bike rides, fairs, encounters and legendary parties, Proyectos Ultravioleta is moving to its new space in zone one of Guatemala City.

This first exhibition in our new home showcases the works of the 15 artists represented by the gallery. In order to mark the occasion, we invite everyone to join us, chase away the bad omens, commend ourselves to favourable luck, and touch wood.

Additionally, there will be amazing burgers by Querido Combo, finger licking Caribbean fusions by Morisoñando, and Guatemala’s finest coffee brewed by Rojocerezo.

Those arriving on their bikes can park inside our lot. Those who would prefer to come by car can park around the corner, on 11 ave (between 20 and 21st street) in front of Agrochina.

So please help us spread the word, and come celebrate with us!

 

Después de más de cinco años y medio, y un sin fin de colaboraciones, exposiciones, presentaciones, excursiones, conciertos, talleres, charlas, derivas, debates, lecturas, proyecciones, discusiones, performances, paseos en bici, ferias, encuentros y fiestas legendarias, Proyectos Ultravioleta se traslada a su nuevo espacio en la zona uno de la Ciudad de Guatemala.

Esta primera exposición en la nueva casa de UV presenta trabajos de los 15 artistas representados por la galería. Para celebrar dicha ocasión, los invitamos a todos para acompañarnos a ahuyentar los malos presagios, encomendarnos a la buena suerte y tocar madera.

Además, habrá deliciosas burgers a cargo de Querido Combo, comida caribeña de gran sazón por Morisoñando, y el mejor café del territorio guatemalteco con Rojocerezo.

Los que lleguen en bicicleta podrán estacionar adentro. Y los que prefieran el carro, pueden parquear en el estacionamiento de a la vuelta, sobre la 11 ave (entre la 20 y 21 calle) frente al Agrochina.

Así que rieguen la bola, y vengan a celebrar con nosotros!

May 8, 2015 Richard Garet: META-residue: input, material, space https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/richard-garet-meta-residue-input-material-space/

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Artist: Richard Garet

META-residue: input, material, space
May 8-31, 2015
Studio 10
Brooklyn NY, USA

The exhibition includes sound art, multimedia installation, moving image, painting and collage. These works convey a distilled presentation of Garet’s practice, ideas, and interests articulated through his investigation of time, media, material and space. Garet’s immersive approach activates sensorial results in the viewer. His hybrid constructions draw attention to the normative function of noise as a consequence of daily life. Further inspiration and intent in Garet’s work are the objectification of the ordinary and his interest in the multilayered complexities of the mundane.

The title of the exhibition “Meta-residue: input, material, space” deals with the perception of time, its affects and reception of materiality and space, mediated through the idea of meta-residue identifying the essence of what once was but is no longer tangible. This phenomenon is all around us. Not only as content and evidence of life but also as the mechanics that filter into aesthetics through constructs that are created in response to the felt world.

Image: treating pictures like wire 2, 2015, mixed media, 12″ X 18″.
May 7, 2015 Christian Camacho Reynoso: doble electrón https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/christian-camacho-reynoso-doble-electron/

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Artist: Christian Camacho Reynoso

doble electrón
May 6, 2015
Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo
Mexico City, Mexico

Solo exhibition by Christian Camacho Reynoso.

May 7, 2015 Ivelisse Jimenez: Else-weres https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ivelisse-jimenez-else-weres/

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Artist: Ivelisse Jimenez

Else-weres
April 9 – May 31, 2015
Diana Lowenstein Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

Solo show by artist Ivelisse Jimenez.

Image: Blind Enough #4, 2010, Mixed media on canvas, 54 x 48 in. (137.16 x 121.92 cm)
May 6, 2015 Emilia Azcárate, Leyla Cárdenas, Danilo Dueñas, Bernardo Ortiz, Rosario López & Luis Roldán: Why Abstract Art? https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilia-azcarate-leyla-cardenas-danilo-duenas-bernardo-ortiz-rosario-lopez-luis-roldan-abstract-art/

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Artists: Emilia Azcárate, Leyla Cárdenas, Danilo Dueñas, Bernardo Ortiz, Adolfo Bernal, Carlos Bunga, Feliza Bursztyn, Beatriz Eugenia Díaz, Fernando Fragateiro, Rosario López, Delcy Morelos, Aleex Rodríguez, Carlos Rojas, Luis Roldán, Rosemberg Sandoval, José Antonio Suárez Londoño and Icaro Zorbar.

Why Abstract Art? (¿Por qué el arte abstracto?)
May 7 – June 11, 2015
Casas Riegner
Bogotá, Colombia

Group show.

May 6, 2015 Miguel Rothschild: Book presentation https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/miguel-rothschild-book-presentation/

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Artist: Miguel Rothschild

Book presentation
May 1, 2015
Kuckei + Kuckei Gallery
Belin, Germany

On this occasion, the artist will present his new book, which is published by Hatje Cantz Verlag and show some of his work along with it.

May 5, 2015 Aníbal Catalán: Campo Dinámico https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/anibal-catalan-campo-dinamico/

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Artist: Aníbal Catalán

Campo Dinámico
April 17 – May 17, 2015
Museo de la Ciudad de Querétaro
Querétaro, Mexico

Solo show by Aníbal Catalán.

May 5, 2015 Marcolina Dipierro: …en dos https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcolina-dipierro-en-dos/

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Artist: Marcolina Dipierro

…en dos
April 23 – May 25, 2015
Galería del Paseo
Lima, Peru

Me interesa profundizar en las posibilidades y potencialidades contenidas en el círculo y el triángulo; representar su infinitud formal, visual y perceptiva, estableciendo vínculos y diálogos de dirección, actitud, límites, volúmenes y replieges.

 

April 30, 2015 Mariela Scafati, Silvia Gurfein & Silvana Lacarra: In Fraganti https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/mariela-scafati-silvia-gurfein-silvana-lacarra-fraganti/

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Artists: Ananké Asseff, Juan Becú, Joaquín Boz, Sofía Bohtlingk, Dino Bruzzone, Elena Dahn, Bruno Dubner, Matías Duville, Julieta Escardó, Raúl Flores, Margarita García Faure, Lisa Giménez, Alberto Goldenstein, Max Gómez Canle, Sebastiám Gordín, Diego Gravinese, Silvia Gurfein, Silvana Lacarra, Estefanía Landesmann, Marcos López, Eduardo Médici, Emiliano Miliyo, Jorge Miño, Andrea Ostera, Esteban Pastorino, Oscar Pintor, Santiago Porter, Dalila Puzzovio, Res, Jorge Roiger, Rosa Chancho, Mariela Scafati, Pablo Suárez, Rosana Schoijett, Paula Senderowicz, Rosana Simonassi, Cecilia Szalkowicz, Mariano Vilela, Martín Weber, Pablo Ziccarello.

In Fraganti
Curated by Valeria González
April 11 – July 18, 2015
ArtexArte
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Proyecto que investiga la “y” que une y separa, de manera fluctuante, a la pintura y la fotografía, no tanto como disciplinas estables sino los espacios intermedios, dialógicos o conflictivos, en que los lenguajes se cruzan y engendran nuevas prácticas y pensamientos.

Se trata sobre todo de cruces de dispositivos, algunos de los cuales advienen en la desembocadura de largos procesos históricos.

 

April 30, 2015 Macaparana: Música https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/macaparana-musica/

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Artist: Macaparana

Música
April 27 – June 27, 2015
Galería Jorge Mara La Ruche
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Una exposición para ver y oír. Esta muestra trata de una serie de más de 70 obras sobre cartón y papel inspiradas en la música. Hay en toda la obra de este artista una gran influencia musical. En este conjunto la correlación obra plástica y formas musicales es muy cercana y deliberada. Las obras de Música podrían considerarse casi partituras sin que exista una notación musical propiamente dicha. Existe una corriente de intérpretes y musicólogos que sostiene que una obra plástica – pintura, dibujo- puede ser interpretada por uno o varios instrumentos , improvisando libremente sobre las formas o las líneas de acuerdo a lo que estas sugieran al intérprete. El resultado, una vez traducido formalmente a música, puede ser vertido a una notación convencional e interpretado como cualquier partitura. Esto es lo que la flautista argentina Patricia Da Dalt ha hecho con un grupo de obras de Macaparana que forman parte de la muestra. Inspirada directamente por las obras, frente a ellas, la intérprete, sirviéndose de cuatro tipos de flautas distintas, ha “improvisado” una suite en cuatro partes, que da cuenta de lo que el espíritu, las formas y el color de estas obras le transmitían o sugerían. Esta llamada Suite Macaparana fue registrada en un CD, incluído en el catálogo editado con motivo de la exposición. Junto a esta composición, la flautista interpreta la obra del compositor japonés Toro Takemitsu, Itinerant, a la memoria de Isamu Noguchi, para flauta solista y el Trío Luminar su grabación de la Sonata para flauta, viola y arpa de Claude Debussy.

 

April 28, 2015 Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraenen: Trace https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/carla-arocha-stephane-schraenen-trace/

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Artists: Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraenen.

Trace
May 1 – June 27, 2015
Galerie Isabella Czarnowska
Berlin, Germany

The title “Trace” already conveys an impression of the character of the exhibition and the atmosphere it will create. The artists will moreover venture beyond the physical boundaries of the space and open it up for new and unknown dimensions. As a result, the exhibition will exert a seductive lure and provide aesthetic pleasure by receiving and integrating each of the forms on view. At the same time, it will arouse suspicion and a feeling of uncertainty about what else will appear. The line between the utilitarian function of the architectonic space and a fictional, non-utilitarian one is very fine, and sometimes it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

In the installation Frieze II, the wall looks as if it was being deliberately peeled away to expose an unknown source of light. Room II raises questions about the condition of historical memories and their contemporary character. A marble floor structure running across entire gallery seems to allude to the foundations of another building. Perhaps the form refers to a building of the past, now existing as no more than a trace? Or why not think of it as an announcement of possible future events?

The Cabinet, Credenza and Bedside Table form a series of objects distributed throughout the gallery. Each of them features the finest palisander veneer. If at first sight they look like elegant pieces of furniture, on closer inspection we discover that the objects are non-functional. What is more, they have been perforated with perfectly round holes which lead the gaze right through to the other side. This singular gesture not only opens the objects up to new dimensions, but also emphasizes their non-functional character all the more strongly. A literal act of perforation, well known from everyday situations, means nothing more than the end of validity, and turns the furniture into useless objects but beautiful sculptures.

Earlier works by Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraenen were presented in the exhibition “Caraota Von Moules” with Arturo Herrera at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2012); in their solo exhibition “Persiana” at the Cultuurcentrum Mechelen, Mechelen, Belgium (2014); in “Landscape” in the Sala Juarez of the LARVA Laboratorio de Artes Veriedades, Guadalajara, Mexico, and in the show “In A Rhythmic Fashion” at Glyphotheque, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb, Croatia (both 2015).

A catalogue entitled “What Now?” was published by the DISTANZ Verlag in conjunction with the first exhibition by Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraenen at the Galerie Isabella Czarnowska in 2013. The catalogue is available at the gallery as well as in bookstores worldwide.

April 28, 2015 Bernardo Ortiz: Drawing Biennial 2015 https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/bernardo-ortiz-drawing-biennial-2015/

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Artists: Mateo López and Bernardo Ortiz, among many more

Drawing Biennial 2015
Until April 30, 2015
Auction online: 16 – 30 April 2015
Drawing Room
London, UK

Drawing Biennial 2015, an exhibition organized by the Drawing Room in London, UK. Selected by Drawing Room directors Mary Doyle, Kate Macfarlane and Katharine Stout, each of the 252 participating artists was invited to make an original drawing in any medium on an A4 sheet of paper. Drawing Biennial 2015 culminates in an online auction that will run until April 30th. The sale of the works, all of them donated by the artists, will support the Drawing Room’s exhibition program.

April 24, 2015 Richard Garet, Lucia Koch & Sergio Vega: Theorem https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/richard-garet-lucia-koch-sergio-vega-theorem/

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Artists: Miguel Andrade Valdez, Julieta Aranda, Kader Attia, Elena Bajo, Otto Berchem, Monika Bravo, Fernando Bryce, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Heman Chong, Elena Damiani, Marlon de Azambuja, Milagros de la Torre, Aleksandar Duravcevic, Nicole Franchy, Richard Garet, Kendell Geers, Pedro Gomez-Egaña, Radamés Juni Figueroa, Lucia Koch, Annette Lemieux, Jose Carlos Martinat, Jo Ractliffe, Rivka Rinn, Santiago Roose, Susan Siegel, DM Simons, Antonio Vega Macotela, Sergio Vega, and Zoé T. Vizcaíno.

THEOREM. You Simply Destroy the Image. I Always Had of Myself
Curated by Octavio Zaya
May 3 – August 1, 2015
Mana Contemporary
Miami, FL, USA

Several artists from far-flung locations such as Peru, Brazil, and Norway, are traveling to Mana to create their installations on-site. The artists address the hypothetical question ‘what if?’ – as inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1968 film Teorema – contemplating a world turned upside-down, where social tensions can be amplified to the point of poetic subversion, achieving possible transcendence.

Image: Miguel Andrade Valdez, Encofrado Construção III, 2015.
April 24, 2015 Marco Maggi: Global Myopia II https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marco-maggi-global-myopia-ii/

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Artist: Marco Maggi

Global Myopia II
May 9 – November 22, 2015
Uruguay Pavilion at the Venice Biennale
Venice, Italy

Marco Maggi will represent Uruguay at the upcoming Venice Biennale, opening to the public on May 9 and on view through November 22, 2015. The Uruguayan pavilion is one of the 29 national pavilions located in the Giardini della Biennale. Marco Maggi’s drawings, sculptures and installations encode the world. Composed of linear patterns that suggest circuit boards, aerial views of impossible cities, genetic engineering or nervous systems, his drawings are a thesaurus of the infinitesimal and the undecipherable. Marco Maggi’s abstract language refers to the way information is processed in a global era, and his work challenges the notion of drawing itself. For the 56th Venice Biennale he will present Global Myopia II, a site-specific installation of paper, stickers and pencils on the inside of the pavilion, and a large floating sculpture on the outside.

Saying that the world is myopic sounds depreciative: a planet without perspective, moving forward without any clear sense of direction. Marco Maggi, on the contrary, claims and prescribes myopia as the extraordinary ability to see from very close. Nearsightedness allows one to focus carefully on invisible details, it challenges the acceleration and the abuse of long-distance relationships characteristic of our era. After a farsighted 20th century with solutions for everyone and forever, it is time to stimulate our empathy for the immediate and the insignificant.

In Global Myopia II, paper and pencil, the two basic elements of drawing, get separated and the act of drawing is split into two stages. A portable kit composed of 10,000 elements cut out of self-adhesive paper becomes an insignificant alphabet that the artist will fold and paste onto the walls during the three months preceding the biennale. The diminutive papers are disseminated or connected following the specific traffic rules and syntax dictated by any accumulation of sediments. The colonies of paper sticker on the walls enter in dialogue with a custom lighting track provided by Erco. Myriads of high-definition shadows and infinitesimal incandescent projections will aim to slow down the viewer. The only ambition of the project is to promote pauses and closeness.

Born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1957, Marco Maggi lives and works in New Paltz, NY and Montevideo, Uruguay. His work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America in galleries, museums, and biennials. He is represented by Josée Bienvenu in New York. In 2013, he received the Premio Figari (Career Award). Selected exhibitions include Functional Desinformation, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2012); Optimismo Radical, NC-arte, Bogota, Colombia (2011); New Perspectives in Latin American Art, 1930–2006, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008); Poetics of the Handmade, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2007); Fifth Gwangju Biennial, Korea (2004); VIII Havana Biennial, Cuba (2003); 25th Sao Paulo Biennial, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2002); and Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2001). Public collections include The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; The Drawing Center, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach; El Museo del Barrio, New York; Cisneros Collection, New York; and Daros Foundation, Zurich.

The 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia is directed by Okwui Enwezor, curator, art critic and writer, and the Director of the Haus der Kunst, Munich. The Uruguayan Commissioner is artist Ricardo Pascale and the project is curated by Patricia Bentancur, Senior Curator and New Media Director at the Centro Cultural de España in Montevideo (CCE), a leading space for Iberoamerican art.

Image: Marco Maggi, Putin’s Pencils, 2014. Soviet era color pencils and bowstrings. Image courtesy of the artist and Josée Bienvenu Gallery.
April 24, 2015 Mariella Agois, Alberto Borea, Jorge Cabieses, Casari & PPPP, Valentino Sibadon: Señalamientos https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/mariella-agois-alberto-borea-jorge-cabieses-casari-pppp-valentino-sibadon-senalamientos/

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Artists: Mariella Agois, Alberto Borea, Jorge Cabieses, Casari & PPPP, Valentino Sibadon, Miguel Aguirre, Haroldo Higa, Edi Hirose, José Luis y José Carlos Martinat, Musuk Nolte, and Patrick Tschudi.

Señalamientos
Curator: Jorge Villacorta
April 23 – May 23, 2015
Lucía de la Puente Galería de Arte
Lima, Peru

Celebrating 20 years of the gallery. Group exhibition.

April 22, 2015 José Dávila: Actos tectónicos de duda y deseo https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/jose-davila-last-days/

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Artist: José Dávila

Actos tectónicos de duda y deseo
February 27 – April 30, 2015
Travesía Cuatro
Madrid, Spain

Las piezas que conforman esta exposición remiten a las nociones de equilibrio y balance, las cuales son generadas en el momento de abandono en el que dos fuerzas que permanecían en conflicto, finalmente ceden. Este instante de aparente neutralidad es también la presencia simultánea de todas las posibilidades. El artista pretende extender esta condición de indeterminación aprovechando el conocimiento técnico, que en su uso común busca maximizar la eficacia de los materiales, Dávila en cambio, los convierte en entidades inútiles. Las herramientas estructurales son empleadas con fines meramente poéticos. La lucha interminable de lo arquitectónico en contra de los efectos de la gravedad es sintetizada a través del uso de materiales industriales, destinados para la construcción, para crear estos sistemas de fragilidad, que carecen de profundidad y han quedado recluidos a su extensión superficial; amenazados por la fractura y la interrupción de las relaciones de fuerza y las estructuras de tensión que los constituyen y les otorgan autonomía. Estas obras obligan a reconsiderar el significado de lo escultórico. Desafían la frontera que separa al contenido del contenedor, para efectuar una expansión espacial que modifica por completo la experiencia arquitectónica. Rosalind Krauss denomina lo anterior como el fenómeno propio de las estructuras axiomáticas, constituidas por la fusión de la arquitectura con la no-arquitectura. Lo anterior implica la introducción de formas ajenas que rechazan toda incorporación funcional, problematizando las obviedades del campo donde se ubican, para así reclamar una presencia propia. Las especificidades de los materiales llevan a cabo un desdoblamiento del espacio por medio de una serie de transparencias y reflejos. El carácter pictórico de los cinchos contrastando con las placas despliega un conjunto de líneas referenciales que ayudan a visualizar la delicada comunicación entre las superficies y sus correspondientes puntos de apoyo.

Dávila propone una exégesis de la tradición minimalista y de la historia del arte en general, recurriendo a una especie de lenguaje críptico reservado a la naturaleza de los objetos, que desafía la comprensión y las categorías de la mirada subjetiva. Las esculturas permanecen como gestos intermedios, entre la destrucción inminente y la permanencia. El trabajo de Dávila aborda la cuestión sobre los límites de los valores instrumentales mediante el uso de materiales comunes para crear esculturas, objetos e instalaciones. Con frecuencia, la naturaleza de estos materiales se acerca tanto a la construcción de la arquitectura como a la producción artística formal, que suscriben su trabajo a los principios acuñados por el Minimalismo y el Arte Povera. Dávila también ha manifestado un especial interés en el uso y ocupación del espacio, temas que han estado presentes a lo largo de toda su carrera.

Su obra ha sido expuesta en el Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo MUAC, Ciudad de México; Caixa Forum, Madrid; MoMA PS1, Nueva York; Kunstwerke, Berlín; San Diego Museum of Art; Museo de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; MAK, Viena, Fundación / Colección JUMEX, Ciudad de México; Bass Museum of Art, Miami; Museu do Arte Moderna, Sao Paulo; The Moore Space, Miami; NICC, Antwerp, entre otras; y ha aparecido en publicaciones internacionales como Cream 3, ed. Phaidon, 100 Latin- American Artists, ed. Exit y Megastructures-Reloaded, ed. Hatje Cantz. Dávila ha recibido el apoyo de la Andy Warhol Foundation, la Kunstwerke residency en Berlín y el Premio Nacional para jóvenes artistas del Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (FONCA) en 2000. Además fue fundador de la Oficina para Proyectos de Arte (OPA), en Guadalajara, México.

April 22, 2015 Iosu Aramburu: Demasiado pronto, demasiado tarde https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/iosu-aramburu-demasiado-pronto-demasiado-tarde/

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Artist: Iosu Aramburu

Demasiado pronto, demasiado tarde
Curated by Alba Colomo
April 15 – May 30, 2015
Centro Cultural Británico de San Juan de Lurigancho
Lima, Peru

Muestra individual de Iosu Aramburú (Perú)

La exposición se apropia de la mirada del novelista J. G. Ballard y hace un recorrido por el imaginario urbano de la Lima de mediados del siglo pasado. En la muestra, los edificios se diluyen hasta volverse ruinas o fantasmas y ser reclamados por su entorno.

El artista exhibirá fotografía, pintura, dibujo y una instalación interactiva en el jardín del centro de estudios.

April 21, 2015 Cipriano Martínez: Weight for the Showing https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/cipriano-martinez-weight-showing/

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Artists: Richard Serra, Phyllida Barlow, Christian Jankowski, Nicolas Feldmeyer, Cipriano Martinez, Levi van Veluw, David Rickard, Livia Marin, Richard Schur, Liv Fontaine, Knopp Ferro.

Weight for the Showing
Curated by Paul Carey-Kent
April 23 – June 16, 2015
Maddox Arts
London, UK

Of the many competitors for our attention when we look at a work of art – meaning, narrative, form, colour, gesture, scale, sound, movement – its weight is not generally high in the list, heavy as much sculpture and some painting may be (Bram Bogart’s super-thick applications or Analia Saban’s container canvases come to mind). Indeed, although WEIGHT FOR THE SHOWING is themed around weight, all the works have other interesting agendas, most notably perhaps the frequency with which they skew logic and the zest with which they engage with art history.

Some artists playfully substitute the heavy for the light or vice versa: Gavin Turk’s bronze bin bags are well known, Andreas Lolis has made marble look very like card or polystyrene; Fishli & Weiss fashioned all manner of items out of polyurethane; and Sarah Sze recently made rocks out of photographs of rocks, which she showed alongside real boulders. Others have used surprisingly-weighted items, e.g. Andrew Palmer attaches rocks to paintings, and Aselm Kiefer fixes anything from soil to submarines to his canvases; Damien Hirst’s ping pong ball pieces might be the opposite end of that scale.

Such play is allowed here, but the show concentrates more on two other aspects: the relative weight of elements within or between works, which latter may be down to evident heaviness of mark, or else be a matter of ‘feeling’ heavy or light for no obvious literal reason; and the metaphorical association of weight with seriousness and being weighed down by troubles or history. There’s no neat division, but Barlow, Rickard, Schur, Ferro and Martinez are perhaps more in the first category; and Serra, Jankowski, Marin, Feldmeyer and Fontaine in the second.

Enough weight may also lead to collapse. Nietzsche worried about the possibility of Eternal Return, in which we’re doomed to repeat events for eternity, making existence a heavy burden, given the impossibility of escaping the cycle. Buddhism provides a potential way out of that by embracing the cycle, as does Milan Kundera when, assuming in contrast that such a cycle is impossible, he holds that ‘life which disappears once and for all, which does not return is without weight…and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime…means nothing’. Decisions are then ‘light’ – they do not tie us down – but meaningless and potentially empty. That isn’t entirely welcome either, hence the ‘the unbearable lightness of being’. A more pragmatic view would be that we’re in the space between the baggage of the what’s gone and the disintegration to come – but the interim phase may last a while yet, and we might as well enjoy it. Just so, there’s plenty of wit in these works, that raise interesting issues but also help visitors to enjoy a few minutes of the gap.

Image: Christian Jankowski, Heavy Weight History (Ronald Reagan), 2013 – b/w photograph on baryt paper, 140 x 186.8 cm, ed.1 of 5+2 ap
April 21, 2015 Adriana Minoliti & Fernanda Laguna: Monumento https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/adriana-minoliti-fernanda-laguna-monumento/

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Artists: Jimena Croceri, Dana Ferrari, Adriana Minoliti and Fernanda Laguna.

Monumento
March 20 – April 18, 2015
Mite Galería
Buenos Aires, Argentina

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Images: Fernanda Laguna, “Sin título”, 2014, Mixed media / Adriana Minoliti, “Geometría tropical”, 2015, Acrylic on fabric.
April 17, 2015 Omar Barquet: Solo show https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/omar-barquet-solo-show/

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Artist: Omar Barquet

Omar Barquet, performance and solo show
April 10, 2015
Christinger De Mayo
Zürich, Switzerland

Solo show and performance by Omar Barquet

Image: Omar Barquet, Ghost Variations’ 3rd Fugue: The Shinning Sequence. Photo: Pablo Faccinetto
April 17, 2015 Amadeo Azar: Los restos del triunfo (Dos por tres) https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/amadeo-azar-los-restos-del-triunfo-dos-por-tres/

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Artists: Jorge Miño and Amadeo Azar.

Los restos del triunfo (Dos por tres)
Curated by Valeria González
April 8, 2015
Fundación Federico Jorge Klemm
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Religiosa o no, una revelación es un acontecimiento que excede a sí mismo, señalando una verdad que lo precede. Aún antes de saberlo ellos mismos, las obras de Jorge Miño y Amadeo Azar avanzaban en sintonías paralelas. La experiencia artística que hoy nos presentan, en la que han trabajado como un auténtico dúo, es una desembocadura que ilumina y resignifica sus propios pasados.

A nadie habrá escapado que ambos comparten el interés por los idiomas geométricos de las utopías constructivas que brillaron antes de la segunda guerra mundial. Pero se trata aún de un rasgo demasiado genérico, casi consustancial al arte posmoderno. Para captar algo de la singularidad de su espíritu es preciso aclarar lo que ellos no hacen. Miño y Azar no condescienden a la risa triste de la ironía. No trabajan con cadáveres de proyectos fracasados (“fracaso” puede decir aquel que espera de la utopía una respuesta útil) sino con un acervo de inquietudes formales e imaginarias aún inagotable.

Para remarcar sus coincidencias, pero sobre todo cómo un repertorio acotado y riguroso es capaz de combinatorias infinitas, los artistas dicen todo en blanco, negro y rojo. En una gran retícula donde las fotografías de Miño y las acuarelas de Azar se intercalan, vemos que los colores netos del diseño ruso se abren a la multiplicación de matices sutiles, creando un efecto casi atmosférico.

Hace años, su pasión por las vanguardias geométricas los llevó a tensar los límites del plano: Azar comenzó sus piezas de papel plegado y Miño a multiplicar los efectos ópticos de sus distorsiones fotográficas. Aquí, por primera vez, integran sus lenguajes en una secuencia de piezas realizadas en conjunto.

En un tercer y último paso, los artistas ponen en diálogo dos obras individuales de gran tamaño. Visto musicalmente, el dúo se presenta entonces al compás de tres partituras diferentes. En el primer mural, las dos voces al unísono se integran en una melodía continua. Como instrumentos afinados en una misma clave, la copia sobre papel de algodón acerca su registro al de la acuarela. Gradientes cromáticos y lumínicos modulan la textura de esta gran superficie como suaves diferenciales sonoros de timbres y alturas.

La secuencia de piezas en coautoría puede pensarse como una segunda partitura compuesta de breves arreglos contrapuntísticos a intervalos mayores. Fotografía y papel plegado se superponen como dos interpretaciones vocales en base a un mismo motivo musical.

Por último, asistimos a la alternancia de dos cantos solistas de largo aliento. En tanto los papeles plegados de Azar componen una línea melódica en degradé continuo, la fotografía de Miño acude a los contrastes. Ambos pulsan la geometría hacia la incertidumbre de los reflejos y las reverberaciones lumínicas.

Dos artistas que jamás fueron a Rusia pueden volver a hacer del duro abecedario del constructivismo una experiencia estética de inesperadas resonancias.

Image: Amadeo Azar, 72 acuarelas sobre papel plegados, 2015, 120 x 520 x 20 cm
April 15, 2015 Ricardo Rendón: Límite posible https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ricardo-rendon-limite-posible/

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Artist: Ricardo Rendón

Límite posible
March 2 – April 18, 2015
Arroniz Arte Contemporáneo
Mexico City, Mexico

Un Dedo

La posibilidad remota de comprender la estructura del universo en el corto lapso de una vida conformada por ecos espirales se presenta en el momento improbable en que asumo la “nadidad” que me toca encarnar, como quien invoca una visión que regenera, o aquel que se ubica en el umbral de la ordalía, anulando su propia personalidad, y se sumerge en el Vacío.

“La forma es vacío, el vacío es forma”, resuelve el autor del Prajna Paramita, estableciendo los enigmas ontológicos de la física cuántica.

Pero, ¿dónde se encuentra el Vacío que transforma la consciencia?
¿En el espacio profano, repleto de aire tóxico, preñado de tumulto arcaico, de voces silenciadas?
¿En el espacio luminoso, atravesado por agujeros negros, los túneles al fondo del abismo, que conducen a lo que nadie quiere ver?
¿En la materia fatal de un espejismo seductor?
¿En la solidez de la ilusión mental?
¿En la energía atómica que palpita ad infinitum en la intersección de esta grafía: † ?
¿En la reabsorción final?
¿O en el reflejo de mí mismo?

‘El Maestro Gutei, siempre que se le preguntaba algo, sólo levantaba un dedo.
En una época, Gutei tenía un pequeño asistente, a quien un visitante preguntó:
“¿Qué es el Zen que tu Maestro está enseñando?”
El niño también levantó un dedo.
Al enterarse de esto, Gutei le cortó el dedo al niño con un cuchillo.
El niño se alejó corriendo, gritando de dolor, y Gutei lo llamó.
Cuando el niño giró su cabeza para mirarlo, Gutei levantó su dedo.
El niño repentinamente se iluminó.’

Mumonkan (3. Gutei Levanta Un Dedo)

Cuando a las formas se les remueve el contenido, antes de provocar cualquier expresión material o psicológica, de modo que manifiestan sólo sus límites externos, y ocultan su cuerpo inconfesable el Vacío revela, al fin, su verdadera naturaleza omnipresente, como la risa sacra que el lenguaje es incapaz de definir.Así, cuando las fuerzas que acaban despojando todo movimiento artístico de contenido y poder de transformación, intenten también tragarse estas formas, las encontrarán huecas y no podrán hacerlo, ya que no les quedará nada más por devorar.

Gabriel Santamarina,
Ciudad de México 2015.

April 15, 2015 Marcius Galan, José Davila & Gabriel Sierra: Do Objeto para o Mundo – Coleção Inhotim https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcius-galan-objeto-para-o-mundo-colecao-inhotim/

02. Marcius Galan-Secao Diagonal

Artists: Abraham Cruzvillegas, André Cadere, Anri Sala, Artur Barrio, Channa Horwitz, Chris Burden, Cildo Meireles, Cinthia Marcelle, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, David Lamelas, Décio Noviello, Ernesto Neto, Gabriel Sierra, Hélio Oiticica, Hitoshi Nomura, Iran do Espírito Santo, Jac Leirner, Jorge Macchi, Jose Dávila, Juan Araujo, Kiyoji Otsuji, Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Mauro Restiffe, Marcellvs L., Marcius Galan, Melanie Smith, Michael Smith, Pipilotti Rist, Raquel Garbelotti, Rivane Neuenschwander, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Tsuruko Yamazaki.

Do Objeto para o Mundo – Coleção Inhotim
Curated by Rodrigo Moura and Inês Grosso
April 2 – May 31, 2015
Itaú Cultural
São Paulo, Brazil

A mostra itinerante “Do Objeto para o Mundo – Coleção Inhotim”- primeira vez que parte do acervo do instituto deixa sua sede, em MG – chega a SP para ocupar três andares do Itaú Cultural. A obra “Seção Diagonal”, de Marcius Galan, instalada em Inhotim desde 2010, foi readequada para o espaço da exposição. Dividida em seis núcleos temáticos, a coletiva possibilita ao público conhecer como a arte neoconcreta influenciou decisivamente as técnicas contemporâneas.

Image: Marcius Galan, Seção Diagonal
April 13, 2015 Iván Navarro: Jardins https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ivan-navarro-jardins/

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Artist: Iván Navarro

Jardins, Opening of new gardens at Baró
April 11 – May 23, 2015
Baró Jardins
Sao Paulo, Brazil

Ao subverter conceitos de design, criando um minimalismo carregado de emoção, o artista chileno coloca em foco reflexões políticas e sociais originárias de sua experiência com o regime ditatorial chileno sob o qual cresceu. Mais do que trazer estas questões à luz do neon, Iván Navarro transporta o espectador a infinitos labirintos, onde o espelhos ecoam o que muitas vezes as vozes podem calar.

Image: Iván Navarro, Strike
April 13, 2015 Ricardo Carioba & Richard Garet: Adrenalina https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/richard-garet-adrenalina/

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Artists:  Chris Coleman, Donato Sansone, Henrique Roscoe (VJ 1mpar), Hugo Arcier, Lucas Bambozzi, Luiz duVa, Matheus Leston, Mike Pelletier, Rick Silva, Ricardo Carioba, Richard Garet, Ryoichi Kurokawa, Santiago Ortiz, Semiconductor, Susi Sie, Transforma.

Adrenalina -a imagem em movimento no século XXI
Curator: Fernando Velazquez
March 14 – May 5, 2015
RedBull Station
Sao Paulo, Brazil

A adrenalina é um hormônio neurotransmissor que é descarregado no corpo em situações que demandam uma rápida resposta em termos cognitivos, comportamentais e fisiológicos. Ela aguça os sentidos e aumenta a capacidade do cérebro de processar informações, com o objetivo de reestabelecer o equilíbrio entre o ser e o meio.

Esta exposição apresenta um recorte do audiovisual nos dias de hoje, em que vivemos anestesiados pela imagem. Emprestar, no título da mostra, o nome desta substância é um modo de sugerir que ainda podemos ser desafiados e surpreendidos por imagens. 

Os trabalhos apresentados têm em comum a utilização de programação algorítmica e de artifícios generativos, ou seja, se utilizam de sistemas ou regras que permitem o aparecimento de soluções imprevistas. São obras que exploram os recursos narrativos e de linguagem do chamado tempo real, estratégia alternativa à edição convencional de natureza aristotélica.

O interessante neste conjunto de obras está na forma particular de olhar a realidade, as coisas e as pessoas, revelando estruturas e qualidades visíveis e invisíveis a partir de perspectivas que nos solicitam condicionamentos cognitivos específicos, além da abertura ao diálogo com imaginários pouco conhecidos.

Como nos lembra Steve Dietz, todo novo meio penetra as camadas da cultura deixando um legado estrutural de base. O novo meio da fotografia trouxe um outro entendimento da estética da pintura e contribuiu para consolidar culturalmente a conjunção tempo-espaço. O novo meio do vídeo traz uma nova compreensão da estética do cinema, e junto com a TV estabelece o assimilação da ideia de tempo real. O novo meio digital muda o entendimento da arte no sentido que desloca o interesse do comportamento da forma, para a forma dos comportamentos, destacando a potência da interatividade e dos comportamentos em rede. Dos campos eletromagnéticos que nos atravessam em tempo integral (e cujo real efeito sobre o nosso corpo ainda desconhecemos), ao corpo de dados que nos conforma (possível de ser processado e manipulado por algoritmos autônomos), vivemos tempos de reconfigurações sutis da ética, da estética, da política e do território – tópicos sobre os quais propomos refletir a partir deste heterogêneo grupo de obras.

Apoio: SONY

Image: Ricardo Carioba, Abra, 2009, still.
April 8, 2015 G.T. Pellizzi: Before Completion https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/g-t-pellizzi-completion/

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Artist: G.T. Pellizzi

Before Completion
January 10 – February 14, 2015
Harmony Murphy Gallery
Los Angeles, CA, USA

The works in this exhibition are inspired by Hexagram 64 of the I Ching (Book of Changes), colloquially referred to as Before Completion. This section of the ancient augury Chinese text addresses the moment of clarity and illumination in the creative process that exists after a work is resolved, but before it is finished.

This exhibition will feature site specific wall drawings, sculptures, as well as interior and exterior light pieces. These works utilize the materials and vocabulary of buildings-in progress and construction sites, such as snap lines, plaster, plywood, etc., as metaphorical representations of the construction of any work of art. Referencing Flaubert, who famously said: “Books are not made like children but like pyramids.

G.T. Pellizzi was born in 1978 in Tlayacapan, Mexico. He studied philosophy at St. Johns College and graduated from The Channin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union. From 2001-2011, Pellizzi co-founded and has been involved in various art collectives, including The Bruce High Quality Foundation, with whom he has exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art, PS1 MoMA, Centre Pompidou, PAC Murcia, and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and various art galleries in New York, Zurich, Berlin and London. In the past year he has participated in exhibitions at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, the Museo del Barrio in New York, the Biennial of the Americas in Denver, and at L&M. Gallery in Los Angeles. Pellizzi lives between New York and Mexico.

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April 7, 2015 Clarissa Tossin: In Search of an Exit https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/clarissa-tossin-search-exit/

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Artists: Basma Alsharif, Jordi Colomer, Patricia Esquivias, Emiliano Rocha Minter, Barbara T. Smith, Sergio De La Torre, and Clarissa Tossin.

In Search of an Exit
April 7 – May 3, 2105
Curated by the MA class of 2015: Lucia Fabio, Samantha Greggs, Daniela Lieja, Selene Preciado, Heber Rodriguez
Heritage Square Museum
Los Angeles, CA, USA

The works in the exhibition present situations where individuals or groups of people find themselves in a space and have to negotiate their existence within pre-established and external conditions. Inspired by Jean Paul Sartre’s 1944 play No Exit, the exhibition considers themes of time, existence, freedom, and collectivity through time-based work. The structure of a given environment is a pervasive yet ever-evolving stimulus of human behavior capable of catalyzing a spectrum of reactions, from cultural resistance to immersion. The works in this exhibition, a selection of video installations, sound works, and performances, address the adaptability of the human condition in response to external circumstances.

The exhibition will take place at the Heritage Square Museum—a living history museum featuring nineteenth-century buildings from Southern California—a choice of location that highlights the human impulse to preserve artifacts. As the characters in No Exit questioned the peculiarity of their surroundings (a Second Empire-style parlor room), the twenty-first-century artworks stimulate a similar assessment of the three Victorian-era houses into which they are placed. The unique setting additionally highlights the prevalence of the built environment and the effects of architecture as preoccupations for many of the artists in the exhibition.

 

April 6, 2015 Alberto Borea: Mobility and Its Discontents https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alberto-borea-mobility-discontents/

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Artists: Jane Benson, Alberto Borea, Ángel Delgado, Javier Téllez, Lan Tuazon, Jorge Wellesley.

Mobility and Its Discontents
March 6 – May 30, 2015
The 8th Floor
NY, NY, USA

The exhibition examines the dynamics of mobility and its physical, psychological, socio-economic, geographic, and political boundaries. Mobility and Its Discontents signals a shift in the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation’s mission, now focused on broadening public access to artistic and cultural activities in New York City. Featuring artists from Venezuela, Peru, the United Kingdom, and the Philippines, alongside two Cuban artists from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Private Collection, the show brings the Rubins’ dedication to contemporary Cuban art into conversation with a wider artistic community, reflecting the diversity of New York’s cultural life. The works in the exhibition convey experiences of separation, isolation, and distance, experienced on both a local and global scale, in sites such as the United States-Mexico border, New York City’s financial district, and Havana, Cuba. Collectively, they contribute to a dialogue about the barriers encountered in contemporary life, suggesting possibilities for transformation enabled by connectivity and increased access.

Image: Alberto Borea, “Wall Street”, 2013
April 4, 2015 Luis Roldán: Eidola https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/luis-roldan-eidola/

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Artist: Luis Roldán

Eidola
April 2 – May 16, 2015
Henrique Faria Fine Arts
NY, USA

A skull can be read as a ruin signifying the vanity of human existence, the inevitable transitory splendor of human life. Ruins are crumbles of our material world, abandoned fragments, hollowed out of the divine spirit that once animated them.

Images give us hope, that particular hope of accessing the world without limits. Images create a special bond with death, as if the birth of the image could both suppress and sustain life. Or even be exchanged for a life. The human skull, this faceless death mask, this skeletal residue with its empty stare that once animated a human face, is an image, an emblem, an allegorical representation of a history, a montage out of which is read, like a picture puzzle, the nature of human existence, its spirit. Yet it is also the figure of its greatest natural decay, the transformation of the body into corpse, and then, into dust.

But what is really remarkable of the skull as image is the effect it has on recognition. It looks like a figure with something missing; it is at once a body and its ghostly double. It is a cadaver, just as the French theorist Maurice Blanchot notes: “He is, I see this, perfectly like himself: he resembles himself. The cadaver is its own image”.

But all that isn’t so odd after all. Body and image are to resemble each other the same way a shape resembles its mold, emptiness resembles what surrounds it, or an observation or a thought translates into a painting or a sculpture.

Luis Roldán’s ever mutable urge to rescue ruinous objects from their fate by imposing upon them new destinies is, in truth, the task of all artists: that of embodying one’s observations. In the poem “Eidolon”, Walt Whitman suggests that the drive of human creativity is that of issuing eidola. In ancient Greek literature, an eidolon (plural: eidola) was an image, a double, a phantom, a ghostly apparition, a spirit-image of a living or dead person. For the Romans, the same type of spectrum was known as simulacra.

The gathered objects in Roldán’s new piece, Eidola, used to be hat molds. They were the volumes that shaped hollow felts into hats. They stood in the place of the head, like soulless wood brains —as the one Pinocchio must have had— constantly searching for another fragment to attach itself to, in pursuit of completeness.

Eidola is a legion of sculptures searching for idols and a band of paintings searching for corporeality. In other words, it’s an arrangement of elements that emphasize what is left of them, or, rather, what is missing. The sculptures and paintings organized in the exhibition space are fragments that invite us to continue completing, enlarging, augmenting, researching the myriad hypotheses that might justify their existence. But mostly, their purpose is to provoke our imagination, to make us creators of stories and narratives by suggesting an interplay between observation and materialization, surface and volume, void and being, possessions and desires.

Split surfaces, pieces in halves and fragments, invoke a certain fear that appears when we stand in front of an open body. It might be the fear not only of having to acknowledge the fragility of life, its brevity, but also the fear of probing and questioning the indivisibility of the human body. In Eidola, surfaces stop being the intangible frontier between interior and exterior. Roldán exposes the colorful fleshiness of the parts, and renders, as a visible residue, the delimitation among individuals.  These objects are fragments, as we are also fragments, constantly searching for an other who, even if not exact, will complement us, shape us, and make us whole.

Again, it is not about the independence of parts, but how they come together. Striping down the surfaces, opening a gap, creating a tension between paintings and sculptures, doesn’t come from a preoccupation with dissection that seeks to rescue some essence. On the contrary—and this is just an intuition—Roldán grants some sheen to these objects, covering their surfaces with brightness and color, creating new bonds and points of contact that will, in return, renew our gaze over mundane things.

Eidola is a response to constraints and a seizing of opportunities. Despite the use of found objects, Roldán’s representation of the external world becomes a much more complex thing. He shakes objects loose from their attachments and bestows new meanings upon them. Meanings that point toward absolute acts of poetic intuition, producing a text written with our own words, yet one which appears suddenly from a place beyond language.

For despite these attempts of interpretation, Eidola will remain a mystery, a resilient friction. These artworks will resist analysis and interpretation; they will not offer relief or closure. We will not be able to dismantle the mystery, at least not until we cash-in on their stubborn materiality. We cannot tear the mystery into pieces. Art invites and resists interpretation. This is what constitutes art and this is how it reveals the extent of our world yet to be encountered.

In fact, there is nothing to comprehend. The pleasure that derives from these objects comes not only from the beauty with which they have been invested, but also from their essential quality of being present, surrounding us, staying with us, completing us. Here is a traffic and an economy of properties: the object hides its essence, the essence hides in the attributes, but the attributes render visible the object in a grammar of intuition and anticipation, and above all, in a grammar of the encounter.

Perhaps, in a broader sense, we all depend on the images and thoughts that others have produced, what others have encountered for us. We have no easy way of distinguishing a genuine thought from those that have been borrowed or suggested by others. However, it is our good fortune to be able to enjoy them once we encounter them. As it is our fortune to continue imagining alternative realities, meanings.  Indeed, this is what a fragment calls for: to continue its creation, to invent its match, its double, to complete it.

Democritus did say that our attitudes and emotions give off eidola, but that they are too thin for us to detect them, except when we are asleep, as they enter our dreams.

Mariangela Méndez

Luis Roldán (Cali, Colombia, 1955) studied Art History at the École du Louvre (Paris), engraving at S.W. Hayter (Paris) and Architecture at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Bogotá, Colombia). He has exhibited extensively at institutions internationally. A selection of solo shows include: Expiación, Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avendaño, Bogotá (2014); Presión y flujo, Galería Casas Reigner, Bogotá (2014); Mechanical Ventilation. Interactions with Willys de Castro and Other Voices, Henrique Faria, New York (2013 and 2011); Transparencias, Museum of Modern Art, Medellín (2011); Continua, Sicardi Gallery, Houston (2007); Acerca de las estructuras, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, San José, Costa Rica (2006) and Permutantes, Sala Mendoza, Caracas (2005). Selected group shows include: the First Biennial of Cartagena, 2014; the Tenth Monterrey Biennial, 2012; the 53rd Venice Biennale, Latin America Pavilion, 2009; and Dibujos, Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires (2004). He has won numerous awards such as the Luis Caballero Award (Bogotá, 2001) and the National Award in Visual Arts (Colombia, 1996). His work is included in important collections such as Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Museo del Barrio and Deutsche Bank Collection, New York; FEMSA Collection, Monterrey; Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami and the Museums of Modern Art in Buenos Aires, Bogotá and Medellín. He lives and works both in New York City and Bogotá.

Image: Eidola (detail), 2015, Oil on wood, Dimensions variable.
April 1, 2015 Pia Camil: Frieze Projects 2015 https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/pia-camil-frieze-projects-2015/

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Artist: Pia Camil

Frieze Projects 2015
New York, USA

Pia Camil has conceived a project that will function as a portable environment. Inspired by Hélio Oiticica’s Parangolé – a series of capes, flags and banners made to be worn as ‘habitable paintings’ – Camil’s project will consist of a series of wearable fabrics distributed freely to the fair’s visitors.

Camil’s pieces of fabric are designed to allow for various versatile uses including clothing – such as robes or ponchos – and more utilitarian functions – such as picnic blankets, table cloths and sheets. Disseminated within the context of the fair, Camil’s fabric pieces will require the direct participation of the viewers, quietly emphasizing one of the main characteristics of the experience of art fairs, where the act of looking at art is often as important as the act of looking at others and distinguishing oneself from them.

April 1, 2015 Iván Navarro: Onomatoepopeyas https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ivan-navarro-onomatoepopeyas/

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Artists: James Nares, Jenifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, Felipe Águila.

Onomatoepopeyas, La re-significación del espacio a través del sonido
Curated by Iván Navarro
March 21 – April 21, 2015
Centro Cultural Matucana 100
Santiago, Chile

ONOMATOEPOPEYAS es la combinación de las palabras “onomatopeya” y “epopeya” para explorar cómo el sonido está representado en las narrativas “épicas” que estos trabajos contienen.

-“Street” de James Nares (video)

Esta es la pieza central de la exhibición. En septiembre de 2011, Nares- quien vive en New York desde 1974- grabó por 16 horas la gente de las calles de Manhattan desde un auto en movimiento usando una cámara de alta definición que generalmente se usa para grabar cosas que se mueven a alta velocidad (una bala o un colibrí). Luego Nares ralentizó este material y lo dejó en una hora de movimiento continuo y fijo, que musicalizó con una melodía de una guitarra de 12 cuerdas compuesta  e interpretada por su amigo Thurston Moore, co-fundador de la banda Sonic Youth.

-“Returnin g a Sound”de Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla  (video)

Este video fue hecho en Vieques, Puerto Rico, una isla usada durante 60 años por la milicia norteamericana y las fuerzas de la OTAN para ejercicios de bombardeo. Aquí se prepararon intervenciones militares como la de Vietnam, Corea, Bahía Cochinos, Los Balcanes, Somalía, Haití, Golfo Pérsico, Afganistán e Irak.

El movimiento nacional rebelde junto a una red internacional de apoyo, logró que se detuviera el bombardeo en mayo de 2002, además del retiro de las fuerzas militares norteamericanas de la isla, y el comienzo del proceso de desmilitarización y futuro desarrollo de la zona.

“Returning a sound” da cuenta de esta campaña de paz y justicia, y al mismo tiempo señala los posibles riesgos. El video se dirige no solo al paisaje geográfico sino al paisaje sonoro, que para los habitantes de la isla queda marcado por el recuerdo de los bombardeos. Siguen a Homar, un rebelde y activista, que cruza la isla desmilitarizada en una motocicleta que tiene una trompeta soldada al silenciador. Así, al aparato para reducir sonido se le cambia su sentido original para producir un estridente llamado de atención, que le da un nuevo panorama sonoro a áreas de la isla antes expuestas a las detonaciones.

-“Instrumento de Protesta” de Felipe Águila  (escultura)

Felipe Águila expuso hasta el 5 de enero su obra “Strumento di protesta- Opera Latinoamericana”, en la Galería Cívica de Arte Moderna y Contemporánea de Turín, en conmemoración del 69° aniversario de la liberación de Italia. El chileno Felipe Águila vuelve a la imposición del toque de queda durante la dictadura y al silencio quebrado durante las noches de protesta por el sonido de los “cacerolazos, que dialogaban de una casa a otra, de un barrio al otro de la ciudad”. El artista construye una verdadera batería, un instrumento musical donde las ollas son los tambores, las tapaderas son los platillos y las cucharas de madera son las baquetas.

Paralelamente abriremos Radetzky Loop, una instalación realizada por Iván Navarro en colaboración con el músico Atom™. Esta obra se sitúa en el campo de la estética de la resistencia, porque re-significa un neumático, regularmente utilizado para fines muy distintos a los de este proyecto. Por un lado, la rueda de camión de transporte de minerales como el cobre que cumple la importante función de trasladar el popularmente llamado “Sueldo de Chile” (que son las utilidades obtenidas por la empresa gubernamental CODELCO, provenientes de la venta de cobre). Y por otro lado, ironiza dicha función energética como una gran barricada para marchas y protestas callejeras, que resalta su dramatismo interrumpiendo flujos de tránsito peatonal y sonoro.

El neumático se transforma en una micro sala de escucha, donde el visitante se sumerge en un espacio industrial e íntimo, con fragmentos de sonidos de la popular marcha Radeztky. Los sonidos activan la memoria al poder militar, posiblemente grabada en el inconsciente colectivo social.

Lo anterior será acompañado de un concierto a cargo del músico Atom™.

Programa:

Inauguración Radetzky Loop  – IVÁN NAVARRO. 21 de marzo 2015

Intervención sonora  Atom™//Radetzky Loops Live -21 de marzo 2015, Teatro Principal Matucana 100

Exhibición:  21 de marzo al 21 de abril, Galería Concreta.

March 30, 2015 Fernando Carbajal, Eduardo Costa, Juan Raúl Hoyos, Gabriel de la Mora, Sergio Vega: Affective Architectures https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/fernando-carbajal-eduardo-costa-juan-raul-hoyos-gabriel-de-la-mora-sergio-vega-affective-architectures/

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Artists: Milton Becerra, Esteban Blanco, Carola Bravo, Monika Bravo, Tania Candiani, Fernando Carabajal, Consuelo Castañeda, Othon Castañeda, Eduardo Costa, Juan Raúl Hoyos, Pablo León de la Barra, Gonzalo Lebrija, Alberto Lezaca, Gabriel de la Mora, Atelier Morales, Ronald Morán, Bernardo Olmos, Ernesto Oroza, Gamaliel Rodríguez, Rafiño, Leyden Rodríguez-Casanova, Mariasun Salgado, Sergio Vega, and Viviana Zargón.

Affective Architectures
Curated by Aluna Curatorial Collective
Closing reception March 28th, 2015
Show ran from December 6, 2014 – February 15, 2015
Aluna Art Foundation
Miami, FL, USA

Amidst the flood of banal images, what artworks created through an inter-subjective dialogue with the architecture or the spaces inhabited by artists, have the power to move us and remain in our memory? This question was the point of departure in Affective Architectures, an exhibition curated by Aluna Curatorial Collective (Adriana Herrera and Willy Castellanos), and presented with the collaboration of the Instituto Cultural de México in Miami. The opening will be on December 6 at the headquarters of Aluna Art Foundation and the show will run until February 15, 2015.

Twenty three artists from Mexico, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Spain display specular visions of the architectures that are, or were, mirrors of the failed dreams of modernism in the continent, but they also reveal the potential reserves of creativeness that often manifest themselves in the midst of chaos or necessity.

Walter Benjamin, who left the legacy of a perspective of the world around him that was as critical as it was poetic, used to say that architecture was the oldest of arts because the human need for shelter is timeless. And yet, immersed in the architectures that model our cities, we perceive them absentmindedly, without discovering to what extent they contain and alter the acts of our existence.

For Benjamin, criticism was a matter of “the right distance”. The works exhibited reflect an affective gaze on the cities inhabited on the border between the public and the private: they are re­counts of the steps that have been walked, testimonies of having got lost, but also of groping for a way out. Many images, going against the wish to “do” or build characteristic of modernism, reveal the wish to “undo” or “deconstruct”, and track the past and the present of large cities, posing questions about what may be possible.

Paraphrasing what Gerhard Ritcher termed “the question of position”, each of the participating artists approaches inhabited architectures based on a constant negotiation between closeness and distance. They observe, without indifference —from the closeness of affectivity, but also from the distant perspective of memory—, architectures that contain ‘life deposits’, stored memories of life experiences in spaces, which often fuse with social histories everywhere in the world.

Affective Architectures functions as a mirror reflecting our biographies within the failure of the grand narratives in Latin American and Caribbean cities, but also as a window into alternative passages: strategies of the imagination that may allow us to reinvent our ways of inhabiting the world.

About the Instituto Cultural de México en Miami (Mexican Cultural Institute in Miami): The Instituto Cultural de México in Miami (ICMM) projects the wealth and diversity of the millenary culture of that country in Southern Florida. In addition to fostering the acquisition of knowledge on Mexico’s history, literature, cinematography and dramatic arts, it assigns special relevance to the new artistic trends and generations that are successfully developing in Mexico and that, due to their acknowledged quality, have achieved a solid projection at the national and international level.

March 30, 2015 Camilo Guinot: La forma promiscua https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/camilo-guinot-la-forma-promiscua/

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Artist: Camilo Guinot

La forma promiscua
March 12 – April 5, 2015
Centro Cultural Recoleta
Buenos Aires, Argentina

La propuesta del artista consiste en una instalación escultórica utilizando ramas de la poda pública. Guinot reúne, combina y tensiona la idea de producción humana y la de naturaleza. Asimismo involucra en la exposición las nociones de constructivismo austero, el antimonumento (escultura efímera), la sinergia, la ambigüedad temporal, además de aplicar la idea de lo promiscuo a la mezcla y la diversidad que subyace tanto en el proceso artístico como en el de la vida.
En el lenguaje del artista, la poda le otorga a las ramas el status de desecho. Las mismas son recolectadas y recontextualizadas formalmente en relación al entorno. Cada rama puede entenderse como patrón constructivo, y su vez como unidad de tiempo. Acumuladas y dispuestas en el espacio implican la traducción de tiempo a forma.

March 27, 2015 Amalia Pica: A∩B∩C∩A∩B∩C, a reading https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/amalia-pica-a%e2%88%a9b%e2%88%a9c%e2%88%a9a%e2%88%a9b%e2%88%a9c-reading/

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Artist: Amalia Pica

A∩B∩C∩A∩B∩C, a reading
Whitechapel Gallery
London, UK

The artist’s new immersive event centres on a projection of a film by Rafael Ortega, with actors narrating an abstract language of sounds, conceived by Amalia Pica.  The  film depicts a performance of Pica’s work A ∩ B ∩ C: a constellation of different configurations and intersections of shape and colour.  The performance continues the process of layering from the original work: from object, to performance, to film, returning again to performance.

March 27, 2015 Pedro Tyler: Extensa https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/pedro-tyler-extensa-2/

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Artist: Pedro Tyler

Extensa
March 24 – May 2, 2015
Sicardi Gallery
Houston, TX, USA

Pedro Tyler transforms metal rulers into installations that connect the sculptural object with the history of philosophy. The exhibition opens with a reception on Tuesday, March 24, from 6-8 pm with the artist.

Tyler looks to the intersections of philosophy and religion, sculpture and knowledge. “Extensa has to do with the idea of immensity,” he writes. With his installation Principio y Fin (Beginning and End), Tyler bends sections of metal measuring tapes, turning them into the symbol for infinity. Connecting each piece, the linked chain emerges from the wall and splits into several strands, which connect to the ceiling.

The installation and sculptures in Extensa continue the artist’s ongoing investigation of systems of measurement as metaphors for the immensity of the universe. The artist writes, “Making sculpture is providing matter with form, organizing the space in which we move. How then to make an inanimate body transmit thought and emotion? According to Descartes, body and thought are quite distinct. He maintains that there are only two things: the extended thing (bodies, measurable space) and the thinking thing (the immaterial, thoughts, ideas and intuition). And inside the thinking is perfection and infinity, that is, God. But if each body is infinite within itself, are we not saying, like Spinoza, that God is in everything?”

Image: Pedro Tyler, “Beginning and End”, 2014, Variable dimensions.
March 25, 2015 Danilo Dueñas: The painting fallen, and the collapse of Rome https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/danilo-duenas-painting-fallen-collapse-rome/

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Artist: Danilo Dueñas

The painting fallen, and the collapse of Rome
March 18 – April 25, 2015
Galerie Thomas Schulte
Berlin, Germany

“The painting fallen, and the collapse of Rome“ is Dueñas’ second one person show with the gallery after succeeding impressively with his installation in the gallery’s Corner Space in 2012.

March 23, 2015 Lucia Koch: Kaleidoscope: abstraction in architecture https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/lucia-koch-kaleidoscope-abstraction-architecture/

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Artists: Kevin Appel, Carlos Bunga, Gianfranco Foschino, Veronika Kellndorfer, Lucia Koch.

Kaleidoscope: abstraction in architecture
March 21 – May 16, 2015
Christopher Grimes Gallery
Santa Monica, CA, USA

From its beginnings in the early 20th century the legacy of abstraction is rooted in social and political utopias. Today, abstraction as an artistic strategy has reinvented itself for the 21st century, and the fragmentation of form is a common denominator within the majority of the works featured in this exhibition. Kevin Appel’s (United States) paintings explore the relationship between physical space, architecture and the painted image. Using photographs as a ground on which to build his painting, he applies layers of paint that act as screens, compressing the perceived space between the built environment and nature. The act of looking through one element to another, or the blocking of one impenetrable layer by another and mediating our perception of nature and our encounter with the exterior world has become a signature of his painting. Appel’s work is in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, among others.

While Appel’s approach to abstraction is to collide several planes of visual information, Veronika Kellndorfer (Germany) reveals the subjectivity of space and the ephemeral nature of seeing. Her photographs of the glass facades of modernist architectural landmarks are silkscreened onto large glass panels. The works conflate internal and external environments and invite the viewer to uniquely experience their own surroundings. Kellndorfer has recently completed a site-specific commission for the Architekturmuseum, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, where she is presenting large-scale works for the Lina Bo Bardi 100 survey show open through February 22nd. Her work is included in the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA, Hammer Museum Los Angeles, CA, and Pier 24 in San Francisco, CA, in addition to several European institutions.

Lucia Koch (Brazil) challenges the viewer’s perception and experience of space using diverse tactics within architectural settings. In addition to a video and one of her large-scale photographs of the interior of a small coffee bag, Koch will present a wall structure made of aluminum and colored acrylic panels that filter natural light. Through planar interventions, the wall connects different spaces and environments. In 2016 Koch will be the subject of a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

March 20, 2015 Eduardo Costa: International Pop https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/eduardo-costa-international-pop/

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Artists: Delia Cancela, Eduardo Costa, Ushio Shinohara, Keiichi Tanaami, as panelists for the talks.

International Pop
April 11–August 29, 2015
Curators: Darsie Alexander with Bartholomew Ryan
Walker Art Center
Minneapolis, MN, USA

International Pop, a groundbreaking historical survey featuring some 125 works from more than 13 countries on four continents that chronicles the global emergence and migration of Pop art from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s. Organized by the Walker and on view April 11 through August 29, International Pop will travel to the Dallas Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art through 2016.

Among the most broadly recognized phenomena of postwar art, Pop was strikingly nomadic,  spreading not only through Britain and the United States but also Japan, Latin America, and both Eastern and Western Europe. From its inception, Pop migrated across borders, seizing the power of mass media and communication to reach a new class of viewers and adherents who would be drawn to its dynamic attributes. Yet, as this exhibition reveals, distinct iterations of Pop were developing worldwide that alternatively celebrated, cannibalized, rejected, or transformed some of the presumed qualities of Pop advanced in the United States and Britain. While Pop emerged in reaction to the rise of a new consumerist and media age, it also emerged in specific socio-economic contexts that inflected its development and reception: from postwar Europe to the politically turbulent United States to the military regimes of Latin America to the postwar climate of Japan with lingering United States occupation to the restricted pop cultural palette of countries in East Central Europe.

Curated by Darsie Alexander with Bartholomew Ryan

Curatorial consultants: Erica Battle, Hiroko Ikegami, Godfre Leung, Luigia Lonardelli, Ed Halter, and María José Herrera

International Pop Cinema
The exhibition includes an ambitious dedicated in-gallery cinema program curated by Ed Halter of Light Industry, Brooklyn.

Opening day talks, April 11
Livecast on the Walker Channel

Introduction
Speaker: Darsie Alexander (lead curator, International Pop)

The Internationality of Pop
Panelists: Erica Battle (associate curator, Philadelphia Museum of Art), Dávid Fehér (associate curator, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest), Hiroko Ikegami (associate professor, Graduate School of Intercultural Studies at Kobe University, Japan), and Christine Mehring (department chair and associate professor of art history, University of Chicago)
Moderator: Darsie Alexander

Argentine Pop and Its Dematerialization
Panelists: Delia Cancela (artist, Buenos Aires), Eduardo Costa (artist, Buenos Aires), and María José Herrera (director, Museum of Art, Tigre)
Moderator: Bartholomew Ryan

Tokyo Pop
Panelists: Hiroko Ikegami (associate professor, Graduate School of Intercultural Studies, Kobe University, Japan), Ushio Shinohara (artist, New York), and Keiichi Tanaami (artist, Tokyo)

Image: Antonio Dias, O meu retrato (My Portrait), 1966.
March 16, 2015 Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraenen: In A Rhythmic Fashion https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/carla-arocha-stephane-schraenen-rhythmic-fashion/

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Artists: Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraenen

In A Rhythmic Fashion
March 4 – 27, 2015
The Croatian Academy of Arts Glypthotheque
Zagreb, Croatia

For their first exhibition in Zagreb, the Antwerp-based artist duo have devised P10, the tenth iteration of their P-series: modular veils or curtains made of identical Plexiglas elements, hooked together with s-brackets, that both divide, distort and reveal (possible) spaces. Their work, always devised according to site-specific considerations, shows how a regular exhibition location can be made to suggest limitless space that shimmers with depth and reflection.

extract of text by Kate Christina Mayne

March 16, 2015 Amadeo Azar: Open Sessions: Drawings in Context/Field https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/amadeo-azar-open-sessions-drawings-contextfield/

Queens Museum

Artists: Amadeo Azar, Daniel Barroca, Lea Cetera, Youmna Chlala, Onyedika Chuke, Alexandra Lerman, Harold Mendez, Marcelo Moscheta, and Ronny Quevedo.

Open Sessions: Drawings in Context/Field
March 7, 2015
Queens Museum
NY, USA

Encompassing practices in video, photography, drawing and sculpture, this exhibition is focused on the notion of ‘field/context’ as a political, historical, spatial, and technological construct.

In order to analyze contexts and fields artists utilize various modes of making. The artists presented do not attempt to resolve or locate their practices within any given mode of representation. Encompassing practices in video, sound, photography, drawing, performance and sculpture the works herein negotiate with spaces both ambiguous and direct.

The participating artists in Open Sessions: Drawings in Context/Field are members of the Open Sessions program at The Drawing Center, which fosters a dynamic, ever-evolving conversation with new drawing practices and practitioners, viewing drawing as an activity rather than a product. The exhibition is organized by Onyedika Chuke, a participant in Queens Museum’s Artist Studio Program and The Drawing Center’s Open Sessions participant.

Schedule of Events:

1-4pm: Video Screenings, in the Theater on 2nd Floor

4-7pm: Opening Reception, Community Partnership Gallery

Note: There will be a free shuttlebus making loops from under the Mets/Willets Point 7 Train Stop and the Museum from 4:30-7:40pm.

March 11, 2015 Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraene: Landscape https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/carla-arocha-stephane-schraene-landscape/

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Artists: Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraene.

Landscape
February 1 – March 1, 2015
Café Benito / Sala Juárez
Guanajuato, Mexico

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Image: courtesy of the artists and Hey Javier Mendez

 

 

March 11, 2015 Gabriel Acevedo Velarde: Your Lazy Eye https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/gabriel-acevedo-velarde-lazy-eye/

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Artists: Gabriel Acevedo Velarde, Bernadette Corporation, Emily Jacir, Ana Jotta, Judith Hopf, Adriana Lara, Amilcar Llontop, Andreas Slominski, Sturtevant, and Heimo Zobernig.

Your Lazy Eye
Curated by Antoine Henry Jonquères
February 27 – March 6, 2015
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima
Lima, Peru

OUR ONTOLOGY OF DARKNESS
IS FLOODED WITH DIGITAL LIGHT
Sturtevant
Exposure and camouflage are part of our instinct of survival. The animal kingdom does not lack of examples. Each species has a ritual of seduction in which dances and postures allow to compete and demonstrate who is the fittest for procreation. On the other hand, to fool predators and preys, a fish may appear as a stone, an owl as a tree trunk and a chameleon change color depending on its surroundings.

Since the beginning of the XXI century, digital technologies shed light on a large part of a previously anonymous population. The ability to identify, record, steal and share data increased the tension between institutions and individuals. Similar to a large spider web, the structure of networks needs to feed from the digital identities that remain trapped in it.

Like the conquest of America, the discovery of the new “Internet” continent reshapes human interactions. However, the idea of conquering the other becomes more complex when that other is ubiquitous.

At this threshold, the archaic structures of power and the most individual utopias have found a niche where to exist, but in this ambiguous terrain, this niche can also be a trap.

With this background in mind, this group exhibition wonders to what extent primitive instincts of survival such as hunting and socialization govern the actual hyper technological environment. Throughout the selected works we can observe that the difference between camouflage and exposure dissolves itself. Behind the masks, we can clearly see that the spectacle, multinationals and religions are part of the same system of power.

March 9, 2015 Emilio Chapela: New International Boundary Commission https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilio-chapela-new-international-boundary-commission/

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Artist: Emilio Chapela

New International Boundary Commission
March 6 – May 10, 2015
Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil
Mexico City, Mexico

The artistic proposal of Emilio Chapela has an interest in the mechanisms involved in human communication and how these processes impact society. Also questioned our relationship with various technological tools, such as books, libraries, the Internet and social networks.

Guillermo Santamarina, chief curator of the MACG, explained that aside from what those who view the works of Emilio Chapela may take away freely from the experience of approaching this anthological show, concerted between the Carrillo Gil Art Museum and the artist, certain lines of reflection may be highlighted that lay the foundation for the structure of the New International Boundary Commission, an organization established by Chapela himself, inspired by the nomenclature of the organism created in 1889 by the United States and Mexico in order to enforce international treaties regarding the lands and waters between these two nations.

A correspondence between gazes from either side of a linguistic portal, resolved through a dynamic of critical activism in response to simulations of referential urban order; the development of poetic inspections that lead to resistance, given the terminal conditions that run like shadows behind the nefarious policies that determine obtuse teaching methods, thus perpetuating inequality and social oppression; a conceptual network that refreshes the irrepressible halo of detournement (an artistic technique that consists of appropriating material from normative culture, the art world and consumer society and intervening it in order to divert its meaning); this New Boundary Commission also accredits another column of expression within the cosmos of Emilio Chapela, singularly articulating a complex of reflection in modern art history: art for art’s sake.

“No matter what vortices the observers of this new commission choose to focus on (and not to confine within borders) in order to gain comprehension of the linguistic complex explored by Emilio Chapela, this experience—plural, open and dynamic— finds its recapitulation unified on the scale of a single floor of the MACG, thus assimilating the articulation of a single entity. As in a home. As in a solitary planet, unique in the cosmos. It is constituted by units interconnected simply by curiosity and emotions. Perhaps like that which, whenever one takes a step, encounters the ground…hard, rough, dirty, and even foul at times. Ground, what it should be, what we have always believed it was. The surface that binds us to life. Essence. Meaning. The things that occur when you close your eyes and off in in the distance, distinguish a line. The Horizon, limitless” Santamarina declared

March 9, 2015 Iván Navarro: Feio https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ivan-navarro-feio/

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Artists: Iván Navarro and Ricardo Muñoz.

Feio
February 12, 2015
Sketch
Bogotá, Colombia

En la sala de proyectos se mostrará un atlas cartografiado del artista Iván Navarro. Este proyecto de dibujo llamado “FEO” surge a partir de su interés por la estética, la asimetría, el error, la rareza típicas de la individualidad humana. Esta exposición está acompañada por el lanzamiento de la publicación FEIO editada por La Silueta en el año 2014.

En la sala princcipal de la galería, Ricardo Muñon Izquierdo, mostrará obra sobre papel producida en los últimos cuatro años. A través de yuxtaposiciones absurdas de iconos del arte, con humor, cinismo, y deformación alegórica acentúa tensiones dialéctivas entre lo público y lo privado, lo culto y lo marginal.

March 5, 2015 Patrick Hamilton: Progreso / Progress https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/patrick-hamilton-progreso-progress/

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Artist: Patrick Hamilton

Progreso / Progress
February 17 – April 4, 2015
Galeria Marta Cervera
Madrid, Spain

Solo exhibition by Patrick Hamilton

March 5, 2015 Richard Garet: ce.onl_0011 https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/richard-garet-ce-onl_0011/

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Artist: Richard Garet

ce.onl_0011
Live Recordings
Contour Editions
On line recordings

Contour Editions will be presenting a series of recordings of Richard Garet performing live. This online release is the latest development of the labelʼs effort to present works that explore the various possibilities of sound, while also engaging with studio experimentation, materiality, processes, and diverse techniques to create and treat material and media. The labelʼs objective is to reach listeners and spectators on a personalized level while facilitating the independent distribution of sound and visual artistʼs work that are often hard to experience within the local community or the cultural landscape of the world at large. 
 
Richard Garet’s approach to working with sound live focuses on creating processes that interact and activate sonic material such as electromagnetic waves, treated tape and audio cassettes, cracked media, sonification of light and data, information noise, and computer processing. Over the years his work has evolved from laptop playing to a more hands on type of approach, focusing on sound and material that could encompass a more tactile malleability and less playback. Garet’s preparations to working live with sound evolve from studio practice and these developments establish the artist’s material and set of possibilities to work and interact with in front of an audience.“It is really pointless trying to coin a term for working with sound live. I feel that adjectives and names describing audio art today apply to a certain degree but it does not represent a practice that uses broad methods and techniques. Much goes into the mix, and much goes into consideration. There are moments of improvisation but then there is a control-and-memory at play. There is much knowledge involved as well triggering things as much as the desire to run faster than the mind has time to dictate the next move. Therefore during a live set there is much space for risk and discovery. There are preselected methods and there are elements of surprise. There is electricity. There is analog and digital but most importantly there is hope and there is optimism! And overall there must be progress. Presenting sound live for me has always had a fixation to time, and it involves more than one time, more than one memory, and many approaches to craft-and-media tailoring ideologies for listening that also challenge reception and notions of listening, physicality, and awareness. I like to think that making this work embodies imagination and action that embraces sculpting in time as a dominant understanding of physical space and physicality shifting within space. It is also fascinating how material objects that create sonic energy, shred air, and change and affect a temporal situation. It is like having additional arms and legs for voicing out wordless forms that carry out powerful communication. Performing live with audio to me consists of piling efforts that sum up to a temporal temper that interconnects people within a particular environment and time capsule. It can make you as aware of sound as it can of its absence and yet be felt besides being heard. It is a directness that not only produces a faculty to touch others but also a vehicle for experiential transcendence, psychological connections and thought that leaves the room with you. Performances become alive inside a space or with the absence of one but most importantly are also collectively lived.”
Richard Garet, 2015
March 2, 2015 Fabián Burgos: Stay in Space https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/fabian-burgos-stay-space/

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Artist: Fabián Burgos

Stay in Space
February 12 – April 4, 2015
Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

The graphic representation of the visible spectrum of light, shows us a line with 4 colors fused, in order: violet, blue, yellow and red. Upon multiplying the lines and assigning each one a color on a scale greater than 140 colors, creates a more energetic relationship with the space. The paintings of “Stay in Space” are composed of a 140 (approximately) color palette. These colors change their hues and tones as they are being prepared. On, or “in” this mesh of lines, a group of straight lines and diagonals are drawn that cut the gentle flow of colors, to build more hard geometric shapes. This contrast is again involved in space, but this time, registers it mentally.

These paintings are accompanied by others decidedly more concrete in their geometry (“Blue Spiral”, “Endless blue”, “That network”), which confirms the persistence of Burgos in working space in a sensitive and symbolic way: symbolic in terms of space as an optical game of “truth and falsehood”.

To this insistent work on the preparation and search for colors, Burgos adds their distribution on the surface of the canvas. Sometimes the method used is intuitive; other times, mathematical (application of rule of three on the square root), a simple mechanism that Burgos uses as a random instrument to switch longer fragments of colors with other shorter ones.

Through this means a reading of blocks and forms is established, which calls every viewer to interpret with his own subjectivity. One can see in that weave of colors: spectral shapes, numbers, letters, or any other interpretation that one gives the works, like a misty narrative. However, the contrast of forms and the permanence in space, is what really occupies Burgos.

Finally, Burgos expresses once again his identification with and admiration for some Latin America’s mid-20th century geometric artists. He involves himself with them and establishes a dialogue as of today, with the differences and particularities that the passing of time imposes. In “Stay in Space” he pays a tribute to the Ecuadorian artist Manuel Rendón (Despues de Rendon, 2014).

Fabian Burgos was born in Argentina in 1962, where he currently lives and works. He is a self-taught artist and participated in Atelier Felipe Noe (1987-85), Atelier Ahuva Szlimowicz (1988-1987) and Fundacion Antorchas Scolarship organized by Guillermo Kuitca (1993-91), all them in Buenos Aires. Selected Solo Exhibitions include: Instante Eterno. Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Buenos Aires (MACBA), 2014; Comiéndose a Raúl, Galería Vasari, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2013; Abstracta, Galería Dabbah Torrejón, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010, and Conferencia de Prensa, Galería Alejandra Von Hartz, Miami, USA, 2007. Selected group exhibitions are:Recovering Beauty: The 1990s in Buenos Aires. Blanton Museum of Art. Houston. Texas, 2011; Art First, Colección MACBA Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires, Fundación Pablo Atchugarry, Manantiales, Punta del Este, Uruguay, 2011; 4 Museos + 40 Obras. Muestra Itinerante de Colección MACBA; Arte en el Plata, Intervención artística sobre la fachada del Edificio del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina curated by Inés Katztenstein and Eva Grinstein, 2009; Geometrías dislocadas, Burgos, Door, Siquier, Sala Mendoza, Caracas, Venezuela, 2009; All Boys, en el Rosa x 6, Rosa Galisteo Museum, Santa Fe, Argentina, 2009; Escuelismo. Arte argentino de los 90, MALBA Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2009; Pintura Latinoamericana Contemporánea (in Guayaquil Coleccions), MAAC Museo Antropológico y de Arte Contemporáneo, Guayaquil, Ecuador, 2008.

He is currently developing large commissioned murals for the SLS Hotel and Brickell Heights project to be completed in Miami in 2015.

March 2, 2015 Rodrigo Sassi: In Between https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/rodrigo-sassi-2/

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Artist: Rodrigo Sassi

In Between
February 3 – 24, 2015 (London)
March 19 – April 18, 2015 (Paris)
MDM Gallery
London, UK and Paris, France

The fruit of a 6-month residency at La Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, In Between is Part One of Rodrigo Sassi’s first European solo exhibition: London 3 – 24 February and Paris 19 March – 18 April 2015 at MDM Gallery in partnership with Gallery Nosco | Frameless (London).

February 24, 2015 Mariella Agois, Ricardo Alcaide, Alberto Borea, Jorge Cabieses, Alberto Casari, Sandra Gamarra, Billy Hare, Nicolás Lamas, Valentino Sibadón: Divertimento https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/mariella-agois-ricardo-alcaide-alberto-borea-jorge-cabieses-alberto-casari-sandra-gamarra-billy-hare-nicolas-lamas-valentino-sibadon-divertimento/

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Artists: Mariella Agois, Miguel Aguirre, Ricardo Alcaide, Alberto Borea, Jorge Cabieses, Alberto Casari, Aldo Chaparro, Margarita Checa, César Cornejo, Dare Dovidjenko, Sandra Gamarra, Huanchaco, Billy Hare, Haroldo Higa, Edi Hirose, Fernando La Rosa, Nicolás Lamas, Julio Le Parc, Benjamín Moncloa, Vik Muniz, Musuk Nolte, Pedro Peschiera, Jorge Piqueras, Liliana Porter, Emilio Rodríguez Larraín, Valentino Sibadon, Pier Stockholm, José Tola, Adriana Tomatis, Patrick Tschudi, and Alice Wagner.

Divertimento
January 14 – February 6, 2015
Galeria Lucia de la Puente
Lima, Peru

Group show

Image: Alberto Borea, from the series American Deconstruction, 2015, Collage on canvas, 150 x 190 cm.
February 24, 2015 Richard Garet: Systematic Sampling https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/richard-garet-systematic-sampling/

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Artists: Audra Wolowiec, Brenna Murphy, Chris Woebken & Sascha Pohflepp, Ellie Irons, Erin Sexton, Genevieve Hoffman, Jess Rowland & Margaret Schedel & Kevin Yager, Melissa F. Clarke & Sue Ngo, Nanu Al-Hamad & Miriam Simun, Natalie Jeremijenko & xDesign Team, Phillip Stearns, Richard Garet and Trish Mackenzie.

Systematic Sampling
January 8 – 22, 2015
Stream Gallery
Brooklyn, NY, USA

Systematic Sampling examines how artists contend with emerging ecologies in a series of art works and performances situated on the continuum between “technology” and “nature,” often exploring this inextricable link. The diverse group of artists all share a proclivity for using research methods and information-parsing in their process towards meaning-making.

Some artists make use of existing scientific and technological systems in their processes, some question these systems, while others work in parallel, devising entirely new forms of ‘sampling’ to produce knowledge. What are the systems that artists are putting in place as they explore emerging ecologies? And what is the “data” that comes forth?

Systematic Sampling explores these questions with a collection of inventive art works that uncover hidden systems and emerging signs of life. A wide range of mediums are represented including sound, light, painting, video, installation and sculpture. Curated by Melissa F. Clarke and Miriam Simun.

Live performances will take place at both the opening and closing events.

Image: Brenna Murphy, “Embodied Entitiy”, 2013.
February 18, 2015 Patrick Hamilton: Territorios Fronterizos / La fotografía mas allá de la imagen. https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/patrick-hamilton-territorios-fronterizos-la-fotografia-mas-alla-de-la-imagen/

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Artist: Patrick Hamilton

Territorios Fronterizos / La fotografía mas allá de la imagen
November 18, 2014 – January 25, 2015
Centro Cultural Matucana
Santiago de Chile, Chile

 

February 18, 2015 José Dávila: Premio de Arte Latinoamericano EFG-ArtNexus https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/jose-davila-premio-de-arte-latinoamericano-efg-artnexus/

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Artist: José Dávila

Premio de Arte Latinoamericano EFG-ArtNexus
EFG-ArtNexus, 2015

El mexicano José Dávila gana el Premio de Arte Latinoamericano EFG-ArtNexus.

Desde hace cuatro años, EFG Bank y ArtNexus organizan este premio de adquisición de una obra de un artista latinoamericano emergente, mediante un proceso de preselección en cinco ferias de arte contemporáneo de América Latina: ArtBo de Bogotá, SP-Arte de São Paulo, arteBA de Buenos Aires, ArtLima y Ch.ACO de Santiago de Chile.

Imagen: José Dávila, en la galería Travesía Cuatro, SP-Arte, 2014.
February 8, 2015 Marco Maggi: Embracing Modernism: Ten Years of Drawings Acquisitions https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marco-maggi-embracing-modernism-ten-years-drawings-acquisitions/

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Artists: Matisse, Mondrian, Schiele, Pollock, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Twombly, Kippenberger, Dumas, Maggi, and many more.

Embracing Modernism: Ten Years of Drawings Acquisitions
Curated by Isabelle Dervaux
F
ebruary 13 – May 24, 2015
Morgan Library & Museum 
New York, USA

In 2005, the Morgan Library & Museum embarked on a new program of drawings acquisitions with the goal of bringing to the present a collection that was known for its Old Master and nineteenth-century holdings. During the ensuing decade the institution put together a formidable collection of modern and contemporary drawings, representing a wide range of artists and movements. Embracing Modernism: Ten Years of Drawings Acquisitions, opening February 13, features more than eighty works from the collection and explores the dynamic creativity that revolutionized the medium in our time. The exhibition runs through May 24.

Embracing Modernism includes work by artists from Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, and Egon Schiele, to Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Susan Rothenberg, Martin Kippenberger, and Marlene Dumas. The exhibition is divided into five sections. Each focuses on a particular departure or shift in emphasis in modern drawing—such as the approach to the use of the line—that sets it apart from its antecedents. The exhibition is organized by Isabelle Dervaux, Acquavella Curator of Modern and Contemporary Drawings at the Morgan, who has led the museum in this area since 2005.

“The Morgan’s decision to collect modern and contemporary drawings underscores its belief that artists of our day are part of a long continuum that celebrates the primacy of the medium,” said Peggy Fogelman, Acting Director of the Morgan Library & Museum. “Embracing Modernism presents an extraordinary collection of works by some of our greatest artists. The Morgan is deeply grateful to the collectors and donors who helped build our collection over the last decade and make possible an exhibition such as this.”

Exhibition Sections

The Autonomy of the Line

An essential component of drawing from its origins, line took on a new role in the twentieth century as artists eschewed naturalistic representation. Liberated from its descriptive function— as the outline of an object or a figure—line achieved greater autonomy. Drawing became, in Paul Klee’s words, “an active line which moves freely; a walk for a walk’s sake, without aim.” The sheets by Matisse, Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, and Saul Steinberg in this section show them investigating the expressivity of the line, whether continuous or broken. During the 1960s and 1970s, artists such as Sol LeWitt and Agnes Martin eliminated any remaining illusionistic function of a line on a ground with the adoption of the grid format, in which the line is a basic modular unit.

More recently, contemporary artists have used the line to visualize aspects of man’s relationship to the world in dense, labor-intensive drawings. Examples include Giuseppe Penone’s extension of a fingerprint into growth rings of an ancient tree, or Marco Maggi’s nod to the electronic age with an intricate network of nearly invisible incisions.

Gesture and Trace

Drawing as a gesture—the record of physical engagement—is central to twentieth-century expressionist tendencies. It reflects a conception of art as a direct, spontaneous experience as seen in the work of Cy Twombly, Michael Goldberg, and Joan Mitchell. But the gesture can also be more automatic, calling into question the traditional notion of the hand of the artist. The Surrealist Max Ernst was the first to explore the technique of frottage (rubbing) to create unexpected patterns intended to stimulate the viewer’s imagination. During the 1960s, the technique was revived in process drawing—drawing as the trace of an action independent from usual artistic practice—as in Robert Overby’s rubbing of his studio wall.

Contemporary artists’ fascination with the use of chance has led them to rely more and more on unconventional modes of drawing. Gavin Turk, for instance, produced his elegant Rosette by placing a sheet of paper in front of the exhaust pipe of his van before starting the engine.

High and Low

In the modern era, the interplay between art and popular culture considerably broadened the range of drawing styles available to artists. Inspired by commercial illustrations, comic books, graffiti, tattoos, and posters, artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Paschke, Red Grooms, and Martin Kippenberger gave their drawings a new kind of energy At the same time their work questioned the very nature of what constitutes “artistic” drawing as opposed to any other form of mark making.

The use of non-traditional art material was another way to bridge the gap between art and everyday life. Following the lead of the Cubists, who first introduced fragments of newspapers and labels in their papiers collés, Kurt Schwitters created collages from scraps of contemporary urban culture: ads, ticket stubs, candy wrappers, torn packaging. The practice has remained a vital form of expression to the present day as can be seen in the collage books of John Evans and the poignant compositions of Hannelore Baron.

Everyday Objects

Although the depiction of everyday objects has a long tradition in the genre of the still-life, the range of items deemed worthy of the artist’s attention has expanded in modern times, as attested by the cigarette-butt, ice cube, soup can, and portable electric heater in the drawings on view in this section by artists including Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist. Artists also explored new modes of representation, notably in compositions that favor odd cropping and extreme close-up, largely influenced by photography and film.

From Melancholia to Schizophrenia

Nowhere is the disruption of the academic tradition in modern art more visible than in portrait and figure drawings. Liberated by photography from the necessity to produce a likeness, and stimulated by psychoanalytic revelations about the complex inner life of individuals, artists set out to render emotions and mental states with unprecedented immediacy. Various formal means— fragmentation, distortion, exaggeration, awkward poses and cropping—were used to convey sensations and feelings, from the psychological tension of Walter Sickert’s bedroom scene to Anne-Marie Schneider’s vision of a schizophrenic bus passenger who imagines himself in the luggage rack.

Self-portraits offer particularly rich territory as artists used drawing to probe their most intimate psychological states and lay bare on paper their fears and anxiety. Examples in this section include work by Egon Schiele, Lucas Samaras, Philip Guston, and Maria Lassnig. Others, such as André Masson, Jackson Pollock, and Steve di Benedetto, relied on a range of visual metaphors—including the labyrinth and other intricate patterns—to conjure the workings of the unconscious.

Image: Marco Maggi, Too Close too Far, V, (Detail) 2001, Pencil on clay 36 x 24 inches.
February 8, 2015 Clarissa Tossin: Streamlined: Belterra, Amazônia / Alberta, Michigan https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/clarissa-tossin-streamlined-belterra-amazonia-alberta-michigan/

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Artist: Clarissa Tossin

Streamlined: Belterra, Amazônia / Alberta, Michigan
January 16 – April 26, 2015
MOLAA Project Room
Long Beach, CA, USA

In a video installation, Clarissa Tossin brings together two Ford Motor Company towns: Belterra, a rubber plantation village in the Brazilian Amazon Forest, and Alberta, a sawmill town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Built concurrently in 1935, each town provided, respectively, rubber and wood for the manufacturing of the Model T in the United States. The installation establishes a sense of place, highlighting how specific cultural characteristics inhabited and changed these equivalent, pre-planned towns.

January 30, 2015 Gabriel de la Mora: (f) https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/gabriel-de-la-mora-f/

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Artist: Gabriel de la Mora

(f)
February 3, 2015
OMR Galeria
Mexico City, Mexico

Solo show by Mexican artist Gabriel de la Mora

January 30, 2015 Diana de Solares & Darío Escobar: 5 – R.P.M https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/diana-de-solares-dario-escobar-5-r-p-m/

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Artists: Luis Díaz, Diana de SolaresDarío Escobar, Sandra Monterroso, and Esvin Alarcón Lam.

5 – R.P.M (Revoluciones por minuto / Revolutions per minute)
January 29 – March 21, 2015
The 9.99 Gallery
Guatemala City, Guatemala.
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Artists: Patrick Hamilton and Alejandro Almanza Pereda.

Diálogo entre Patrick Hamilton y Alejandro Almanza Pereda
Dialogue between Patrick Hamilton and Alejandro Almanza Pereda
January 29 – March 21, 2015
The 9.99 Gallery
Guatemala City, Guatemala

“5 / RPM”. RPM (Revolutions Per Minute) is a unit related to a machine’s power and speed; in this case we have taken the concept to create an analogy, where the innovative vigor of the artists has been transformed into creative energy and whose works are the manifestation of that power and the movement of different generations of Guatemalans contemporary artists.

The temporal shift becomes real and the artists express it differently. Such that the RPM concept functions as a double bind. The works on display are based on various media that refer to the effect, the imprint, and the meaning of actual movement in reference to transportation or working machines, as well as the industrial materials with which they are built.

The gallery is pleased to invite for the first time the artist Luís Díaz, who has a long history with and a great influence on the Guatemalan artistic production. With “Documento” (Document) (1972), Díaz was a pioneer of conceptual art in Guatemala, placing a piece of cardboard on a manhole cover on which a spontaneous colography was performed within the street context in which it was found. Through colography, Díaz managed to capture the traces of passing cars, whose evidence is displayed in the exhibition in a circular composition inside a rectangle, tending to abstraction. With this gesture, Díaz documented an action whose testimony has managed to remain and transcend for over 40 years.

In “La demoledora” (Demolition woman) (2010) Sandra Monterroso documents an action using various modes of representation. The videoperformance shows the artist driving an industrial steamroller over tin pots of the kind used to cook tamales -objects associated with stereotypical domestic femininity. Violent, yet oddly liberating, Monterroso’s act equally rethinks and abolishes female roles. The installation is composed of the video documenting the action, the flattened pots, and several colographies made using a process akin to the one employed by Díaz in “Documento.” The colographies become an abstract representation of the action while affirming the dispossession of the pots’s original function.

In “ Construcción Geométrica # 5” (Geometric construction #5) (2014), one of the main interests of the artist Darío Escobar is brought into question. The wooden bodies of Guatemalan rural transport vehicles are the found objects that Escobar uses to pose questions regarding the Latin American geometric awareness. Through this aesthetic resource, the artist reflects on a modernity unconsciously acquired in nations that by definition do not meet the Western standard of having achieved homogeneous progress.
“Construcción Geométrica # 5” subtly critiques such national condition, yet it is not far from its industrial origin. As it hangs on the wall, the sculpture moves by means of hinges attached to its structure, allowing for the reconfiguration of the panels while adding some dynamism to the work.

Similarly, Lam Esvin Alarcón is known for resignifying objects within a national context, in this case, addressing public transportation, such as city buses. In “Desplazamiento No. 2” (Displacement No.2) (2014), the pieces achieve both chromatic and calculated harmony, turning into spontaneous geometric compositions as a result of careful formal conclusions.

The selection of materials chosen by the artist is motivated by his interest in evidencing the passage of time and the physical erosion caused by lived spaces. With this piece Alarcón Lam was invited to participate in the exhibition “Spatial Acts” at the Americas Society in New York last year.

Like Escobar, Diana de Solares recontextualizes the found object. In this instance an object that moves away from modernity and refers back to the pre-industrialization period. In “Existir en un estado de peligrosa distracción “ (Exist in a state of dangerous distraction) (2010-2014) Solares covers the plow with automotive paint, stripping it off of its agricultural functionality so that it can be perceived as a new object, a work of art suspended in time and space. As part of the composition, the artist added dried branches treated with curative wax to provide contrast between the materials; the juxtaposition between the organic and the industrial creates tension and highlights the fragility of the plow’s elements, alluding to the object’s temporality.

Due to her intuitive processes and attention to material combinations, Solares seeks to preserve a dose of mystery and enigma allowing the viewer to openly interpret her works. Such works become meaningful to talk about the human condition, related to the evolutionary and industrial development, physical and conceptual movement, and different ways to approach it, which proves the strength of the national creative power.

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“5 / RPM” RPM. (Revoluciones por minuto) es una unidad que se relaciona con la potencia y velocidad del desplazamiento de una máquina; en este caso se ha retomado el concepto para hacer una analogía, donde la energía innovadora de los artistas se ha trasformado en energía creadora y cuyas obras se vuelven la manifestación de la potencia y el desplazamiento de diferentes generaciones de artistas contemporáneos guatemaltecos.

Este desplazamiento temporal se convierte en desplazamiento real y los artistas la representan de diferentes formas. De manera que el concepto de RPM funciona doblemente como aglutinante. Las obras en la exhibición se basan en medios heterogéneos para referirse al efecto, a la huella y al significado de desplazamiento real, en este caso aludiendo a los efectos de las máquinas de transporte o trabajo, al igual que a los materiales de los que son construidos industrialmente.

La galería tiene el placer de invitar por primera vez al artista Luis Díaz, quien goza de una extensa trayectoria y de gran influencia en la producción artística guatemalteca. Con “Documento” (1972), Díaz fue un pionero del arte conceptual en Guatemala, al colocar un pedazo de cartón sobre una tapa de alcantarilla, sobre la cual realizó una colografía espontánea, a la merced del contexto vial en que se encontró. Por medio de la colografía, Díaz logró captar la huella de la fuerza y del paso de los automóviles, cuya evidencia es representada en una composición circular adentro de un rectángulo, tendiendo a la abstracción. Con este gesto, Díaz documentó una acción cuyo testimonio ha logrado permanecer y trascender por más de 40 años.

En “La Demoledora” (2010) Sandra Monterroso documenta una acción utilizando diferentes representaciones. El gesto de Monterroso de repensar y abolir los roles femeninos de una manera violenta pero al mismo tiempo liberadora, al accionar contra ollas de hojalata para hacer tamales, objetos asociados al estereotipo de la feminidad doméstica, es presentado en diversos medios. El videoperformance muestra a la artista conduciendo una aplanadora industrial sobre las ollas, la instalación es conformada por las ollas aplanadas que luego las transfiere gráficamente en colografías, dónde la huella del objeto agredido es plasmado sobre papel, al igual que Diaz en “Documento” (1972), convirtiéndose en una representación abstracta de la acción y afirmando el despojo de su significado original.

En “Construcción Geométrica # 5” (2014), uno de los intereses principales del artista Darío Escobar se pone en cuestión. Las carrocerías de madera de vehículos de transporte rural guatemaltecos son el objeto encontrado en el que Escobar se basa para poner en cuestión la concientización geométrica latinoamericana. Por medio de este recurso estético, el artista reflexiona acerca de una modernidad adquirida desapercibidamente en naciones que por definición no cumplen con los estándares occidentales de haber alcanzado un progreso homogéneo, de tal manera que la obra tiene connotaciones críticas sobre una condición nacional. Al mismo tiempo la obra no se aleja de su origen industrial y conserva movimiento, ya que aunque se adhiera a la pared, las bisagras colocadas en la estructura permiten la reconfiguración de los paneles, lo cuál la vuelve dinámica.

De modo similar, Esvin Alarcón Lam se caracteriza por reconfigurar objetos pertenecientes al contexto nacional, en este caso, ligados al transporte público, como lo son los autobuses urbanos. En “Desplazamiento No. 2” (2014), como producto de un cuidado juicio formal, las piezas demuestran una gran armonía cromática y calculada, volviéndose composiciones geométricas espontáneas. La decisión del material elegido por el artista se origina por su interés en mostrar el paso del tiempo y las erosiones físicas causadas por el espacio habitado. Con esta pieza Alarcón Lam fue invitado a participar en la exhibición “Spatial Acts” en Americas Society en Nueva York el año pasado.

Diana de Solares, al igual que Escobar, recontextualiza el objeto encontrado, en este caso un objeto que se aleja de la modernidad y alude a la pre-industrialización. En “Existir en un estado de peligrosa distracción”
(2010-2014) al pintarlo con pintura automotriz, de Solares despoja al arado de su funcionalidad agrícola para que pueda ser percibido como un nuevo objeto, una obra de arte suspendida en tiempo y espacio.

Tales obras se vuelven significativas por hablar de una condición humana, relacionada con el desarrollo evolutivo e industrial, el desplazamiento físico y conceptual y las diferentes maneras de abordarlo, lo cual viene a probar la fuerza-potencia creadora nacional.

  

As part of the gallery’s agenda in 2015, the first Project Room opens with a dialogue between Patrick Hamilton and Alejandro Almanza Pereda, along with the exhibition “5  RPM” on Thursday January 29.

Hamilton ‘s work focuses on the processes of urban “cosmetization” that took place in Santiago de Chile after the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), during which many Modernist buildings were constructed. Using the technique of collage, Hamilton intervenes images of several buildings in the city’s new financial district with adhesive paper that imitates marble and precious woods textures, to cover up and give new meaning to the local architecture. “Proyectos de arquitecturas revestidas para la Ciudad de Santiago” (Architectural projects re-covered for the City of Santiago, 2008-2009) the artist proposes a social critique that denounces the deception caused ​​by the powerful economic sector to the Chilean people.

In the piece “Balance No. 3, Ruca” (2013) Hamilton presents a picture of a still life—a pictorial composition of inanimate objects—, which appears to be real when reproduced photographically at actual scale. The decision to use specific objects like a postcard, two chains, and a rectangle of red acetate, comes from the story that each object holds but that the artist does not reveal. Hamilton implements multiple planes with objects to build a contemporary still life to add to its fragile balance.

In contrast, the sculpture of Alejandro Almanza “Sticks & Stones No. 4” (Palos y piedras, 2014) takes up objects in diverse make up and meaning and places them in a tense and unorthodox composition. Almanza relates a wooden table and a resin bust, acquired in the flea markets, with fluorescent light tubes, tubes, stones, and what appears to be a burnt stick—objects found in the country where he creates the work. The sculpture becomes a constellation of places, memories, and stories that talk of a temporal and spatial condition. “Sticks & Stones” is the title of several popular songs; however, its origin comes from a nursery rhyme that expresses the desire not to be hurt by insults even when sticks and stones may cause one physical pain.

Winning an honorable mention at the XVI Biennial of Photography in 2014 at the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City, “The Less Things Change, the Less They Stay the Same” (Entre menos cambian las cosas, menos siguen iguales, 2014) documents the deconstruction of a metal bookshelf. A formal exercise that begins when a shelf is placed vertically resulting in endless variations, the shelf, no longer a utilitarian object, becomes a sculpture. The title of the work is a reversal of the well-known French epigram plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same) implying that at a deep level, changes do not affect reality

Almanza, like Hamilton, focuses on the object, the material, and their inherent history and in the way they are intervened by the artist so that they retain their original meaning while adding a new one.

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Como parte de la agenda de la galería para el 2015, se inaugura el primer Project Room con un diálogo entre Patrick Hamilton y Alejandro Almanza Pereda, junto con la exhibición “5  RPM” el día jueves 29 de enero.

La obra de Hamilton se centra en los procesos de “cosmetización” urbana que ocurrieron en Santiago de Chile después de la dictadura de Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), periodo durante el cual se construyeron muchos edificios de estilo modernista. Empleando la técnica del collage, Hamilton interviene las imágenes de varios edificios del nuevo barrio financiero citadino con papel adhesivo que simula texturas de mármol y maderas preciosas, recubriendo, o maquillando por decir así, la arquitectura local para conferirle un nuevo significado. En “Proyectos de arquitecturas revestidas para la Ciudad de Santiago” (2008-2009), el artista propone una crítica social que denuncia el engaño efectuado por el poderoso sector económico al pueblo chileno

En la pieza “Equilibrio No. 3, Ruca” (2013) Hamilton presenta la fotografía de un bodegón—composición pictórica de objetos inanimados—que simula ser real al reproducirlo en escala natural. La decisión de utilizar objetos específicos como una postal, dos cadenas y un rectángulo de acetato rojo, proviene de la historia que retiene cada uno de ellos y que el artista no revela. Hamilton implementa múltiples planos con los objetos que construyen el bodegón contemporáneo en sí sumándose a su frágil equilibrio

En contraste, la escultura de Alejandro Almanza “Sticks & Stones  No. 4” (Palos y piedras, 2014) retoma objetos variados en construcción y significado y los coloca en una composición heterodoxa en tensión. Almanza relaciona una mesa de madera y un busto de resina, adquiridos en los mercados de segunda mano, con tubos de luz flourecente, tubos, piedras y lo que parece ser un palo quemado, objetos que incorpora a la obra generalmente del país dónde la realiza. La escultura se vuelve una constelación de lugares, memorias e historias que habla de una condición temporal y espacial. “Sticks & Stones” es el título de varias canciones populares pero su origen proviene de una rima infantil que expresa el deseo de no dejarse herir por los insultos aun cuando los palos y las piedras le puedan causar dolor físico.

Ganadora de una mención honorífica en la  XVI Bienal de Fotografía del 2014 en el Centro de la Imagen en México D.F., “The Less Things Change, the Less They Stay the Same” (Entre menos cambian las cosas, menos siguen iguales) documenta la deconstrucción de una estantería metálica. Ejercicio formal que empieza cuando un entrepaño se coloca verticalmente dando lugar a sin fin de variaciones, la estantería deja de ser objeto utilitario para convertirse en una escultura. El título de la obra es una inversión del popular epigrama francés plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (entre más cambian las cosas, más siguen iguales) dando a entender que a un nivel profundo los cambios no afectan la realidad.

Almanza, al igual que Hamilton, se centra en el objeto, el material y su historia inherente y en la manera que al intervenir en ellos, retienen su significado original pero también adquieren otro.

 Images: Exhibition view, Courtesy of The 9.99 Gallery, Guatemala.

 

January 30, 2015 Aníbal Catalán: untitled unit until the lit let the litter https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/anibal-catalan-untitled-unit-lit-let-litter/

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Artist: Aníbal Catalán

untitled unit until the lit let the litter
February 7 – March 28, 2015
Yautepec Galería
Mexico City, Mexico

Solo exhibition by Mexican artist Aníbal Catalán.

January 30, 2015 Darío Escobar & Patrick Hamilton: Beleza? https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/dario-escobar-patrick-hamilton-beleza/

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Artists: Kader Attia, Francis Alÿs, Darío Escobar, Alberto Baraya, Albano Afonso, Matías Duville, Patrick Hamilton, Carlos Garaicoa, Cinthia Marcelle e Tiago Mata Machado, Moris, Pedro Alonso & Hugo Palmarola, Sandra Cinto, and Santiago Sierra.

Beleza?
January 24 – March 29, 2015
Curated by Pamela Prado
Centro Cultural Sao Paulo
Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Beleza? – com sinal de interrogação – é uma expressão brasileira que pergunta se por acaso tudo está bem. Assim, parece relançar a beleza – conceito extinto no discurso da arte – para outro lado, para o da preocupação dos artistas com o estado do mundo contemporâneo, a globalização e a crise do modelo econômico imperante. Beleza? reúne obras que parecem formular esta mesma pergunta: está tudo bem? Em distintos formatos e estratégias, dão visibilidade e reagem às transformações e contradições próprias do desgaste dos sistemas políticos e econômicos que se chocam contra as pessoas (e suas relações sociais), as paisagens (e as definições territoriais) e os países (e suas demarcações geopolíticas).

January 27, 2015 Marco Maggi: The Suspended Line https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marco-maggi-suspended-line/

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Artists: Ana Bidart, Jonathan Callan, Beth Campbell, Martí Cormand, Elena Del Rivero, Marco Maggi, Stefana McClure, Lauren Seiden, Sérgio Sister, John Sparagana, and Julianne Swartz.

The Suspended Line
January 10 – February 14, 2015
Josée Bienvenu Gallery
New York, NY, USA

The Suspended Line includes a series of intense tensions and ethereal suspensions: thoughts suspended in submerged books, knitted music sheets, perforated porcelain towels and socks, gold leaf constellations, fatigued newsprint, disjointed bricks: the works in the exhibition challenge the division between two and three dimensions and Newton’s law of universal gravitation.

Ana Bidart’s work is concerned with the possibilities and impossibilities of drawing, in space and across time. She explores nomadic and hyperactive art forms by bringing to life found objects: the formally exquisite yet intrinsically disposable or the materially precious but casually discarded. With Disappointment she reconstitutes meaning in potential interactions between two found objects. Born in Montevideo in 1985, she lives and works in Mexico DF.

Jonathan Callan explores the relationship of disembodied knowledge to embodied experience.  The books that form the footprint of Range are forever held in sedimentary layers that will never be opened. Knowledge is often thought to precipitate down through history and accumulate as the sum of many human additions, but here the plaster, like snow, sprinkles down in mountain peaks denying access to the books under the weight that covers them. Born in Manchester in 1961, he lives and works in London.

Beth Campbell creates works that challenge the notion of a physical world beyond our perception. Drawing upon philosophy, phenomenology and psychology, Campbell choreographs space, crafts uncanny objects, and maps thought. In Campbell’s installations and recent sculpture, what appears at first glance to be a facsimile of the everyday will reveal startling complexity: forms repeat and stutter, interiority is externalized and the familiar becomes strange. Born in 1971 in Illinois, she lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Martí Cormand’s work is a testimony to the degradation of certainty. For the past two years, he has been investigating the notion of conviction by observing and rendering iconic works of the conceptual art movement  “When no one has too many certitudes any more, processes become essential. I have nothing urgent to communicate, no absolute convictions. I investigate the certainties that others had in the 1960s and 1970s. My favorite subject is the study of conviction” (Martí Cormand).  Born in Spain in 1970, he lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Elena del Rivero’s works are rooted in estrangement and recollection. Work and daily routine often intermingle in her oeuvre to become one. In most of del Rivero’s work, delicacy and a sense of loving attention coexist with a feeling of neglect and abandonment. In Wound, a hint to Fontana’s Concetto Spaziale, the punctured 24k gold leafed paper surface, bears the tool of its making with a needle and a thread, left over hanging in the center of the work. Born in Valencia, Spain in 1948, she has been living in New York for the last 30 years.

Marco Maggi’s drawings and sculptures encode the world. Composed of linear patterns that suggest circuit boards, aerial views of impossible cities, genetic engineering or nervous systems, his drawings are a thesaurus of the infinitesimal and the undecipherable. Marco Maggi’s abstract language refers to the way information is processed in a global era. Marco Maggi divides the act of drawing.  Born in Montevideo in 1957, he lives and works in New York and will represent Uruguay at The 56th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia this year.

Distillation of time and obliteration of information characterize Stefana McClure’s drawings and sculptures. All of her work involves translation, transposition and reconstruction as music is changed into text, and text is turned into image. The Planets (op. 32), is a spectacular symphonic suite scored for large orchestral forces and a wordless chorus, written by Gustav Holst between 1914 and 1916. The 192 page score has been sliced and rejoined as continuous lengths of paper yarn and each of the seven movements have been knitted back together again. McClure unveils and reveals the visual fabric of The Planets (op. 32): drawings to a symphonic suite by Gustav Holst as she translates and transposes the synesthetic structure that connects music and image. Born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, she lives and works in New York.

Lauren Seiden’s work explores the essential elements of process and materiality through an intuitive and intimate layering of graphite, breaking down the surface and transforming the paper into a physical, textural and structural form, further expanding upon the notion of drawing as painting and painting as sculpture.  The act of folding strengthens the structure while weakening the surface allowing for necessary manipulation of the material in order to maintain stability. These dualities of strength and fragility are encapsulated within a process that, like the work itself, strikes a balance between the internal and external. Born in 1981, she lives and works in New York.

Sergío Sister’s work stands at the edge between painting and sculpture. The Ripas, ladrillos, pontaletes appropriate the names of the manufactured products from which they are derived. Sergío Sister’s work relates to the US tradition of minimalism and to the Neo-Concrete movement of the 1960’s in Brazil. Many bridges can be drawn between Sister’s attempts to incorporate three-dimensional space and Mira Schendel’s Sarrafos or Willys de Castro’s Objectos Activos. Made of wooden beams dressed in canvas, Sisters ladrillos investigate surface and depth through subtle color dislocations. Born in São Paulo in 1948, he lives and works in São Paulo.

For more than a decade, John Sparagana has been working with found magazine images as his primary material.  His work has developed into a full-fledged investigation into the way information is presented and disseminated visually within contemporary culture. Born in 1958 in Rochester, New York, he lives and works in Houston and Chicago.

With lightness and gravity, Julianne Swartz places equal importance upon negative space, ambient sound, interruptions of sculptural line, and the interface between outside and inside. Her work encourages a quizzical reconsideration of our relationship to our body, to each other and to our surroundings. Lean, a steel rod defies reason as it leans towards a wall but doesn’t touch it, pushing the limits of physical gravity very literally, while exploring gravity metaphorically, in reference to the limitations, fragility and endurance of the body, and the weight of human relationships. Born in Phoenix, AZ in 1967, she lives and works in Kingston, New York.

Image: Elena Del Rivero, Wound, 2014, 24k gold leaf on punctured abaca paper, needle, thread, 11.75 x 11.75 inches
January 14, 2015 Kirin, Macaparana, Fidel Sclavo, Eduardo Stupía: Déjà Vu https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/kirin-macaparana-fidel-sclavo-eduardo-stupia-deja-vu/

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Artists: Abot Allievi, Arnaiz Dipierro, Grilo Hlito, Kirin, Macaparana, Lucía Mara, Fabio Miniotti, Fidel Sclavo, Eduardo Stupía, Ana Sacerdote.

Déjà Vu
November 17, 2014 – March 6, 2015
Galería Jorge Mara La Ruche
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Selección de obra de artistas de la galería.

January 14, 2015 Alexander Apóstol & Adán Vallecillo: Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alexander-apostol-adan-vallecillo-sala-de-arte-publico-siqueiros/

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Artists: Alexander Apóstol and Adán Vallecillo.

Geometría, Acción y Souvenirs del Discurso Insurgente (Geometry, Action and Souvenirs of the Insurgent Discourse)
Proyecto Fachada (Façade Project) 
December 18, 2014–March 15, 2015
Proyecto Siqueiros: Sala de Arte Público
Mexico City, Mexico

The new exhibitions at the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros are centered on a dialogue regarding the leftist political positions that defined part of the strategies of the Modern Art movement in Mexico. Departing from the analysis of David Alfaro Siqueiros’s texts, Alexander Apóstol (b. 1969, Caracas) generates an interdisciplinary collective-practice in open conversation with science—specifically mathematics. His aim is to find possible representation stages that can displace Siqueiros’s writing towards a scientific codification; once deconstructed, it will imply the areas of music, dance, drawing and documentation as catalyst and witness of this research.

Geometría, Acción y Souvenirs del Discurso Insurgente (Geometry, Action and Souvenirs of the Insurgent Discourse) is the title with which Apóstol takes stand amongst Marxist discourses in Latin America; underlining political notions and the definite serial-character it attained on certain historical moments. His research departs from four texts written by Siqueiros: “Manifiesto del Sindicato de obreros, técnicos, pintores y escultores,” 1924; (Manifest of the Workers Union, Painters and Sculptors, 1924); “De tal generador, tal voltaje,” 1933 (Such Generator, Such Voltage, 1933); “En la guerra, arte de guerra,” 1943 (In War, Art of War, 1943); “Hacia la revolución técnica de la pintura,” 1932 (Towards the Technical Revolution in Painting, 1932)—texts where the muralist spoke about the political responsibility of artistic creation and the construction of a new art.

For Apóstol, the replica of these ideological ideas has been a constant in the region—traveling while shaped as assertive policies in servile idealization or absurd parody. Being so, his work is located in this path, breaking down and codifying Siqueiros’s political speech using science-based mechanisms of translation, in pursuit of returning it to representation stages in art.

The interest upon implying science in the translation of ideological-texts is a continuity of the “Absolute”—postulate that defined the inherited “Soviet ways of thinking” in those years. Departing from these four essays, information derives in theorems associated with ideological processes regarding four gnoseological and operative categories: Science, Faith, Politics and Economy. Every codification resolves in a mathematical absolute law, where not only its numerical synthesis rests, but its capacity to bear mechanical reproduction.

Parting from this process, the numbers are returned to the field of representation, where a group of high school students will attempt to interpret them via drawing—geometrical designs that Apóstol transforms in large-format murals. A group of dancers and choreographers displace the theorems (above mentioned) towards spatial-displacement, generating video-installations; finally, music students interpret the mathematical formulae—already converted into scores—carrying them to the field of sound interpretation (Live Act) in the museum space.

On other front, Adam Vallecillo (b. 1977, Honduras) creates a new Intervention for Proyecto Fachada (Façade Project) reflecting upon the relations between art and militancy. His project seeks the coming about of a critical debate that questions political presence as a constant in contemporary Conceptual Latin-American Art.

Composed by an Installation and an action piece—recovering David Alfaro Siqueiros as an emblematic figure of the political activist artist—as well as through various discussion encounters called Interpelaciones (Interpellations)—title that opens up an ongoing critical reflection process and its relation with Latin-American key-artists.

Geometría, Acción y Souvenirs del Discurso Insurgente (Geometry, Action and Souvenirs of the Insurgent Discourse), has been curated by Taiyana Pimentel, Director of Proyecto Siqueiros: SAPS-La Tallera, with curatorial coordination by Mariana Mañón Sepúlveda; while Proyecto Fachada (Façade Project) was curated by Yameli Mera, Curator of the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros.

January 6, 2015 Santiago Reyes Villaveces: Traino (Remolque) https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/santiago-reyes-villaveces-traino-remolque/

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Artist: Santiago Reyes Villaveces

Traino (Remolque)
December 4 – 15, 2014
Caballerizza Real de Turín
Turin, Italy

Ciento noventa y dos alambres sujetan cada una de las silla del antiguo teatro de la Cavallerizza real que funcionó hasta hace 7 años, hoy, espacio de la ciudad de Turín ocupado por una asamblea de ciudadanos, se concentran en un mismos punto de una viga de madera atrancada en el antiguo portón del establo y punto central del escenario del teatro. La viga es presionada contra el vano del portón por la tensión del alambre y las sillas aprisionadas por la resistencia de la viga. A modo de proyección que se abre desde la viga hacia la tribuna o un centro que concentra y sujeta las lineas de fuga en un único punto, la instalación Traino es un embate de perspectivas y tensión.

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Imágenes: “Traino (remolque)”, 2014, Alambre de acero y madera (550cmx20cmx20cm), 50mx50m. Fotos de Paolo Pellion
January 6, 2015 Marcius Galan: Afetividades Eletivas https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcius-galan-afetividades-eletivas/

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Artists: Ana Maria Tavares, Valeska Soares, Laura Vinci, Rosangela Rennó, León Ferrari, Marcelo Silveira, Milton Marques, Jorge Menna Barreto, Emmanuel Nassar, Eliane Prolik, Oswaldo Goeldi, Maciej Babinski, Hudinilson Jr., Nazareth Pacheco, Farnese de Andrade, Leonilson, Amilcar de Castro, Mira Schendel, David Ireland, Mabe Bethônico, Rodrigo Andrade, Tatiana Blass, Thiago Rocha Pitta, Marcius Galan, Hércules Barsotti, Antonio Manuel, Caetano de Almeida, Waltercio Caldas, Marcos Chaves, Nelson Leirner, Regina Silveira, Marcelo Moscheta, Ricardo Basbaum e Shirley Paes Leme.

Afetividades Eletivas
December 2, 2014 – March 1, 2015
Centro Cultural Minas Tênis Clube
Belo Horizonte, Brazil

A mostra conta com 150 trabalhos – pintura, escultura, gravura, desenho, fotografia, vídeo e registros de performance –, de cerca de 100 artistas nacionais e estrangeiros. Realizadas nos últimos 40 anos, essas obras permitem tanto a discussão sobre o colecionismo quanto sobre os questionamentos suscitados pela arte contemporânea. “Sempre me interessei por novas tendências e por uma arte que problematizasse sua própria constituição enquanto arte”, ressalta Luiz, que começou sua coleção enquanto ainda era estudante de Engenharia da UFMG.

Com curadoria de Margarida Sant’Anna e do próprio Luiz Sérgio Arantes, o fio condutor da exposição, que será aberta ao público no dia 3 de dezembro, é a relação afetiva do colecionador com suas obras e com as obras dos vários artistas presentes, algumas representadas com trabalhos experimentais, obras ofertadas como gesto de amizade, outras cuidadosamente garimpadas em galerias e leilões, e que, pouco a pouco, eletivamente, foram encontrando seu lugar no conjunto, como que regidas por uma lógica intuitiva.

As obras estão agrupadas em núcleos, tendo em vista o valor intrínseco de cada uma delas e as ideias que determinadas relações permitem discutir: o emprego da letra, da palavra ou da caligrafia como elemento visível constitutivo; o corpo como suporte em diferentes operações artísticas; o espaço questionado pela arte, seja como representação, seja como campo, lugar da experiência; e a arte como questão da arte, na relação com a sua história, com o mercado e com o próprio colecionismo.

Nesses possíveis diálogos, ficam evidenciadas as questões que atravessam o imaginário contemporâneo, a partir do contexto cultural em que as obras foram produzidas. Os núcleos, entretanto, remetem-se uns aos outros, estimulando leituras transversais.

Para a arte contemporânea, o espaço da galeria deixa de ser apenas um lugar de apresentação para se tornar parte integrante da obra. E, nesse espaço, o espectador passa a ser participante e construtor da obra com o seu olhar.

Tendo uma única coleção como campo para possíveis recortes, é inevitável que se busque estabelecer o perfil desse conjunto, a procedência das obras, de que maneira cada peça foi sendo incorporada ao conjunto. São essas circunstâncias que ajudam a dar sentido ao todo e a delinear nexos entre os seus diversos segmentos. Elas revelam a personalidade do colecionador, mas, ao mesmo tempo, falam, de maneira muito particular, do movimento cultural do período em que as peças foram sendo incorporadas e em que medida o ambiente cultural pauta os caminhos da subjetividade na constituição de uma coleção.

Uma circunstância, em especial, favoreceu a formação dessa coleção, num momento anterior à proliferação das galerias, dos leilões e das feiras de arte: a associação aos Clubes de Colecionadores de Gravura e de Fotografia do Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo. Com curadorias atentas, esses Clubes têm esgarçado as fronteiras da arte, empurrando cada vez mais longe seus limites, problematizando, enfim, sua própria constituição enquanto arte. E essa tem sido uma questão fundamental para a arte contemporânea.

Outro fator, não menos importante, é o interesse pelos artistas mineiros desde o tempo em que o colecionador frequentava a Faculdade de Engenharia, na Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Três gerações de artistas estão contempladas na coleção, tendo como figura central Amilcar de Castro, representado com cinco obras na exposição. Amigos e contemporâneos do artista, seus alunos e uma geração mais jovens, constituída de artistas com menos de 30 anos, também figuram no conjunto exposto.

December 30, 2014 Lucia Koch: Duplas https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/lucia-koch-duplas/

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Artist: Lucia Koch

Duplas
November 29, 2014 – January 31, 2015
Galeria Nara Roesler
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Lucia Koch once again proposes an interaction between architecture and color. This time, not only does she intervene on ambient light, she also presents pieces endowed with object-like character: factory-made windows and doors transformed by the use of color.

Koch uses mobile structures – sliding and pivoting – and replaces the original glass panes with filters in various colors, always in pairs, working with the notion that the minimum indivisible unit in reading colors is the pair. Some of the filter colors repeat themselves in several windows, but since they are always affected by their pairing, they are seen differently in each pair.

“These are windows through which you cannot see the outside, windows that do not connect spaces, or inside and outside. They are enclosed unto themselves and restricted to the relationships they contain. However, these relationships are not fixed, they get remade whenever we move their parts and one color inclines, covers or reveals, or slides upon another,” the artist explains.

Lucia Koch creates an intervention on the vast skylight above one of the gallery’s halls, adding a different shade of matte acrylic sheet to each of the seven panes: Semana Cinzenta (Grey Week).  “These are custom-made acrylic sheets, not at all neutral shades of grey – reddish or bluish – which, when placed side by side, appear as unique colors and have their colors projected onto the wall, moving throughout the day, affected by the moods of the sky.”

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This chromatic series is seen alongside the pairings installed onto doors and windows, the same type of filter at times operating directly on the architecture, and at others on portable objects. “Natural light, filtered and traversing the architecture, shares the space with more or less transparent objects lit up by lamps, a more stable, controlled light. Maybe the different natures of the elements in this set will be rendered evident; maybe they will get dissolved, contaminated by one another.”

What is at stake in Koch’s works is the transitory, fugacious character of vision in particular (and of the senses in general) as an instance that reassures onlookers of the external world. All that is left is for the observer to yield to the transitory in the contest between visual immediacy and the comprehension of what one sees.

 

December 30, 2014 Martin Pelenur: La Pecera https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/martin-pelenur-la-pecera/

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Artists: Martin Pelenur.

La Pecera
December 13, 2014
Taller abierto / La pecera
Uruguay

 

December 23, 2014 José Luis Landet: Gomez https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/jose-luis-landet-gomez/

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Artist: José Luis Landet

Gomez
December 19, 2014
Document Art
Buenos Aires, Argentina

For more information about the exhibition, please refer to the following video narrated by the artist.

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December 23, 2014 Nicolas Lamas: About Sculpture #4 https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/nicolas-lamas-sculpture-4/

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Artists: Alis / Filliol, A Kassen, Matt Bryans, Nicolas Lamas, Maximilian Schubert, Santiago Taccetti and Klaus Weber.

About Sculpture #4
November 28, 2014 – January 10, 2015
Galerie Rolando Anselmi
Berlin, Germany

The project has evolved throughout the year, with four group exhibitions exploring contemporary sculpture. The artistic relevance of this medium is examined through the work of 25 international artists, born between the 60s and the 80s. The artists included in the exhibitions, ranging from established to emerging, are invited to present one piece, trying to expand and go beyond conventional debates and notions of sculpture. Their works reflect a multi-layered and contradictory image of common media definitions through the implementation of different strategies of investigation and aesthetic parameters. In this occasion we are excited to host works by Nicolas Lamas, Maximilian Schubert, Klaus Weber, A Kassen, Santiago Taccetti, Matt Bryans, Alis/Filliol. The shows aim to build a narrative in space, investigating the relationship between space and material in an effort to exhibit a heterogeneous spectrum of possibilities.

The work of Nicolas Lamas is based on a processing reflection about space, time, culture and science. Lamas formalizes his questioning using various media, playing on codes and undermining constructed perceptions and systems that govern our daily life. His work Partial View, consisting of a rock and a scanner, highlights the meeting of two heterogeneous elements, exposing the relationship between actual weight and the virtual weight of a scanned image and the impossibility of understanding an object if one only considers the surface of things. Through this, he attempts to somehow underline relativity, malleability, and the level of indeterminacy in all of which we attempt to comprehend, searching for an objective and definite truth.

In Maximilian Schubert’s wall sculptures, titled Format, lenghts of brass and copper converge at minute hinges, folding the rectangular structure into opposing angles that appear to contract and expand. These works appear paused in space, their motion arrested in one of many possible iterations. Through his works Schubert investigates and questions the concept of representation. The works are reduced to pure form, neither involving direct reference nor attempting to activate particular predetermined associations.

The two large-scale white paintings Untitled (Einstatzbereich Innen – Außen) by Santiago Taccetti, can deceive the viewer, who is forced to walk close to the canvas before realizing that no actual paint is visible. The unpredictable reaction of different material permeates Taccetti’s work, which investigates the relationship between sculpture and painting. In this occasion, the artist experimented with different kinds of household paint and used a variety of instruments to press and imprint the material into the reverse of the canvas, creating a beautiful pattern and texture on the surface of the work while the thick layers of paint remain hidden on the reverse.

Alis/filliol presents The Family (La Coperta), part of a series of sculptures started by the artists this year. The artist duo develops its research using disparate materials, mixing natural elements and industrial products, wax, plaster, mechanical grease, wood, plasticine, polystyrene. The continuous experimentation gives birth to figures with grotesque connotations, provoking a deep sense of alienation and uncertainty.

Artist group A Kassen work with performative installation and sculpture. They examine and experiment with the borders between art and non-art, as well as self invented systems that change the functions of things within a given space. In this sense, they form a critique of the institution and draw attention to how we act and navigate in a certain context. For this occasion A Kassen presents a site-specific installation, composed by small fragments of a statue. The pieces are part of a little angel’s statue once belonged to the Lauritz de Thurah’s Baroque Garden at Gl. Holtegaard in Denmark. The statue was destroyed by the artists, turned into pieces and placed for two years into the ground in front of its original place. After being removed from the garden, they are now neatly displayed on the gallery’s floor in a provocative process of re- contextualisation.

Metal items fill the floor of the second exhibition room. This is Matt Bryans’ installation, Gravermaskintenner, composed by 18 digging machine teeth sourced by the artist in Norway. The machine teeth are worn out until they have no purpose anymore and are left behind to be recycled as metal or forever discarded, depending on the fluctuating global prices of iron and steel. The pieces are consumed, revealing on the surface every single impact and dent caused by their former use. The artist has carefully collected them, refined, sanded and oiled, making them appear like some mystical objects with a completely different meaning and function.

Klaus Weber’s works call our deepest belief systems into question. With recurring motifs of death, animism and ritualism, his works provide an ironic counterpoint to the shared understanding – social, natural, scientific – that underpins our society. Weber’s Witch Ladder is an over-sized version of those used in witchcraft that allows demons to enter a place through the ceiling. Composed of feathers taken from birds bred in captivity and affixed on either side of a rope, it performs a counter-energy by troubling the conditions of reception within the functionalist rationality of the exhibition space. Weber appropriates the magical device undermining the consolidated hierarchical knowledge between producers and receivers and illustrates how our past beliefs still reverberate in the present.

Image: Nicolas Lamas, 2014, Partial view, stone, scanner, variable dimensions
December 22, 2014 Alexis Minkiewicz: Mecánico de Día https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alexis-minkiewicz-mecanico-de-dia/

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Artist: Alexis Minkiewicz and Santiago Rey.

Mecánico de Día
November 27, 2014 – March 2015
ZabaletaLab
Buenos Aires, Argentina

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Sala 4 Baja.
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Imágenes (de arriba hacia abajo): “Nidos”, 2014 (detalle); “Piel”, 2014, Grafito y carbon sobre papel fabriano 300 gramos, 200 x 140 cm; “El origen del mundo”, 2014, Grafito y carbon sobre papel fabriano 300 gramos, 200 x 140 cm; “El origen del mundo”, 2014, Metal desplegado cable de acero, Pintura, Medidas variables 11 metros de Largo; “Nidos”, 2014, Metal desplegado, calbe de acero, varilla de acero, pintura, Medidas variables; Vistas de sala.
December 22, 2014 Pablo Rasgado: Afterlife https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/pablo-rasgado-afterlife/

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Artist: Pablo Rasgado

Afterlife
November 14, 2014 – January 25, 2015
Arratia Beer
Berlin, Germany

For his new series, Pablo Rasgado has delved into the depths of catalogues raisonnés, into the Bibliothèque Kandinsky at the Centre Pompidou and other archives in an attempt to recover lost images. One may argue that every research is an endeavour to retrieve or discover something that is lost or at least unknown. In Rasgado’s case however the objects he pursued had to remain lost in order to be singled out and reclaimed. Rasgado was searching for the blind spots of art history: The images that his serendipitous investigation has disclosed were those that have gone missing, that have been misplaced, destroyed, forgotten, or stolen at some point in their biography, whose provenance expired into the status “present whereabouts unknown.”

Rasgado set himself the task of repainting these works in their actual size and as close to the original as possible. However the new images mimic not their originals but rather their surrogates, the photographs, in regard to the amount of detail and most importantly their colour palette: most of the re-painted works adopt the greyscale of the photographs taken at some point over the last century and transform the reproduction into an oil grisaille.

Accordingly the paintings chosen by Rasgado necessitate two predicaments: that they are nowhere to be found, and that at some point before their loss they were photographically recorded. Rasgado collides the media and genres of painting and photography and with them their many complex evocations of the absent, of their status as emanation or representation of something that they are not. He also collides two distinct chronologies: The paintings date back to the 1440s up to the 1960s, but their photographic records follow a different and independent timeline, as well as a very distinct phenomenological status.

After recreating the lost paintings by Bellini, Velázquez, Léger, Balthus, etc., Rasgado placed the canvases in a palatial building in the centre of Paris. The building is partly abandoned and has been left in a state of slow decay for many years. Rasgaldo’s paintings, placed nonchalantly on the floor, along the Palais’ walls, and in remote corners, acted as attractors to the dust, binding it to their surfaces by virtue of an adhesive. A thick layer of grime, grit, of ashes, smut, of entropy and decay now clings to the cheeks of Philip IV, to Bellini’s Madonna, to Goya’sStone Guest. The paintings have camouflaged themselves under a veil of dirty matter, adopting a new skin.Rasgado himself then took to reworking the remaining paintings obscured under the veil of dust. The forms laid bare by his manipulations differ greatly–sometimes they seem to be casual wipes across the surface, in other instances they are highly geometric and premeditated. Bellini’s Madonna has been rendered comically absurd, only eyes and mouth drawn into the dust to create minimal smiley faces, reminiscent of Cecilia Gimenez’ infamously botched attempt at restoring an Ecce Homo fresco in Zaragoza.
Dust, as the ultimate reminder of transience, however can be reinterpreted as a perfect fertilizer in Rasgado’sAfterlife: as the white slate that facilitates the productive force of iteration, of anachronism and recollection.
(Excerpt from Eva Wilson’s Dust and Shadow and Afterlife)
Pablo Rasgado (1984 Jalisco, Mexico) lives and works in Mexico City.
Pablo Rasgado’s recent exhibitions include: Limited Visibility, CAM Raleigh, NC; La voluntad de la piedra , Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico; Noise, (Collateral Events) at the 55th Biennale di Venezia, Ex Magazzini di San Cassian, Venice, Italy;Other People’s Problems: Conflicts and Paradoxes, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; When Attitudes Became Form Becomes Attitudes, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit and CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; Lost Line: Contemporary Art from the Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles;Arquitectura Desdoblada, Museo Experimental el Eco, Mexico City; Cimbra: Formas especulativas y armados metafísicos,Museo de Arte Moderno,Mexico City; Open Day, Stonehouse, Lagos, Nigeria; Second Coming, Hessel Museum of Art & Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.; Destello, Colección Jumex. In 2014 Rasgado was an invited artist at La Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris.
Image: courtesy of the artist and Arratia Beer
December 16, 2014 Marcolina Dipierro, Silvia Gurfein, Graciela Hasper, Fernanda Laguna, Adriana Minoliti & Mariela Scafati: El teatro de la pintura https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcolina-dipierro-silvia-gurfein-graciela-hasper-fernanda-laguna-adriana-minoliti-mariela-scafati-el-teatro-de-la-pintura/

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Artists: Sergio Avello, Chiachio & Gianonne, Flavia Da Rin, Tulio de Sagastizabal, Juan del Prete, Marcolina Dipierro, Jorge Gumier Maier, Silvia Gurfein, Graciela Hasper, Magdalena Jitrik, Fabio Kacero, Fernanda Laguna, Alfredo Londaibere, Adriana Minoliti, Guillermina Mongan, Inés Raiteri, Mariela Scafati, Cristina Schiavi, Leila Tschopp, Paola Vega and Yente (Eugenia Crenovich).

El teatro de la pintura. Artistas argentinos en diálogo con Sonia Delaunay
November 8, 2014 – February 22, 2015
MAMBA
Buenos Aires, Argentina

La exposición, con curaduría de Jimena Ferreiro, toma como punto de partida las obras de Sonia Delaunay (Gradzihsk, Ucrania, 1885 – París, 1979) pertenecientes al patrimonio del Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires para contar una nueva historia, en tiempo presente, que la hace convivir con artistas argentinos modernos y contemporáneos. Una propuesta que sitúa a Delaunay fuera del relato habitual –aquel que la confina a ser la única mujer en un mundo europeo, moderno y profundamente masculino– para ensayar otra historia que despliega secuencias temporales distantes entre sí, las cuales permiten establecer correspondencias entre artistas y contextos diversos.

Las obras de Sergio Avello, Chiachio & Gianonne, Flavia Da Rin, Tulio de Sagastizabal, Juan del Prete, Marcolina Dipierro, Jorge Gumier Maier, Silvia Gurfein, Graciela Hasper, Magdalena Jitrik, Fabio Kacero, Fernanda Laguna, Alfredo Londaibere, Adriana Minoliti, Guillermina Mongan, Inés Raiteri, Mariela Scafati, Cristina Schiavi, Leila Tschopp, Paola Vega y Yente (Eugenia Crenovich), en diálogo con Sonia Delaunayprovocan la activación de otros sentidos de lo moderno, que permiten comprender las maneras en que estos artistas abordan la pintura y sus tradiciones. De este modo, más que una colección de imágenes que se aproximan por forma y color según el relato moderno tradicional, esta exposición convierte a Sonia Delaunay en un modo de hacer cuya fuerza irradiadora despliega una genealogía del arte local en clave abstracta, pero desobediente y sensual.

Imagen: Marcolina Dipierro, CME0002 – Instalación. Sin título. 7 círculos. Medidas variables sujetas a disposición -Madera, espejo, hierro y pintura acrílica – Año 2014
December 16, 2014 Amalia Pica: Switchboard https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/amalia-pica-switchboard/

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Artist: Amalia Pica.

Switchboard
November 15, 2014 – March 1, 2015
Mostyn Gallery
Conwy, UK

Argentina-born artist Amalia Pica’s practice primarily explores her background; communal histories, myths, rites and traditions, as well as language and ways of communication. Her works include installation, photography, drawing and performance, with a specific focus on sculpture.

The exhibitions brings together work that looks at communication, particularly the act of listening and its ability to be both effective and also nuanced and fallible.

These themes, which have their basis in social interaction, will be reflected in the presentation of the work. Actions of touch and hearing are made equal and often as important as the viewer’s gaze.

 

December 12, 2014 Pablo Rasgado: Constructs https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/pablo-rasgado-constructs/

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Artists: Nathan Green, Laura Vandenburgh, Pablo Rasgado.

Constructs
January 17–March 1, 2015
Curated by Rachel Adams
Disjecta Contemporary Art Center
Portland, OR, USA

Constructs introduces a collection of works that address the interactions between scale, architecture and the body. Each artist will create new site-specific pieces, ranging from the calculated and Op-Art inspired abstraction of Nathan Green, to the cascading cut-out paintings of Laura Vandenburgh, to the calculated wall excavations of Pablo Rasgado.

Nathan Green (b. 1980) lives and works in Dallas. He received his BFA in 2004 from the University of Texas at Austin.

Pablo Rasgado (b. 1984) lives and works in Mexico City. He holds a BFA from the Autonomous University of the State of Morelos, Mexico.

Laura Vandenburgh (b. 1962) lives and works in Eugene. She holds an MFA from Hunter College, New York, and a DVM and BS in Zoology from the University of California, Davis.

December 12, 2014 Iván Navarro: Nadie sabe para quien trabaja https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ivan-navarro-nadie-sabe-para-quien-trabaja/

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Artists: Courtney Smith and Iván Navarro

Nadie sabe para quien trabaja
November 19 – December 16, 2014
M. Edeler & Sons
Brooklyn, NY, USA

Nadie Sabe Para Quien Trabaja was created as a sculptural installation that was activated in a performance-dinner that took place on November 12th, 2014. The work on view is a large-scale two-part sculpture, the conjoined work of Courtney Smith and Iván Navarro.

December 11, 2014 Magdalena Atria: La montaña movediza https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/magdalena-atria-la-montana-movediza/

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Artist: Magdalena Atria

La montaña movediza
November 13 – December 27, 2014
Galeria XS
Santiago de Chile, Chile

La exposición reúne obras recientes realizadas en diferentes medios y materialidades, que en conjunto proponen una mirada singular sobre la forma en que nos aproximamos a la inescrutabilidad de la naturaleza, determinada por múltiples preconcepciones y definiciones variables de “lo natural” que sirven de fundamento para nuestras concepciones de la cultura, de la historia y del arte.

La pieza central de la muestra es un conjunto variado y multiforme de objetos de cerámica, a veces esmaltada, a veces intervenida con otros materiales; formas densas, compactas y pesadas que pretenden la tarea imposible de acercarse a la condición de las piedras, meras cosas que no han sido fabricadas por la mano humana sino por procesos naturales que se desarrollan en el interior del Planeta Tierra, donde sustancias minerales son sometidas a altísimas temperaturas para fundirse y posteriormente solidificarse, constituyendo lo que genéricamente llamamos piedra. Los procesos cerámicos reproducen, en una escala muchísimo menor y más controlada, aquellos procesos naturales para dar origen a objetos misteriosos, que reposan en sí mismos, confundiendo las categorías de lo natural y lo fabricado, que se emplazan como testigos mudos pero elocuentes de las fuerzas y acciones que los originaron.

Los acompaña una serie de dibujos realizados con hebras de lana sobre el muro que construyen, desde un gesto mínimo, una suerte de alfabeto compuesto por signos indescifrables, más relacionados con la manifestación de una fuerza leve e inexorable que con la arbitrariedad de los códigos lingüísticos.

Cierra el conjunto una pintura de mediano formato realizada con plasticina, material vulnerable por excelencia, que es el resultado de un proceso manual que reproduce también en pequeña escala los procesos tectónicos que, a proporciones inimaginables, han dado origen a muchas de las formaciones geológicas del planeta.

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Atria-Meteoritos-2014-Ceramica
Atria-Septaria-2014-Plasticina sobre MDF-80x100cm

Images courtesy of the artist
December 11, 2014 Carmela Gross: Iberê Camargo: século XXI https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/carmela-gross-ibere-camargo-seculo-xxi/

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Artist: Carmela Gross, Angelo Venosa, Carlos Fajardo, Edith Derdyk, Eduardo Haesbaert, and Regina Silveria.

Iberê Camargo: século XXI
November 18, 2014 – March 29, 2015
Curators: Agnaldo Farias, Icleia Cattani e Jacques Leenhardt
Fundação Iberê Camargo
Porto Alegre. Brazil

Diferenciando-se de um formato convencional de exposições comemorativas, em geral um conjunto representativo ordenado cronologicamente, a mostra destaca a potência da poética de Iberê Camargo em diálogo com trabalhos de dezenove artistas brasileiros de gerações variadas.

O recorte valoriza as relações de vizinhança e tensões entre as pinturas, gravuras e desenhos de Iberê e uma grande variedade de linguagens, incluindo escultura, instalação, fotografia, literatura, dança e cinema. Com essa perspectiva, pretende-se salientar o diálogo consciente e inconsciente que os artistas travam entre si e, no caso particular deste projeto, evidenciar uma espécie de “efeito Iberê Camargo” na arte brasileira, ou seja, o modo como sua produção impôs-se ao nosso meio artístico, desvelando questões profundas da existência humana e do modo de representá-las. Um efeito que excedeu a própria duração da vida do artista, ultrapassando as linguagens por ele praticadas para ressoar em artistas de extração completamente distintas as suas, embora com sensibilidade e energia semelhantes.

Pela primeira vez, todos os espaços do edifício sede da Fundação Iberê Camargo são tomados como expositivos. A totalidade do prédio projetado por Álvaro Siza, desde o lado de fora ao interior tortuoso das rampas, passando pelo grande átrio, acolhe obras e conjuntos de obras com afinidades aos grandes eixos problemáticos tratados pelas várias séries de Iberê Camargo. Séries como “Carretéis”, “Núcleos”, “Fantasmagorias”, “Ciclistas” e “Idiotas” são apresentadas na companhia de trabalhos de artistas cuja proximidade, em alguns casos, pode trazer à mente a ideia de sombra, enquanto o caráter profundamente diverso da produção de outros, ao contrário, provoca fricções, ingrediente fundamental para o desdobramento de novos planos de leituras. O cinema, que Iberê tanto apreciava ocupa as rampas que levam de um andar ao outro, como também a literatura, que ele amava a ponto de praticá-la.

Alternando exemplares das principais séries de Iberê Camargo com trabalhos expressivos de artistas contemporâneos, a proposta de Iberê Camargo: século XXI é estabelecer um coro, colocar lado a lado um grupo consistente de vozes até então distantes umas das outras. A tensão e a surpresa provenientes dessas aproximações e cruzamentos interessam por si sós, dado que podem desencadear uma multiplicidade de sentidos.

Imagen: By Gustavo Kunst from Igrejinha, Porto Alegre, Brasil (Iberê) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
December 7, 2014 Ricardo Alcaide: Displacement https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ricardo-alcaide-displacement/

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Artist: Ricardo Alcaide

Displacement
November 20, 2014 – February 5, 2015
Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

Displacement: The act of displacing, or the state of being displaced; a putting out of place.

The exhibition reflects how to transcend the memory of modernism and intends to rebuild the ruins and remnants through fictional construction and new compositions with architectural references.

As a continuation of moving and relocating —displacing— objects, and based on my experiences and perceptions of how society functions and deals with industrial problems caused by modern living conditions in densely populated cities, my recent work has created different parallels through the combination of principles of modernist architecture and the precariousness that manifests itself in ordinary day to day living, while still working as a continuation of previous dialogues, from shelter for individuals to social solutions, revealing the “progress” in society as a vague and rapidly losing shape.

Living and working in Sao Paulo over the last years—and after more than a decade in London, and previously in my hometown of Caracas— is an experience that still informs my practice and has been strongly influenced by architects like Gio Ponti, Carlos Raul Villanueva and Lina Bo Bardi, for example, all of whom projected a great spirit of forward thinking and an extraordinary sense of aesthetics—something that I cannot avoid to express myself. Latin-American architecture, or even generally speaking, is not only as a reference for my work but also as a way of living, a day by day personal exchange that affects the way I think, I function, and interact with the world.

The work for this first solo show in Miami at Alejandra Von Hartz proposes a dialogue between all these areas observations -the balance between the formal aesthetics of modernism and the utopian impossibility- captured within the combination of found objects and the abstraction (out) from them, as in the Settlements installation: a construction built out of found disposed objects, next to a display of a small group of bronze sculptures of crushed cardboard boxes and other rejected material.

From a recent series ‘Intrusions’: a painted photograph is included; Land Of Order, an image of Brasilia’s iconographic -perfect modernism- interrupted by geometrical elements.

To complete the group of works, dismantled painted panels are the most recent, industrial paint on mdf board, they retain a memory of a disassembled shelving unit, from which all elements have been removed to reveal only the divided sections of the back wall. Here it’s the ‘action of deconstruction’ in the actual process that counts as the most relevant point for this work. An abstract recreation of construction that reveals the uncontrolled and imprecise condition to reflect —once again— about the failure of progress associated with modern aesthetics within my discourse, what could be perceived formally as an abstraction. Perhaps the necessity to synthetize the visual elements as an aesthetic resource in my work, is almost like “the supremacy of pure artistic feeling” expressed in Malevich’s Suprematism, but despite that, what lies behind are the anecdotes and symbolic shapes from today’s hard reality.

Ricardo Alcaide
November 2014

Ricardo Alcaide was born in Caracas in 1967. He currently lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil.   Recent exhibitions include: Settlements, Baro galeria, São Paulo; The Language Of Human Consciousness, Athr gallery, Jeddah. Saudi Arabia; Donde Hay Protesta Hay Negocio, Galería Agustina Ferreyra, San Juan de Puerto Rico (2014); Solo Project, Curated by Jose Roca. Pinta NY Art Fair, New York; Incidental Geometry, Project Room – Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New York; Visão Do Paraiso: Pensamento Selvagem, curated by Julieta Gonzalez and Pablo Leon de la Barra, Rio de Janeiro; From Disruption To Abstraction, New Art Projects Gallery, London (2013); Prototipo Vernacular, Oficina #1, Caracas, Venezuela; Optimismo Radical, Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New York (2012). His work is part of the following collections: Sayago & Pardon, Los Angeles, CA. LIMAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima, Zabludowicz Collection. London. Colección Fundación Cisneros, Caracas. Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas.

December 7, 2014 Silvia Gurfein: Aguardamos conexión https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/silvia-gurfein-aguardamos-conexion/

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Artists: Silvia Gurfein, Guillermo Faivovich and Javier Villa.

Aguardamos conexión
November 1 -29, 2014
Diagonal
Buenos Aires, Argentina

En 1925, luego de cuatro años de trabajo, Howard Carter abre el sarcófago de Tutankamón y se convierte en la primera persona en enfrentarse a su máscara luego de más de 3.000 años. En 2009, se hunde el Polar Mist cerca del Estrecho de Magallanes con una carga de 9,5 toneladas de metal doré, una aleación de oro y plata. En Julio de 2015, la sonda New Horizons, después de viajar más de 5.000 millones de kilómetros, ofrecerá una nueva imagen de Plutón. Entre 2008 y 2009, durante su estadía en la academia Städelschule de Frankfurt, Alemania, Guillermo Faivovich investiga estos sucesos, quizás interesado por la imagen latente que en un momento dado es vista por un solo hombre y luego se expande hacia la cabeza de toda la humanidad, por una imagen tangible de la economía que, de un instante a otro, se vuelve pura abstracción y por las imágenes que aún no existen.

¿Si las imágenes son máquinas del tiempo lanzadas hacia dos direcciones, no navegarían en un bucle infinito y, por lo tanto, tendrían un espacio reservado en todo tiempo y lugar, situando al arte en el rol de un guardián que preserva viva, dentro de una cripta, la posibilidad de la imagen aún no vista?

En 1969, Silvia Gurfein asiste al estreno en Argentina de 2001: Odisea del Espacio. En la década del ochenta, ensaya la obra El esfuerzo del destino de Vivi Tellas; se prepara para esas sesiones escuchando cassettes que le provee Nora Loiseau, su prima astrofísica. Las cintas contienen radiaciones electromagnéticas en longitud de onda, obtenidas con la antena del IAR (Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomía,) y luego convertidas en audio. En 2009, durante un estudio abierto de la Städelschule, Faivovich exhibe una foto de la primera torre erigida para el Radiotelescopio de Arecibo, una mega construcción situada en Puerto Rico cuyo objetivo, de algún modo, es la búsqueda de nuevas imágenes.

¿Una imagen nunca vista puede ser reconocida como tal, o es necesario que arrastre consigo un rango de información reconocible que construya identificación con su receptor, al mismo tiempo que lanza datos al futuro para que, ante su llegada, los mismos ya formen parte de una experiencia adquirida y, por lo tanto, puedan ayudar a construir la percepción de nuevas imágenes que aún no podemos ver, situando al arte en el rol de un catapulta que envía señales hacia adelante para activar el espacio reservado de esas nuevas imágenes que ampliarán nuestro conocimiento y goce del mundo?

En 1913, Kasimir Malevich concibe Cuadrado negro sobre fondo blanco, siendo su primera materialización pictórica dos años posterior. El óleo de Malevich podría contener el pasado y un potencial futuro de la historia de la pintura. En 2001, Gurfein desarrolla su primera serie de espectrogramas, frecuencias de color realizadas al óleo que toman como referencia diversas pinturas de la antigüedad. Un espectrógrafo, entre otras cosas, permite conocer la composición de una estrella por el dibujo de los intervalos de luz. Gurfein toma un pequeño fragmento de un cuadro, identifica cada color de ese fragmento como una unidad de sentido y desarrolla esos colores, extrapolados, como una escritura de bandas cromáticas sobre la tela, convencida de que el óleo contiene toda la historia de la pintura como ADN que transporta en el tiempo la información de su génesis. La búsqueda de una mínima unidad que porte la información esencial, plegada, para luego ser arrastrada a otros soportes, trece años después se redirecciona hacia el sistema solar.

¿Si nunca antes la imagen se había impuesto con tanta fuerza en nuestro universo estético, técnico, cotidiano, político e histórico, no debería una sola imagen ser capaz, al mismo tiempo, de reunir todo lo anterior y ser entendida, por turnos, como documento y como objeto de sueño, obra y objeto de paso, monumento y objeto de montaje, no-saber y objeto de ciencia, un tesoro y una tumba de la memoria? ¿Si pensáramos a la historia de las imágenes como una historia de profecías, el arte sería aquello que hoy nos otorga la percepción más precisa de la experiencia contemporánea del tiempo, sin caer en linealidades evolutivas sino aportando relaciones cercanas a una idea de montaje, que escapa de las teleologías, hace visibles las supervivencias, los anacronismos, los encuentros de temporalidades contradictorias que afectan a cada objeto, cada acontecimiento, cada persona, cada gesto, conteniendo todos los estratos de la arqueología y todos los punteados del destino?

Obras exhibidas:
Sistema Solar espectral. Silvia Gurfein, 2014. Lapiz sobre papel, medidas variables – ángulos precisos.
Tower 1962. Guillermo Faivovich, 2009-2014. Impresión sobre papel, medidas variables (mural). Cortesía NAIC – Arecibo Observatory, a facility of the NSF.

Texto:
Javier Villa (basado en las charlas del trío y en las ideas de George Didi-Huberman).

December 1, 2014 Danilo Dueñas, Magdalena Fernández, Jaime Gili, Osvaldo Romberg, Gabriel Sierra, Adán Vallecillo: Impulse, Reason, Sense, Conflict https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/danilo-duenas-magdalena-fernandez-jaime-gili-osvaldo-romberg-gabriel-sierra-adan-vallecillo-impulse-reason-sense-conflict/

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Artists: Aitken, Francis Alÿs, Miguel Amat, Stanley Brouwn, James Brown, Ryan Brown, Carlos Bunga, Daniel Buren, Sergio Camargo, Mario Carreño, Natalia Castañeda, Carla Chaim, Lygia Clark, Dadamaino, Sandu Darié, Willys De Castro, Iran do, Leonardo Drew, Danilo Dueñas, Eugenio Espinoza, Qin Feng, José Gabriel Fernández, Magdalena Fernández, Fernanda Fragateiro, Mario Garcia Torres, Theaster Gates, Gego, Gunther Gerszo, Jaime Gili, Fernanda Gomes, Alberto Greco, Sara Grilo, Arturo Herrera, Karl Hugo Schmolz, Alfred Jensen, Donald Judd, William Kentridge, Jannis Kounellis, Liz Larner, Jac Leirner, Sol Lewitt, Guido Llinas, Anna Maria Maiolino, Raul Martinez, Sarah Morris, Helio Oiticica, Gabriel Orozco, Alejandro Otero, Claudio Perna, Liliana Porter, Carlos Puche, Eduardo Ramirez Villamizar, Dorothea Rockburne, Carlos Rojas, Osvaldo Romberg, Ana Sacerdote, Espirito Santo, Mira Schendel, Harald Schmitz Schmelzer, Gunter Schroeder, Gabriel Sierra, Lolo Soldevilla, Jesús Soto, Eduardo Terrazas, Erwin Thorn, Fred Tomaselli, Richard Tuttle, Adan Vallecillo, Adrián Villar Rojas, Alfred Wenemoser, Pae White.

Impulse, Reason, Sense, Conflict -Abstract Art from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection
December 3, 2014 – March 8, 2015
CIFO Art Space
Miami, FL, USA

The exhibition includes 105 pieces by 72 artists from different generations and latitudes, who share their interpretations and philosophies of abstraction. The exhibition was organized by CIFO.

Impulse, Reason, Sense, Conflict explores abstraction as an aesthetic category instead of as a movement or art trend.  Since its inception abstraction has provided a series of models that remain paradigmatic and exemplary  in today’s art production. The exhibition is divided in four areas:

Abstract Impulses dedicated to the rupture with mimetic representation and its concomitant representational crisis with the subsequence substitution of the represented object by the structural elements of painting itself (color, line, etc.) On this section the artists represented will include Mario Garcia Torres, Theaster Gates, Andreas Gursky, Anna Maria Maiolino, Sarah Morris, Reinhard Mucha, Helio Oiticica, Liliana Porter, Karl Hugo Schmolz, Fred Tomaselli, Adrián Villar Rojas, and Pae White among others.

Laboratory of Reason refers to the questioning of the nature, essence and even the existence of art implied in abstration. Instead of asking “what is beauty?,” this section questions art’s existence to the extreme of declaring it dead. Artists included on this section are Doug  Aitken, Lygia Clark, Dadamaino, Olafur Eliasson, Fernanda Fragateiro, Fernanda Gomes, Arturo Herrera, Donald Judd, William Kentridge, Liz Larner, Jac Leirner, Gabriel Orozco, Osvaldo Romberg, Gabriel  Sierra, and Alfred Wenemoser among others.

Uncommon Senses relates to the integration and crossover of other art forms. With the introduction of different materials, media and art forms such as theater, music, dance and literature, abstraction demanded an approach that required the use of multiple senses, both from its makers but also art’s viewers. Francis Alÿs, Stanley Brouwn, Sergio Camargo, Willys De Castro, Qin Feng, Gego, Alberto Greco, Jannis Kounellis, Sol Lewitt, Dorothea Rockburne, Mira Schendel, Erwin Thorn, and Richard Tuttle are some of the artists in this section.

Spatial Conflicts touches on abstraction as a radical change in the conception of spatiality that substituted the Rennaisance perspectival notion of space. Abstract art promotes a real experience. In this section, we showcase Antonio Asis, Carlos Bunga, Daniel Buren, Mario Carreño, Iran do, Espirito Santo, Eugenio Espinoza, Sarah Grilo, Gunther Gerszo, Alfred Jensen, Alejandro Otero, Jesús Soto, Eduardo Terrazas, and Erwin Thorn among others.

Image: Miguel Amat, Series: Capitalismo y Vanguardia, 2006-2010. Photo by Oriol Tarridas.
December 1, 2014 Danilo Dueñas: Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/danilo-duenas-teach-us-outgrow-madness/

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Artists: Danilo Dueñas, Alfredo Jaar, Jonathan Lasker, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Fabian Marcaccio, Michael Müller, David Reed, Leunora Salihu, Albrecht Schnider and Stephen Willats.

Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness
November 22, 2014 – January 17, 2015
Galerie Thomas Schulte
Berlin, Germany

Group exhibition

Image: Alfredo Jaar, “Teach Us To Outgrow Our Madness”, 1995
December 1, 2014 Mauro Giaconi: Revuelta (Revolt) https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/mauro-giaconi-revuelta-revolt/

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Artist: Mauro Giaconi

Revuelta (Revolt)
December 1, 2014- February 13, 2015
Dot Fiftyone Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

Mauro Giaconi will exhibit “REVOLT”; a series of moving sculptures based on the ephemeral site-specific mural “Volver a Girar” done at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico in May 2013. By deconstructing the mural and wall fragments detached from its walls, Giaconi launches a poetic exploration on detachment, fragility, rupture and social breakdown.

By accepting the possibility of loss, of an end, Giaconi provokes a spatial reconfiguration of the memory of a static image. Its traces are then used to evoke past events and erect upon its ruins a dreamlike environment, which by stirring the past builds a future, in order to turn again.

As part of the exhibit, he will be showing his new video LÍNEA TRANSVERSAL, (Transversal Line), in the video-room and a collection of recent drawing in the project room.

Mauro Giaconi was in born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1977, he lives and works in Mexico City. He studied Architecture in the Buenos Aires University (U.B.A.) and Fine Arts in the Prilidiano Pueyrredon National School of Fine Arts (E.N.B.A.P.P), getting in 2001 the degree of National Painting Professor. Since then, his work has developed in the sculpture field, Installation and drawings, has been the major focus in his investigation and development. During 1998 and 1999, he worked on mural painting and historic buildings restoration. In the artistic teaching field he imparted class in the Prilidiano Pueyrredon National School of Fine Arts, in Buenos Aires, Argentina in the year of 2002. At 2011 was teacher in the Autonomous University of the State of Morelos, in Cuernavaca, Mexico. He is co-founder of Obrera Centro, an non profit and independent art space in México City. He received the first Philips (Argentina) Award for young talents, Mention of the jury, and the honor mention in the National Drawing Salon, was selected for the First and the Second award ArteBA-Petrobas. He participated as scholarship holder during 2010 in the Center of Artistic Investigation (CIA , Buenos Aires),  then he attended to the artistic residences, Bémis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha, Nebraska) and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Skowhegan, Maine) in 2013; and in 2014 he participate in Art Omi International Residency (NY). He has exhibited in various solo shows and group shows in Buenos Aires, Mexico City New York, Boston, Miami, Marseilles and Switerzland. Including: ¨Temporada de Plomo (Lead Season) in Arroniz Gallery (Mexico City), “Partir“ (depart) in the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires), “Immense Parellel“ in Dot Fiftyone (Miami),  “Panorámica, Paisaje, 1969-2013“ (panorama, landscape, 1969-3013” in Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexico City) and “AQULLA” in Gallerie HO in Marseilles.

View video of exhibition here

November 27, 2014 Emilia Azcarate, Sigfredo Chacón, Emilio Chapela, Eduardo Costa, Diana de Solares, Marcolina Dipierro, Jaime Gili, Juan Iribarren, Bárbara Kaplan, Luis Roldan, Osvaldo Romberg, Horacio Zabala: Dirty Geometry https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/dirty-geometry/

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Artists: Emilia Azcárate, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck, Cecilia Biagini, Sigfredo Chacón, Emilio Chapela, Eduardo Costa, Willys de Castro, Diana de Solares, Marcolina Dipierro, Eugenio Espinoza, Jaime Gili, Mathias Goeritz, Juan Iribarren, Bárbara Kaplan, Ramsés Larzábal, Raúl Lozza, Beatriz Olano, César Paternosto, Alejandro Puente, Luis Roldán, Osvaldo Romberg, Joaquín Torres García, and Horacio Zabala.

Dirty Geometry
December 2 -7, 2014
Curated by Osvaldo Romberg
Mana Contemporary
Miami, FL, USA

Dirty geometry has existed throughout 20th century art although not in a manifest way; it implies a subversion of the laws of logical rigor, systemism and utopian modernism that have pervaded geometry since Kandinsky. In his milestone book Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky argues against geometry as decoration; instead, he promotes geometrical painting as a spiritual tool. The quest of the spiritual, of a balance between the mind and intellectual order constituted the fundamental idea behind geometric art. Geometrical abstraction was used in different times, as we see for instance in Kandinsky’s compositions, in the rigorous nihilism of Malevich’s “Black on Black”, and in the concrete iconography of Max Bill.

Through my concept of “Dirty Geometry,” I want to undermine the rigid, global imposition of geometry that has dominated from the beginning of the 20th century. Of course, other artists have already played with this approach more or less consciously: Rothko when he broke the grid, Frank Stella with his Cone and Pillars series from the eighties.

However I came to realize that Latin-America offers the most prominent examples of “Dirty Geometry.” First, this might be explained by the often rudimentary absorption of the center by the periphery, as peripheral access to major art trends has long been mediated by art reproductions, and perceived through local cultural prisms. This is even truer in Latin-America where most countries lacked a radical and contemporary art scene. Secondly, in Latin America one always finds forms of political and existential resistance against the values of neo-liberalism embodied by the center.

“Dirty Geometry” will question different aspects of American, Russian and European abstract art such as the imposition of polished finish on paintings, the compositions and the purity of its lines, classical applications of colors inherited from the Bauhaus, Concrete Art, etc.

In the forties for instance, the Latin-American group MADI challenged the format of the canvas, the relation between two and three dimensions, etc. In the sixties the Latin-America group of Kinetic Art in Paris challenged the static geometry produced by artists such as Vasarely and Herbin, and introduced movement, light and shadow to abstract art.

I would therefore suggest that Latin-America has proceeded to elaborate a kind of creolization of the dominant geometrical art; this is a recurrent phenomenon in other fields of Latin-American culture, and we encounter it in religion, education, food, inventions, etc.

The more figuration moves away from reality and representation, the more it needs to resort to theory in order to retain legitimacy. Geometry as we traditionally conceive it can only be legitimized by a tight, rigid theoretical framework. “Dirty Geometry” is therefore a rebellious attempt to break from all theoretical frameworks and thus invent a geometry that would be free from theory. This is a dirty war, one that we could define as “below the belt”.  George Bataille believed that “divine filth” brings about true eroticism; likewise, I would suggest that it is possible to bring about an eroticism of geometry through dirt.

November 24, 2014 Horacio Zabala, Silvana Lacarra & Marcolina Dipierro: Cromofobia https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/horacio-zabala-silvana-lacarra-marcolina-dipierro-cromofobia/

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Artists: Leandro Katz, Horacio Zabala, Lucio Dorr, Silvana Lacarra, Andrés Sobrino, Jorge Miño, Ivana Vollaro, Pablo Accinelli, Nicolás Mastracchio, Marcela Sinclair, Tomás Espina, Matías Duville, Mathieu Mercier, Marcolina Dipierro, Alfio Demestre, Eduardo Basualdo, Guido Yannitto, Erica Bohm, Malena Pizani, Mariano Vilela, Anna María Maiolino, Ascânio MMM, Knopp Ferro, João Costa da Silva, Lothar Charoux, Rogelio Polesello, Beto de Volder, Pilar Ferreira, Manuel Álvarez, João Carlos Galvão and Raúl Lozza.

Cromofobia
November 15, 2014 – March 1, 2015
Curator: Teresa Riccardi
MACBA
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Entre la luz y su ausencia, una reunión de imágenes, esculturas, dibujos y fotografías contemporáneas proyectan temporariamente  un espacio formal y acromático en MACBA.  Como si se tratara de una cámara resonante que desafía el umbral audible intensificándolo o neutralizándolo, las piezas que integran esta exhibición en blanco y negro ocupan la arquitectura del museo creando un relato que cancela la posibilidad expansiva e inmaterial que nos propone el color para pensar la gramática formal  que instalan los extremos lumínicos y opacos.

En esta constelación, la certeza gobierna sobre la inestabilidad sugerida por la variación de tintes y cromas, evitando los desvaríos del color, las explosiones y sus afinidades selectivas. Cromofobia  no intenta construir formas de interacción a partir de sus tintes, sino a partir de sus valores y significaciones. Donde cada intervalo de sentido se elabora en la superficie material, y las gradaciones o volúmenes espaciales se reparten entre las distintas intensidades de fuente lumínica. En esta manifestación, ciertas piezas, exteriorizan las progresiones intermedias que componen  la escala de los grises.

Cromofobia nos invita a percibir las obras, su planteo formal y nos acerca a la subjetividad que se inscribe detrás del conocimiento sensible y lenguaje de cada artista. Expone un modo posible de ver usos diversos del blanco y el negro, y en ello, de qué modo ésta elección adquiere un peso específico, una gravedad discursiva.  No obstante la restricción del color, la exhibición nos abre hacia otra lectura fenomenológica de los objetos, las cuales despliegan un horizonte de posibilidades para poder mirarlas y comprenderlas.

Esta exhibición reúne piezas de: Leandro Katz, Horacio Zabala, Lucio Dorr, Silvana Lacarra, Andrés Sobrino, Jorge Miño, Ivana Vollaro, Pablo Accinelli, Nicolás Mastracchio, Marcela Sinclair, Tomás Espina, Matías Duville, Mathieu Mercier, Marcolina Dipierro, Alfio Demestre, Eduardo Basualdo, Guido Yannitto, Erica Bohm, Malena Pizani y Mariano Vilela. También se incluyen obras de la Colección MACBA de los artistas Anna María Maiolino, Ascânio MMM, Knopp Ferro, João Costa da Silva, Lothar Charoux, Rogelio Polesello, Beto de Volder, Pilar Ferreira, Manuel Álvarez, João Carlos Galvão y Raúl Lozza.

Andrés Sobrino, Sin título, 2010, Esmalte sintético sobre multilaminado uréico (plywood), 75 x 55cm. cada uno
Guido Yannito, Perder el nombre, 2013, fotografía, 40x50cm
Horacio Zabala, Los siete días de la semana, 2014, serígrafía sobre papel, 70 x 490 cm.
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Tomás Espina, Sin título, 2013, hollín sobre papel, 32 x 23 cm. (1)

MACBA presents Chromophobia, an exhibition that brings together works from its collection with the work of invited contemporary artists. The pieces included in this exhibition in black and white occupy the museum’s architecture creating a story that cancels the expansive and intangible possibilities of color in order to think of the formal grammar and senses installed by lighting and opaque matter extremes.

Chromophobia brings together works by: Leandro Katz, Horacio Zabala, Lucio Dorr, Silvana Lacarra, Andrés Sobrino, Jorge Miño, Ivana Vollaro, Pablo Accinelli, Nicolás Mastracchio, Marcela Sinclair, Tomás Espina, Matías Duville, Mathieu Mercier, Marcolina Dipierro, Alfio Demestre, Eduardo Basualdo, Guido Yannitto, Erica Bohm, Malena Pizani and Mariano Vilela. Works of the MACBA Collection by Anna Maria Maiolino, Ascânio MMM, Knopp Ferro, João Costa da Silva, Lothar Charoux, Rogelio Polesello, Beto de Volder, Pilar Ferreira, Manuel Álvarez, João Carlos Galvão and Raúl Lozza are also included.

It is a constellation of artists working on pieces that talk about the corporal experience of space, as in the case of Anna Maria Maiolino and Ascânio MMM of Brazil, which inspire and open the bet to other object-based and perceptual dialogues with Argentine artists of the same generation, such as Horacio Zabala and Leandro Katz, or new generations of artists as Eduardo Basualdo, Pablo Accinelli and Marcolina Dipierro. In all cases, their poetics- anchored in the gap between analytical reason and sensorial experience of space and language- suggest a palpable, tactile and visible condition of the body projected or absorbed into the surface of the material and conceptual pieces.

As if they were dissociated from the apparent reality, certain photographic pieces move metaphorically from the earthly to the spectrum, giving spatiality other senses. This is true in the series of photographs by Erica Bohm, Jorge Miño, Guido Yannitto and Leandro Katz, that transport us into a dimension disclosed only by the fictional pact.

Certain gestures, heirs of a formal and conceptual minimalism, dialogue with the MACBA Collection in pieces by Horacio Zabala, Andrés Sobrino, Marcolina Dipierro and Lucio Dorr, compositions that install a narrative space with geometry of minimal units.

The white corporeality is tested by other relationships: Pablo Accinelli, Silvana Lacarra and Ivana Vollaro reduce the image to a minimum in their works, revealing the sensitivity of the materials. Other subsections bodies and cutting materials take shape such as Marcela Sinclair’s intervention performed on a vintage photographs, and pieces of soot on paper with geometrical figures and mandalas of Tomas Espina. The black and white, the paper, the charcoal and the graphite come to life in the imaginary worlds of Matías Duville and abstract pieces by Mariano Vilela, respectively.

In this statement from Chromophobia, perceiving the works and their formal proposal is to see how the use of white and black acquires a specific weight, discursive and poetic gravity that empowers the spatial relationship with the viewer.

Images: Andrés Sobrino, Sin título, 2010, Esmalte sintético sobre multilaminado uréico (plywood), 75 x 55cm. cada uno / Guido Yannito, Perder el nombre, 2013, fotografía, 40x50cm / Horacio Zabala, Los siete días de la semana, 2014, serígrafía sobre papel, 70 x 490 cm. / Vista de sala / Tomás Espina, Sin título, 2013, hollín sobre papel, 32 x 23 cm. (1) / Mathieu Mercier, Sin título, 2012, impresión digital sobre papel baritado, 44 x 29,3 cm.
November 24, 2014 Guido Ignatti, Silvia Gurfein, Fernanda Laguna, Ramiro Oller & Mariela Scafati: Pintura Buenos Aires 2014 https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/guido-ignatti-silvia-gurfein-fernanda-laguna-ramiro-oller-mariela-scafati-pintura-buenos-aires-2014/

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Artists: Juan Becú, Sofía Bohtlingk, Rosa Chancho, Silvia GurfeinGuido IgnattiFernanda LagunaRamiro Oller, Tiziana Pierri, Marisa Rubio, Mariela Scafati and Juan Tessi.

Pintura Buenos Aires 2014
November 15 – December 31, 2014
Nora Fisch
Buenos Aires, Argentina

En Argentina se pinta.  La tradición pictórica es fuerte, y a pesar de la energía con que se despliegan otras prácticas artísticas a nivel local –ya sean relacionadas a la imagen en movimiento, lo conceptual o la performance– la pintura permanece viva, empujando sus propios límites, reconsiderándose, en el centro del foco de artistas de generaciones jóvenes e intermedias.  Esta muestra, que inaugura el nuevo espacio de la galería, aspira a ser un recorrido por algunas de estas obras, que empujan, fuerzan, tuercen, reconsideran lo pictórico, ya sea desde su lenguaje mismo (Pierri, Becú, Gurfein),  contaminándolo desde otros medios y materiales (Scaffatti, Oller, Bothlingk, Ignatti) o desde una mirada desde afuera, desde prácticas performáticas o esencialmente conceptuales (Rosa Chancho, Marisa Rubio).

Image: Guido Ignatti, Collage para cajones, collage, papel enmarcado en cajones, 60 x 44 cm, 2014
November 21, 2014 Jaime Gili: Ornament and Barricade https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/jaime-gili-ornament-barricade/

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Artist: Jaime Gili

Ornament and Barricade
November 20, 2014 – February 5, 2015
Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

Only after doing it three times and approaching a fourth, I realized that for exhibition titles, large projects, or even a series of paintings; I have repeated a dialectical formula that recreates links between Europe, European minds, and the coasts: South America or its local counterparts. I did it, for instance, when, for an exhibition in Winterthur, I placed Max Bill at Henri Pittier´s Park in Venezuela, and also when I completed the story of Gio Ponti on the Venezuelan coast and Reverón in the Mediterranean, for a series of paintings.

I was about to work on Carlo Scarpa, an obvious candidate as he built the Venezuelan pavilion at the Venice Biennale—which has always fascinated me— when I recognized the formula and tried to avoid it; perhaps even the pavilion commission lacks the anecdote that justifies a wider story.
And yet, Scarpa´s story and use of concrete and structural ornament keeps on fascinating me, and he has, indeed, been present in my mind when developing the current series of works. Of course, painting is slow, and the works here also contain elements from the previous series, the 2013 series which was a utopian homage to a fictional meeting of Armando Reverón and Gio Ponti. That series had some elements, like the thin stripes, that are still present in these works. Made in summer 2014, these paintings actually lie somewhere between winter 2012 and February 2014. So even if Scarpa was in the studio, also present at the party were Ponti and Reverón. And in the real world, miles away, the protests on the streets of Venezuela were starting; they unavoidably entered the mix.

Guarimba is a Venezuelan word that could be translated as “makeshift barricade to block roads by people who stay around it protesting loudly”. Guarimbas were very active in spring 2014 on the streets of Venezuela as a way of protest to block normal life against the regime. Many youth have been detained around them and then imprisoned and tortured thereafter. There are no glimpses of freedom yet and few other ways to protest.

Now imagine the doors of the studio as a barricade that only lets some things come through. But the barricade is a response to what is happening. The gates are also the work, the work is a final guarimba that decides what can and cannot enter in it. A filter that is in itself a response to what is happening. Painting is a political act, but it is also slow.

Jaime Gili
London, September 2014

Jaime Gili was born in Caracas in 1972. Studied first in Caracas, at a tropical Bauhaus that failed to change the country, never mind the world; later at the University of Barcelona, where he learned to be a painter but nobody was there to witness, and finally at the Royal College of Art in London, the city where he found his voice as an artist, paradoxically, based upon the Venezuelan modern tradition that he carried within. He has exhibited widely in Europe and the Americas and works mainly in London, but also in Barcelona and Caracas. He has created large commissions in public and private buildings integrating painting in architecture, in England, the US and Venezuela. He is currently developing his second largest one, a mural for Baltus House, a Condo in the Miami Design District, which will be ready in 2015.

November 21, 2014 Luis Roldán: Secreta prudencia https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/luis-roldan-secreta-prudencia/

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Artist: Luis Roldán

Secreta prudencia
November 13, 2014 – February 15, 2015
Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avedaño
Bogotá, Colombia

Con disimulo alguien observa o escucha lo que pasa para comunicárselo a otros. Lo inculpan por traición y se redime trayendo su historia política al presente con sueños de expiación. Un prisionero político aguarda su tortura en el lugar de encarcelamiento; trabaja forzadamente hasta el agotamiento grabando insignias en piedras y en grandes obras de ingeniería. Estas micronarrativas y sus vestigios, se enlazan en un lugar compartimentado con secreta prudencia.

November 20, 2014 Gabriel de la Mora: Lucíferos https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/gabriel-de-la-mora-luciferos/

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Artist: Gabriel de la Mora

Lucíferos
October 30 – December 21, 2014
Sicardi Gallery
Houston, TX, USA

In Gabriel de la Mora’s most recent body of work, he uses fire-making as a vehicle for reconsidering geometric abstraction. Striking thousands of matches against the red phosphorus-covered paper on the sides of matchboxes, de la Mora collects the used strikers and arranges them in compositions that create repeating patterns, rectangular grids, and minimalist constructions. The resulting imagery evokes two distinct historical moments. On the one hand, the enigmatic geometries are suggestive of Minimalist paintings from the 1950s and 1960s. And, on the other, the used object, marked by the act of striking matches, insistently presents another story: that of the industrialization of fire through the invention of matches (originally called Lucifers). By pairing these two narratives, de la Mora presents a new series of questions about abstraction and vision, invention and industrialization.

Gabriel de la Mora (b. 1968, Mexico) studied architecture before completing his M.F.A. at Pratt Institute, New York.  His solo exhibition Lo que no vemos lo que nos mira, curated by Willy Kautz, is currently on view at Museo Amparo in Puebla, Mexico.  He has had solo exhibitions at NC-Arte, Bogotá, Colombia; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, Mexico; Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), Long Beach, California, USA; and the Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, D.C., among other museums. This is his third solo exhibition at Sicardi Gallery.

Gabriel de la Mora’s work is included in important public and private collections, including Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, CA, USA; Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), Long Beach, CA, USA; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), Houston, TX, USA; El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY, USA; Colección Ella Fontanals-Cisneros, Miami, FL, USA; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Mexico; Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico; Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, D.C., USA; among many others.

November 20, 2014 Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraenen: Threshold https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/carla-arocha-stephane-schraenen-threshold/

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Artists: Josef Albers, Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraenen, Pavel Büchler, Alain Franco, Dennis Tyfus, Peter Fengler and Pieter Vermeersch.

Threshold
November 15 – December 21, 2014
Cultuur Centrum Mechelen
Mechelen, Belgium

Met de tentoonstelling Threshold in De Garage, gaan Arocha en Schraenen in dialoog met werk van Pieter Vermeersch, Josef Albers, Pavel Büchler, Dennis Tyfus en Peter Fengler.

In deze tentoonstelling presenteren Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraenen hun meest recente werk Wall. Deze sculptuur is samengesteld uit verschillende keramische elementen in subtiel gekleurde glazuren het licht reflecteren en zo het werk een steeds veranderend uitzicht geven. Wall speelt, zoals frequent in hun werk, een buitengewoon optisch spel met de omgeving.
Op de openingsavond op vrijdag 14 november, zorgt de muziek van Alain Franco voor een gevoelige verkenning van de kloof tussen tijd en ruimte, aanwezigheid en afwezigheid, geluid en stilte.

November 19, 2014 Guido Ignatti: Luz de día https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/guido-ignatti-luz-de-dia/

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Artist: Guido Ignatti

Luz de día
November 14, 2014 – February, 2015
MACRO
Rosario, Argentina

La muestra se compone de diez tapiados (obras diseñadas para ventanas, realizadas en madera policromada con anilinas y esmalte sintético, y con iluminación interior). Ocho se ubican sobre las ventanas que normalmente se encuentran bloqueadas de la sala, operando en conjunto son el cuerpo central de la obra. Los dos tapiados restantes se ubican sobre un par de ventanas cementadas, a modo de apertura ficcionada. Las piezas de madera policromada poseen iluminación fluorescente en su interior. La muestra se completa con la proyección de un video en el hall de la sala que relata una secuencia lumínica de la sala.

La exposición se puede apreciar a cualquier hora del día, sin embargo, su auge es durante la puesta de sol, cuando el gradiente de la luz natural hacia la artificial atraviesa la obra.

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November 19, 2014 Óscar Figueroa: Acciones Territoriales https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/oscar-figueroa-acciones-territoriales/

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Artists: Astrovandalistas, Brian Mackern, Carolina Caycedo, Claudia del Fierro, Enrique Arriaga, Gala Porras-Kim, Gilda Mantilla & Raimond Chaves, Hillary Mushkin, Juan Caloca, Juan Pablo Macías, Luis G. Hernández, Los ingrávidos, Mauricio Palos, Oscar Figueroa Chaves, Ricardo Díaz, and Yollotl Manuel Gómez Alvarado.

Acciones Territoriales
November 5 – 19, 2014
ExTeresa Arte Actual
Mexico City, Mexico

La presente curaduría explora y esquematiza algunas de las distintas formas en que sociedades, comunidades y personas han imaginado y configurado sus territorios como resistencias a un sistema capitalista neoliberal dominante.
Esta muestra, reconoce las implicaciones históricas del Ex Teresa como espacio de experimentación artística. En ese sentido, la revisión y lectura de la curaduría Terreno peligroso/Danger Zone, 1995 (Los Ángeles y Ciudad de México), la cual hace eco en las reflexiones que se plantean en esta curaduría.
Se ha comisionado un despliegue de proyectos artísticos que responden de manera crítica a fundamentos territoriales de la crisis sistémica actual, prácticas artísticas que se vinculan con otros campos de conocimiento y la acción colectiva. Para reforzar estos lazos se han creado dos puentes: los Conversatorios que funcionan como espacios de reflexión colectiva entre público y actores sociales y los Talleres que son espacios abiertos de acción colectiva.
Acciones Territoriales invita a explorar la idea de territorio y sus resistencias bajo cuatro nodos entrelazados: La idea de territorio como Estado-Nación, Resistencias a través de la memoria, Territorios transitables y en tránsito y Vida cotidiana: imaginarios, representaciones y lenguaje.

 

Un fenómeno dominante en México, al igual que en América Latina, y otras partes del mundo; es la facilidad con que el proyecto Neoliberal ha permitido que los Estados y sus alianzas con compañías transnacionales, invadan y exploten territorios sin ninguna consideración a las comunidades que los habitan. Estos desmedidos ejercicios de poder han provocado acciones de resistencia que tratan de revertir estos actos violentos. Algunos responden, dada la urgencia de la situación, desde la misma anquilosada concepción de territorio usada por el Estado; otros, como algunos grupos indígenas, buscan constantemente elaborar una resistencia más compleja, fundada en su historia, cultura, su relación con el espacio habitado y la inclusión de ideas contemporáneas.
Acciones territoriales, es entonces una invitación a dialogar y encontrar otros caminos posibles para entender nuestra situación actual que se vincula con otras miradas y territorios, una invitación a realizar acciones territoriales.

 

Daniela Lieja Quintanar

 

TERRITORIAL ACTS*

This curatorial project seeks to explore and set forth some of the ways in which societies, communities, and people have imagined and configured their territories as resistances and responses to a dominant capitalist, neoliberal system.
Territorial Acts acknowledges the historical implications of Ex-Teresa as a space for artistic experimentation, and thus we include the revision of the curatorial project Terreno peligroso / Danger Zone (Los Angeles-Mexico City, 1995), which echoes the investigations considered in this curatorial project.
A series of actions have been commissioned, and these respond critically to territorial fundaments in the current crisis, these works connect their practice with other fields of knowledge and collective acts. Two bridges have been createdto strengthen these relationships: the Conversationals (Conversatorios), which work as spaces of collective inquiry between the public and social actors; and the Workshops (Talleres), which are open spaces for collective action.
Territorial Acts is a proposal to explore the concept of territory and resistances through four nodes of investigation: The idea of territory as Nation-State; Resistance through Memory; Accessible and In-Transit Territories; and Everyday life: Imaginaries, Representations, and Language.
A phenomenon that has been reproduced in Mexico as well as in Latin America and other parts of the world, is the indulgence by which the Neoliberal project has granted the hegemonic State and its alliances with transnational companies, approval to invade and exploit territories by building mines, freeways, and damns without any consideration of the people who inhabit these territories. These excessive uses of power have provoked actions of resistance that try to revert their violent actions. Some of these resistances responded, due to the urgency of the problem, with the same misconception of territory used by the State; others, such as indigenous groups, constantly seek to elaborate a more complex resistance, based on their history, culture, inhabited space and the inclusion of contemporary ideas.
Territorial Acts is an invitation to dialogue and to find—through other views and territories—further possible ways to understand our current situation, while simultaneously suggesting an invitation to make territorial acts.

 

Daniela Lieja Quintanar
*Traducción Selene Preciado
November 18, 2014 Diana de Solares: Present 2 https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/diana-de-solares-present-2/

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Artist: Diana de Solares

Present 2: Alma Ruiz presents Diana de Solares
November 1 – December 13, 2014
Josée Bienvenu Gallery
New York, USA

The gallery presents a series of guest-curated exhibitions in the project space. For its second installment, curator Alma Ruiz presents the work by Guatemalan artist Diana de Solares.

Born in Guatemala City in 1952, Diana de Solares lives and works in Guatemala City. Recent exhibitions include: “Las correcciones/The corrections” the 9.99 gallery, Guatemala City (2014); “XIX Bienal Paiz “ Arte Centro Graciela Andrade de Paz, Guatemala City (2014); “Prótesis” [Prosthesis], Piegatto Arte, Guatemala City (2013); “En Tránsito” [In Transit], Sol del Rio Arte Contemporáneo, Guatemala City (2013); “Ensayo” Edge Zones, Miami, FL (2005); “Index miami”, Edge Zones, Miami, FL (2004); “En el filo”, Museo de Arte Moderno de Mérida “Juan Astorga Anta, Mérida, Venezuela (2003); “Picturing the female body”, The Latin Collector Gallery, New York, NY (2002); “Diana de Solares y Juan Paparella” Schneider Gallery, Chicago, IL (2000).

November 15, 2014 Darío Escobar: Unions and Intersections https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/dario-escobar-unions-intersections/

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Artist: Darío Escobar

Unions and Intersections
November 11 – December 12, 2014
Nilsstaerk Gallery
Copenhagen, Denmark

The title of the exhibition Unions and Intersections underlines a general theme in Escobar’s work. The chosen objects, which make up Escobar’s sculptures become markers and signs of both unions and intersections through the way they are arranged and their conversion into art.

Most of the works presented in the exhibition are sculptures made partially or entirely out of sporting goods such as footballs, basketballs, or billiard cues. Sports have been a recurring theme in Escobar’s work in recent years. However, one is not looking at the work of a sports-obsessed artist; someone who cannot get enough of the life-affirming thrills sports can offer. For Escobar these sporting effects are, to a much larger degree, signs of multinational brands and movements, which in the last decades have swept across the world and made any distinction between the local and the global impossible.

To Escobar sports and the culture that surrounds it is inseparable from a worldwide consumerism that offers itself as a ticket to an international community if one is prepared to pay the price. By using effects from this culture Escobar calls attention to this particular situation, though without pointing fingers at sports fans. His work is also not to be understood as a sarcastic comment on the global art world or art market because of its ability to absorb such commercial elements. The works are a sincere investigation of complex power structures, including the relationship between art and consumerism.

Darío Escobar lives and works in Guatemala City. He has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions, among them, Gold, Bass Museum of Art, Miami, and Fútbol: The Beautiful Game, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (all 2014); Confusion in the Vault, Museo Jumex, México D.F. (2013); 2013 California-Pacific Triennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California; Darío Escobar/La experiencia del objeto, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Santiago, Santiago, Chile, Singular/Plural,  SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia, and The Island: A Game of Life, Gallery One, Manarat al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (all 2012); Los impolíticos, Palazzo delle Arti Napoli, Naples, Italy, Périfériks, Centre d’art Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and Mundus Novus, 53 Biennale di Venezia, Venice (all 2009); and Poetics of the Handmade, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2007). Escobar’s monograph A Singular Plurality: The Works of Darío Escobar was published by Harvard University Press in 2013.

November 15, 2014 Christian Camacho Reynoso: Lunes https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/christian-camacho-reynoso-lunes/

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Artist: Christian Camacho Reynoso

Lunes
November 6, 2014
Autjaus / Breve / Neter Proyectos
Mexico City, Mexico

La exposición forma parte del Programa AUTJAUS de NETER proyectos, en colaboración con Breve. Proyecto apoyado por el Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes

November 11, 2014 Pedro Tyler: Extensa https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/pedro-tyler-extensa/

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Artist: Pedro Tyler

Extensa
September 27 – November 1, 2014
Galería Isabel Aninat
Santiago, Chile

Extensa es el fruto y combinación de mi interés en la escultura como portadora de conocimiento y en la historia de la filosofía como un registro de las inquietudes y temores de los hombres. Historia íntimamente ligada con el desarrollo de la ciencia y la matemática.

Extensa tiene que ver con las distancias, con una idea de inmensidad, algo difícil de ser medido en su amplitud. Para hablar de esto utilizo la escultura que contradictoriamente es física y materialmente concreta en su ocupación del espacio.

A partir de algo finito como una cadena o rejas de cintas de medir me aproximo al concepto de lo infinito. Concepto presente en todo el sistema matemático complejo y cabe recordar, también incompleto, a partir del cual se levanta todo el conocimiento racional.

Hacer escultura es practicar la geometría, “medir la tierra”, dar forma a la materia organizando el espacio en el que nos movemos. ¿Cómo entonces hacer que un cuerpo inanimado transmita pensamiento y emoción? Según Descartes cuerpo y pensamiento son bien distintos. Sostiene que sólo hay 3 cosas: la cosa pensante (mis pensamientos, ideas e intuición), la cosa extensa (los cuerpos y el espacio medible) y la cosa infinita (Dios). Pero si todo cuerpo es infinito en su interior; ¿no estamos diciendo, como Spinoza, que Dios está en todo?

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Extensive is the result of the combination of my interest in sculpture as a conveyor of knowledge and in the history of Philosophy as a registry of the worries and frights of men. A history linked to the development of mathematics and science.

Extensive has to do with distances, with the idea of immensity, something difficult to measure in its entirety. To speak about this I use sculpture which, contradictorily, is materially and physically concrete in the way it occupies space.

From something finite as a chain or a grid constructed with measuring tapes I approach to infinity as a concept. A concept which is present in all the mathematical system, a system both complex and incomplete, from which all rational knowledge is derived.

Making sculpture is practicing geometry, “measuring the earth”, giving form to matter organizing the space in which we move. How can we then make an inanimate body communicate an emotion and thought? According to Descartes body and thought are well apart. He states that there are only 3 things: the thinking thing (my thoughts, ideas, intuition), the extensive thing (bodies and measurable space) and the perfect infinite thing (God). But if every body is infinite inside; are we not saying as Spinoza, that God is in everything?

La distancia mas corta detalle
Omega detalle
Principio y fin Detalle chica
Principio y fin
Un grano de arena 2

November 11, 2014 Alexis Minkiewicz: Fantasía Fantasma https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alexis-minkiewicz-fantasia-fantasma/

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Artists: Leonardo Cavalcante, Diego Cirulli, Linhuel González, Miguel Harte, Santiago Licata, Brian Maltz, Alexis Minkiewicz, Tadeo Muleiro, Marcela Oliva, Jorge Opazo, Hernán Soriano, and Catalina Schliebener.

Fantasía Fantasma
November 7 – December 5, 2014
Curated by Lucas Marín
Mapa Líquido / Fundación Lebensohn
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Pintura, objeto, dibujo, escultura, video, collage y mural.

November 6, 2014 Carola Zech: Espacio es espacios https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/carola-zech-espacio-es-espacios/

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Artist: Carola Zech

Espacio es espacios
November 6, 2014 – January 10, 2015
Espacio de Arte Fundación Osde La Vidriera
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Partiendo de la analogía entre las dimensiones de la vidriera y su taller, Carola imagina la idea de transparentar la realidad de su espacio/taller, lugar en donde conviven una serie de materiales que en su acomodo, se superponen, se conectan, se ensamblan. Esa lógica, trasladada a la vidriera del Espacio de Arte de la fundación OSDE, tiene como resultado Espacio es espacios. La vidriera, tridimensional pero no transitable, sugiere algunos desafíos en los que Zech se ha detenido para proyectar su obra.

En sus obras en general, Carola busca mostrar la relación entre el color, el espacio y la forma, relación en sus palabras, magnética. En esta oportunidad, poniendo en tensión la dualidad del espacio tridimensional intransitable, decide desestructurar su lógica a partir del dibujo con formas que, vistas a través del vidrio, resultan en un espacio bidimensional como el de la pintura. El espacio real se multiplica  entonces, según señala la artista, en espacio/contexto, espacio/taller, espacio/pintura, espacio/tridimensión.

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November 6, 2014 Guido Ignatti: Lo mismo, su eco, su sombra https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/guido-ignatti-lo-mismo-su-eco-su-sombra/

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Artists: Guido Ignatti and Hernán Soriano.

Lo mismo, su eco, su sombra
November 6 – December 6, 2014
Curator: Mariano Soto
Fundación OSDE
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Resuena cierta tensión espacial, abstracta, ambigua, como tejida de pequeñas inexactitudes, de corrimientos sutiles, pero también de ajustes sorpresivos e innecesarios.
En la construcción de un espacio paralelo con realidades, circulaciones y códigos de habitabilidad superpuestos, el hecho artístico se traspasa al espectador, al que mira, al que recorre ese espacio, convirtiéndolo en catalizador, en el Capitán Morris del cuento de Bioy. ¿Cómo reaccionaríamos si al despertar una mañana nos encontráramos con una realidad físicaligeramente alterada?, y lo peor: ¿qué pasaría si ese ligeramente fuera la prueba irrefutable de que no somos ya quiénes y cómo éramos la noche anterior?
Entremos a la sala. Agucemos los sentidos. Veremos asomar guiños literarios donde lo ficcional se pone de uno y otro lado de la pared, alternadamente. Ficción por delante o ficción por detrás, pero, al final, lo que prevalece va más allá del cuento. El señalamiento principal pone el dedo en lo presente, en lo residual, en las presencias como huellas, en la posibilidad de la multiplicidad… y en el regodeo en ella.
Aquel “montaje de tiempos heterogéneos” del que habla Didi-Huberman, y que se me antoja (Bioy nos lleva irremediablemente a Borges, y este punto sería un buen tema al que volver en clave estética una y otra vez) tan central en la producción artística contemporánea, es un buen punto para detenerse a observar y pensar. ¿Qué posibilidades de ser leído y clasificado temporalmente tendrá en el futuro nuestro legado contemporáneo de imágenes, fábrica de citas y re-visitas del pasado artístico, rey indiscutido de la posproducción, el ensamble y el objet trouvé?
Pero ese no era el punto, aunque ayude a potenciarlo y darle densidad. El punto es el espacio en sí, la referencia a él, a los modos de habitarlo y sus derroteros; su condición de vórtice de tiempos yuxtapuestos. Es aquí y ahora en donde la irrupción de Ignatti y de Soriano convierten la densidad semántica (y ya altamente citacionista) del estilo Belle Époque en sombras desclasadas, en artefactos irracionalmente inútiles como eco de realidades abandonadas: un espejo retrovisor donde asomarse a la mismidad de las cosas y a nuestro torpe circular entre ellas.

Mariano Soto

lo mismo, su eco, su sombra - fund osde

lo mismo, su eco, su sombra - fund osde

November 5, 2014 Eduardo Costa: Naturalezas https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/eduardo-costa-naturalezas/

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Artist: Eduardo Costa

Naturalezas
October 31 – December 3, 2014
Henrique Faria
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Un hecho pictórico

Arte y lenguaje confluyen en la obra de Eduardo Costa desde mediados de los sesenta, cuando se dedicó a revisar el status institucional de los géneros y las disciplinas artísticas. Más tarde, en los tempranos noventa y luego de diversas experiencias en la vanguardia argentina, brasileña y neoyorkina, trabajando con los medios de comunicación, la moda y la información, Costa abordó por primera vez a la pintura.

Desde su visión de artista conceptual, la pintura no es solo una técnica sino que concentra una visión del mundo: involucra aspectos de índole cultural y psicológica que subyacen a las imágenes que nos rodean y forman el horizonte cognitivo de nuestra época. Así, sus primeras pinturas volumétricas dotan a la pintura de aquello que le faltaba, la tercera dimensión, y demuestran que la representación en el arte es una convención llena de metáforas que apenas distinguimos como ficciones. Capa sobre capa de pintura acrílica Costa hacía frutos, flores, animales y objetos que podían formar parte del universo que el arte europeo occidental denomina “naturalezas muertas”.

Al igual que el derrotero de la pintura en la historia del arte, las pinturas volumétricas pasaron del naturalismo a la geometría y luego a la completa abstracción. De las esferas, cilindros, paralelepípedos, nacieron los actuales monocromos expandidos, fragmentos de paisaje, el tema que le faltaba explorar. Sin dudas, el paisaje no es la naturaleza sino una construcción cultural acerca de cómo la percibimos, un género artístico. Así, la iniciativa del artista fue invertir la operación y buscar los monocromos en la naturaleza. Revisando la tradición, la pintura es concepto y también es materia. El hecho pictórico, como lo reivindican los pintores, es aquello que sucede cuando el tema, la representación, se desvanece. Las obras de Costa podrían ser solamente el enunciado que les da existencia, como fueron en los años sesenta cuando experimentaba con la comunicación. Sin embargo, hoy el artista siente en la rotundidad de la materia un mensaje encriptado, como un código genético que tal vez garantiza la pervivencia de ideas, imágenes y percepciones. Un sistema cuyo sentido sea sostener antiguas codificaciones que definen lo humano.

María José Herrera

Image: Eduardo Costa, “Zapallo redondo”, 2008-2009, Pintura acrílica maciza, 20 x 46 x 38 cm
November 5, 2014 Marta Chilindrón: Expand // Fold // Collapse // https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marta-chilindron-expand-fold-collapse/

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Artist: Marta Chilindrón

Expand // Fold // Collapse //
November 3 – December 5, 2014
Curated by Susanna V. Temkin and Katharine J. Wright
The Great Hall Exhibitions, Institute of Fine Arts
New York, USA

Embracing the instability of perspective and form, New York artist Marta Chilindron (b. 1951, Buenos Aires) creates manipulable sculptures in transparent and colored acrylics.  Adapted from such basic geometric shapes as spheres, cubes, and pyramids, her artworks conceal their identity as complex, kinetic constructions.  Constructed from multiple panels connected by hinges, Chilindron’s sculptures are charged with transformative potential that, when activated by the viewer, cause the works to expand//fold//collapse.

An heir to international constructivism, Chilindron’s artworks recall the influence of such artists as Naum Gabo, Lygia Clark, and Donald Judd.  However, to this tradition Chilindron adds her own investigations based on her interest in the dynamism and mutability of life.  Controlled by the viewer yet mediated by their constructed forms, her artworks transform shape, shift from the second to the third dimension, and extend and contract into space.  Magnified by the chromatic interplay caused by the effects of light, these changes underlie the core of her artistic practice.

Providing a dramatic contrast to the ornate interior of the Duke House, seven works by the artist will be on view in the lobby and vestibule of the Institute of Fine Arts  for the Fall 2014 Great Hall Exhibition.  Focusing on Chilindron’s engagement with idealized geometric forms, these works, executed between 2006 and 2014, will show the diversity of the artist’s practice, ranging from table-top objects such as the curvilinear Helix (2011) to her large-scale Cube 48 Orange (2014).  This latter work represents Chilindron’s expansion into immersive sculptural environments, and is being shown in New York for the first time since its debut in the Encounters exhibition at Art Basel Hong Kong, held in spring 2014.

October 29, 2014 Montez Magno: Solo show https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/montez-magno-solo-show/

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Artist: Montez Magno

Montez Magno
October 3 – November 8, 2014
Christinger de Mayo
Zurich, Switzerland

This exhibition brings a selection of Montez Magno works that developed his entropic impulse, broadly rooted in a sensitive and experimental dimension of spatiality. (…) Thus, more interested in invention, in the force of creation not only as an act, but rather as a constant exercise, Montez Magno rearranges materials as diverse and ordinary as a bar of soap, a watercolour pen or screws, constituting a centrifugal, variable oeuvre open to the other that – unconcerned with “structuring the world” in a universal spatiality (whether cosmological or cosmogonical) – is inclined, in turn, to create small, ephemeral and punctual arrangements which, in response to all variety of political and sensitive contexts, nonetheless have the power to make inventors out of all of us.

Selection of original text by Clarissa Diniz

Image: Montez Magno, “Untitled”, 2005
October 29, 2014 Graciela Hasper: Tramando https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/graciela-hasper-tramando/

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Artist: Graciela Hasper

Graciela Hasper
October 9 – November 6, 2014
Tramando Espacio Vidriera
Buenos Aires, Argentina

 

October 24, 2014 Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraenen: Persiana https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/carla-arocha-stephane-schraenen-persiana/

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Artists: Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraenen

Persiana
October 25 – December 21, 2014
Cultuurcentrum Mechelen
Mechelen, Belgium

De overzichtstentoonstelling Persiana markeert tien jaar gezamelijke praktijk van het Antwerpse kunstenaarsduo Carla Arocha en Stephane Schraenen. De tentoonstelling brengt een ensemble van sleutelwerken samen in een nieuwe constellatie speciaal bedacht voor de tentoonstellingszalen van het cultuurcentrum.
Arocha en Schraenen hebben van de waarneming zelf het primaire onderwerp van hun artistieke aandacht gemaakt.

October 24, 2014 Elias Crespin: Mobiles https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/elias-crespin-mobiles/

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Artist: Elias Crespin

Mobiles
October 16 – January 3, 2015
Galerie denise rené
Paris, France

 

October 22, 2014 Dario Escobar & Marco Maggi: Private Choice https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/dario-escobar-marco-maggi-private-choice/

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Artists: Saâdane Afif, Mahmoud Akram, art & language, François Azambourg, Katinka Bock, Rebecca Bournigault, César, Pierre Henri Chauveau, Claude Closky, Nicolas Delprat, Guillaume Delvigne, Judith Deschamps, Florence Doléac, Stéphane Ducatteau, Joakim Eneroth, Dario Escobar, Antoine Espinasseau, Didier Faustino, Samuel Gassmann, Miriam Gassmann, Shilpa Gupta, Zaha Hadid, Jakob+ MacFarlane, Patrick Jouin, Studio Katra, Itvan Kebadian, Nandita Kumar, Li Lihong, Valentin Loellmann, Marco Maggi, Piotr Makowski, Cecilie Manz, Philippe Mayaux, Mathieu Mercier, François Morellet, Sarngsan Na Soontorn, Nøne Futbol Club, Navid Nuur, Melik Ohanian, ORLAN, David Pergier, Olivier Peyricot, Benoit Pype, Bruno Romeda, Olve Sande, Laetitia Sellier, Olivier Sidet, Augustin Steyer, Sebastiaan Straastma, Studio Minale Maeda, Jeanne Susplugas, Hitomi Uchikura, Felice Varini, Florian Viel, Sacha Walckhoff, Andy Warhol, Victoria Wilmotte, Jens Wolf.

Private Choice
October 18 – 23, 2014
Paris, France

An imaginary and ephemeral collection of contemporary art works and design inhabits for its second edition a new historical space.  At the birthplace of famous filmmaker George Méliès, is a beautiful opportunity to acquire art and design pieces composing this universe.  This adventure is possible thanks to the loan of art works from galleries and partners. It is here that upon the invitation of homeowners and collectors, Pierre-Henri and Marie Chauveau, that project designer, Nadia Candet has chosen to present Private Choice n°2.

Ascending the Staircase
Upon crossing the threshold, the house invites you ascend the staircase where you are met by three tapered toucan beaks by young artist Florian Viel.  At the top of the stairs sits Pavillion nomade II by architects Jakob + MacFarlane. Digital drawings, moving structures, imaginary and preparatory sketches for a project of mobile architecture on brain research spreads rightfully in this house. Facing it is Super Ghost Mirror by designer Olivier Sidet, a mirror reflecting everything but the person looking in it, preferring, besides self-contemplation, attention to environment. Throughout the home are site specific works by Felice Varini connecting each room.

Three Movements
The intimate architecture is reflected in works by Zaha Hadid, who has designed two vases and crafted by event partner, Lalique, Manifesto and Visio are slender crystal towers created specifically for Private Choice.  Didier Faustino presents a domestic vanitas Dead Domesticity Zone, wall to wall carpet sewn as an emptied skull to be walked on, and an installation: Threesome where, an ensemble of three double armchairs, not far from the staircase designed by Le Corbusier.

Under the sky of the living room, with the survival blanket and Dario Escobar
The living room, the central space of the house, is visited by artists from all over the world with the linking language, English, is imbedded in the mural installation of Iranian artist Navid Nuur. On an isothermal blanket, an aluminum drawing form the words: Not like a piece of pie but like rope in a net. On both sides of the entrance to the dining room, two paintings by Polish artist Piotr Makowski. Near the windows are hung motor oil compositions by Guatemalan artist, Dario Escobar and his installation Observe & Reverse. On a pillar, are paintings by Norwegian Olve Sande, and on the table, the powerfully discreet universe of Marco Maggi who will represent the Uruguayan pavilion during the 2015 Venice Biennale. Dividing the territory, using everyday material as universal binder: engine oil, football balls, survival blanket, or rug.

Evidence rooms
It must be mentioned that more than 100 works, 55 artists, 24 participating galleries and editors, and over 10 brand partners fill the space. But like any house, this house reveals itself fully during the visit, exposing mysteries of the space that holds the collection: it shelters as in any living place, a second ghost, (with the one of Olivier Sidet, an apparition from Melik Ohanian), and a pharmacy (Jeanne Susplugas), a penne necklace (François Azambourg), a coveted piece of jewelry (Laetitia Sellier), cufflinks (Samuel Gassmann), a kitchen knife (Shilpa Gupta), a carpet (Cecilie Manz, collection 2014 Chevalier édition, partner of Private Choice), Brillo (Andy Warhol), footprints (César), a mask (Mathieu Mercier), a wedding video (Nøne Futbol Club) and the peculiar story of collector Dorith Galuz (Judith Deschamps).
« That’s life ».

October 22, 2014 Miguel Rothschild: Buenos Aires https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/miguel-rothschild-buenos-aires/

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Artist: Miguel Rothschild

Buenos Aires
October 18 – December 20, 2014
Kuckei + Kuckei
Berlin, Germany

The fragments of our happiness: this could have also been the title of our exhibition Buenos Aires. At Kuckei + Kuckei, the Argentinian artist Miguel Rothschild, who lives in Berlin, is charting his home town anew. In so doing, he is challenging – with every step – conventional demarcation lines and, not least, those between reality and fiction.

For his Atrapasueños series (English: Dream Catcher), the artist photographed telephone lines and electric cables in one of the slums. Their course is reproduced precisely on smashed shatterproof glass. Two centimetres separate the glass and the photo from one another: in this empty interstice, any questions that arise are allowed to remain open.

It is as if Klotho, Lachesis and Atropos were spinning their threads above the city on the Río de la Plata and deciding their fate anew with every day that passes, Rothschild presents a photo – Parzen über Buenos Aires, which explodes the frame and metamorphoses into an installation – by means of cords that replace extension cables and reach to the end of the exhibition wall.

The work entitled Memento mori. Work in progress is subject in a very special way to the principle of die and become. The photograph shows a harp, a shabby-looking shop sign overrun by rust; it bears the inscription Creaciones and dates from 1963, the year the artist was born. As soon as a visitor approaches the work, two extremely powerful spotlights are activated by motion sensors. In the course of time, this light will change the artwork, which has, from the very start, devoted itself to disappearing. It becomes paler, whiter, more translucent and consequently clear to every one of us that it is full of life.

María Cecilia Barbetta

October 22, 2014 Gabriel de la Mora: Lo que no vemos lo que nos mira https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/gabriel-de-la-mora-lo-que-vemos-lo-que-nos-mira/

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Artist: Gabriel de la Mora

Lo que no vemos lo que nos mira
October 18, 2014 – February 16, 2015
Museo Amparo
Puebla, Mexico

Exposición individual del artista Gabriel de la Mora. En conferencia con el curador Willy Kautz, se inaugura la muestra en Puebla, Mexico.

October 22, 2014 Graciela Hasper, Alexis Minkiewicz, Ramiro Oller: Variaciones sobre el círculo https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/graciela-hasper-alexis-minkiewicz-ramiro-oller-variaciones-sobre-el-circulo/

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Artists: Graciela Hasper, Alexis Minkiewicz, Ramiro Oller, Juan Pablo Inzirillo, Paula Rivas, and Sebastián Mejía.

Variaciones sobre el círculo
October 3 -5, 2014
Centro Cultural Estación Mapocho
Santiago, Chile

El análisis de la formas geométricas ha sido un tópico tematizado y problematizado por las diferentes manifestaciones artísticas a lo largo de la historia de la arte. Haciéndose eco de esta reflexión y mostrando distintos exponentes del arte contemporáneo local e internacional que desarrollan sus trabajos en diferentes disciplinas, la galería Aldo de Sousa se complace en pre- sentar un eje curatorial que gira en torno a las variaciones sobre el círculo generadas a partir del disloque rítmico de la repetición. Constantes interrumpidas por la irrupción de la variación sobre lo circular, desde lo otro, también, artístico.

Cada uno de los artistas, desde su identidad, aporta al criterio riqueza plástica y teórica. Las variaciones están sujetas a diferentes enfoques que colocan el énfasis en distintos procesos creativos y estéticos. El círculo se encuentra rodeado y atravesado por aspectos que lo confor- man: desde (1) lo morfológico, en los trabajos de Alexis Minkiewicz (Argentina, b. 1988), donde el grafito sobre papel deconstruye en el espacio una secuencia circular que vira hacia líneas explosivas que se expanden y se contraen en sutiles monocromías; (2) desde lo cromático en la pintura de Graciela Hasper (Argentina, b. 1966) que, a partir de la combinación de elementos esféricos superpuestos, lleva al ojo hacia juegos ópticos y cinéticos de quirúrgico trazo. Desde (3) el material que utiliza Juan Pablo Inzirillo (Argentina, b. 1986) dotando de pureza al color y la imagen, arrojando el pigmento en polvo al vacío de transparencias plásticas en espacios de silencios metafísicos. También trabajando sobre la materia, Ramiro Oller (Argentina, b. 1982) combina el uso de elementos industriales al servicio del brillo y su reflejo y las texturas de sus superficies descubren una geometría (4) sensible al tacto.

Paula Rivas (Argentina, b. 1976) se sirve del movimiento para recrear (5) estructuras molecula- res mediante piedras minerales y dispositivos cinéticos que utilizan el círculo como módulo compositivo. Y siguiendo en esa línea reflexiva, Sebastián Mejía (Colombia, b. 1982) ubica lo esférico en (6) lo real ahí donde el ojo común tiende a subestimarlo y obviarlo, exponiendo el dominio de la geometría en la naturaleza, obligándonos a creer en una física que opera por encima de nuestro entendimiento y tentándonos a poner las sensaciones por encima del pensamiento: el círculo como origen.

Sobre un rico y variado abanico de soportes y herramientas compositivas se erige este conjun- to de artistas (dibujo, pintura, escultura, fotografía, nuevos soportes, materiales industriales) para problematizar sobre la abstracción, la geometría y las variaciones sobre el círculo a partir de su repetición en el arte contemporáneo.

October 17, 2014 Adán Vallecillo & Eduardo Stupia: 500 Años de Futuro https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/adan-vallecillo-500-anos-de-futuro/

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Artist: Franz Ackermann, Fernando Álvarez Cozzi, Sarnath Banerjee, Javier Bassi, Daniel Beerstecher, Camila Borgna, Adriana Bustos, Matilde Campodónico, Tanja Deman, Julián Dupont, Leandro Erlich, Francisco Espinosa Silva, Andrea Finkelstein, Rita Fischer, Federica +Lamasa Folco, Mark Formanek, Gianfranco Foschino, Yang Fudong, Cao Guimaraes, Simon Gush, Olaf Holzapfel, Sebastián Preece, Maurício Ianes, Majida Khattari, Ricardo Lanzarini, Pablo Lobato, Lucía Madriz, Sofia Medici, Patricia Mallarini, Paola Monzillo, Marcelo, Moscheta, Adrian Paci, Lucía Pittaluga, Federico Rubio, Haim Sokol, Guillermo Srodek-Hart, Patrick Steeger, Juliana Stein, Eduardo StupiaAdán Vallecillo, Leonardo González, Diego Velazco, Humberto Vélez, Chen Xiaoyun, and Tobias Zielony.

500 Años de Futuro
Curator: Alfons Hung
September 22 – November 22, 2014
2da Bienal de Montevideo
Montevideo, Uruguay

La distancia que separa el presente del futuro se mide de modos diferentes y en unidades de medida variables en cada época. Ora el futuro parece estar al alcance de la mano, ora se aleja hasta lo inalcanzable. En ocasiones esta distancia se mide en nano segundos, otras en años, décadas y siglos. Los ingenieros intentan traducir la dimensión temporal a otra espacial y determinar la distancia entre presente y futuro con categorías físicas como millas, horas, kilovatios, o con el tacómetro, mientras que a los artistas les toca –no pocas veces– registrar las ruinas que bordean ese camino. Mientras que en el arte esta distancia es vivenciada de forma extremadamzente subjetiva y no lineal, la ciencia y la tecnología aspiran a la objetividad y plausibilidad.

El temor al mañana o, por el contrario, su anhelo, hará aparecer siempre al futuro en un matiz y extensión diferentes.

El futuro como el gran relato del arte

Desde la perspectiva eurocéntrica la cronología en el hemisferio occidental comienza recién en 1507, cuando el nombre “América” aparece por primera vez en un mapamundi de Martin Waldseemüller. Sin embargo, el hecho de que el continente estuviese poblado desde hace más de veinte mil años solía ignorarse, entre otras cosas, porque durante la conquista se destruyó una gran parte del patrimonio indígena.

Ante esta aniquilación a gran escala de una historia y un pasado, no es de extrañar que en Sudamérica también el futuro haya tenido que aplazarse una y otra vez. Esto es particularmente cierto para Brasil, el eterno “país del futuro”. Que en los últimos años ese futuro haya logrado alcanzarse –quizás por primera vez– se debe a un aceleramiento cultural en el que colaboraron, entre otros, las bienales de arte. De modo que estaremos bien aconsejados si entendemos el futuro por medio de la visión de los artistas.

Traspasando los hemisferios, la 2a Bienal de Montevideo desplegará aquellos grandes relatos que harán reducir, aumentar o incluso converger las distancias temporales y espaciales entre los continentes.

El título sugiere que en todos los momentos de la historia el presente ha sido una proyección hacia el futuro. Quizá el pasado y el presente no sean otra cosa que una acumulación de futuros imaginarios que entretanto alcanzaron los 500 años y se encuentran divididos en dos mitades, porque en Sudamérica siempre se tuvo que considerar o incluso vivir la historia de Europa.

Hasta el tiempo fue importado de Europa. En el año 1650 el Rey Felipe III donó un reloj que fue creado por los moros para la Alhambra, a la Catedral de Comayagua (Honduras). Es considerado el reloj más antiguo de América y todavía funciona correctamente.

Una comparación de este antiguo reloj árabe con el tiempo autoconstruido del proyecto Standard Time de Mark Formanek es muy sugestivo. El primero marca el comienzo de la mecánica moderna en América; el último, el retorno consciente a formas artesanales de producción. En el intento por construir cada minuto con la ayuda de tablas de madera, los trabajadores de Standard Time se mueven permanentemente al borde del fracaso. Se trata de una visualización del tiempo que –de manera precaria– todos los días pretende construir un puente entre el pasado y el futuro y que, no obstante, debe ser actual y puntual. Un sólo error interrumpiría para siempre el flujo inexorable del tiempo.

Mientras que los llamados “medios sociales” incrementan la velocidad, como si de esta forma uno podría acercarse más rápidamente al futuro y a otras personas, cada vez más artistas ven como la tarea más noble del arte la detención del curso del tiempo o, más aún, la posibilidad de construirlo ellos mismos.

Por esta razón los artistas contemporáneos recurren crecientemente a archivos de todo tipo que aluden al pasado: objetos de otras épocas, fotografías en blanco y negro de principios del siglo, películas vintage y found footage de los inicios del cine, entre otros. Ahora que todo ya ha sido fotografiado y filmado, y porque se confía cada vez menos en las promesas del presente, armar archivos parece haberse convertido en uno de los procedimientos más modernos. En estas obras se suprime la habitual concepción lineal del tiempo y el progreso, por lo que, en no pocos casos, el artista contemporáneo llega tarde, procesando temáticas antiquísimas.

El arte es una máquina del tiempo que pertenece tanto a las eras más remotas como al presente y, precisamente, la cercanía inesperada entre lo más antiguo y lo más nuevo es una de las paradojas del arte.

© Texto del curador general Alfons Hug

Image: Adán Vallecillo and Leonardo González, “I:492”, 2014
October 17, 2014 Chiara Banfi: Desenhos Sonoros https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/chiara-banfi-desenhos-sonoros/

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Artists: Chiara Banfi and Domenico Lancellotti

Desenhos Sonoros
October 4, 2014
Inhotim (Igrejinha)
Brumadinho, Brazil

Este show faz parte da turnê do disco homônimo e traz uma parceria com a artista Chiara Banfi, responsável pela ambientação do espaço. Em Cine Privê, Domênico é acompanhado por uma superbanda, formada por Pedro Sá (guitarra), Alberto Continentino (baixo), Stephane San Juan (bateria) e Claudio Andrade (teclados).

October 15, 2014 Nicolás Lamas: The value of formlessness https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/nicolas-lamas-value-formlessness/

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Artist: Nicolás Lamas

The value of the formlessness
October 3 – November 29, 2014
Sabot Gallery
Cluj-Napoca, Romania

October 15, 2014 Alberto Borea: We Are All Gone https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alberto-borea-gone/

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Artist: Alberto Borea

We Are All Gone
October 10 – November 12, 2014
Y Gallery
New York, USA

Continuing with his research on cartography, urban identity and the relation between center and periphery, the artist presents a group of works derived from recent explorations. Borea takes the position of an “archeologist of the contemporary” who rescues the materials and used objects which are “residues of civilization“. These artifacts are undergoing a creative process leading to innovative results featuring the artist´s unique vision about ruins and progress.

A cage that is broken and open, “We Are All Gone” shows the tautness derived from the concept of “contention”. This sculpture works as an expanded drawing. Chaos, transgression and geometry coexist in the paradoxical nature of this piece.

In “Haus”, the german word for house, the artist recycles and transforms four doors of New York City taxi cabs. The resulting object is a hybrid device sharing the characteristics of a living architectural structure and a moving vehicle. Permanence and transition are concepts in dialogue in these four works, which are settled on the exploration of what has been called heterotopic spaces.
“Immigration”, on the other hand, is a sculpture made with a metal cement trowel and wheels that the artist found in the streets of Lima. This object is a strong statement about  roots, transit, migration, and art as a social and spiritual practice. For “Self-portrait”, Borea works with the idea of souvenir and global identity. The bottle with an Inca portrait named Biondi is attached to a corn broom, this combination of two different things leads to the creation of a new object. This innovative device shows the different layers of cultural information and manipulation, leaving for posterity a new sort of “huaco”or totem.

The transitional nature of existence is an underlying conceptual principle common to all the works in the show. They are the result of a sensitive reaction to the contemporary and its physical expression, manifested in the combination and manipulations of objects leading to new metaphorical artifacts.

Alberto Borea lives and works between New York and Lima. His work is characterized by the continuous displacement and use of diverse media and materials. He attended residencies and fellowships including Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, (Fundacion Cisneros de Patricia de Phelps), Art Omi International Residency 2009, Vermont Studio Center (Jackson Pollock Krasner Fellowship), International Studio and Curatorial Program NYC (ISCP), Sculpture Space, Utica, NY, Default Masterclass in residence, Lecce and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC).  Borea’s work has been shown in diverse exhibitions in Europe, Latin America and the U.S. including Queens Museum of Art in New York City, Museo del Barrio in New York City, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (Cisneros Fontanals Collection), Dublin Contemporary, Museo Laboratorio in Italy, Art Museum of the Americas in DC, and Museo de Huelva in Spain.

October 14, 2014 Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen, Leyla Cárdenas, José Dávila, and Pablo Rasgado: Limited Visibility https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/carla-arocha-stephane-schraenen-leyla-cardenas-jose-davila-pablo-rasgado-limited-visibility/

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Artists: Allora and Calzadilla, Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen, Laura Belém, Jorge Méndez Blake, Leyla Cárdenas, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Jose Dávila, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Moris, Oscar Muñoz, Daniela Ortiz, Pablo Rasgado, Santiago Sierra, Melanie Smith, and Agustina Woodgate.

Limited Visibility
Curated by Patricia Garcia-Velez Hanna and Natalia Zuluaga
October 3, 2014 – January 4, 2015
CAM (Contemporary Art Museum) Raleigh
Raleigh, NC, USA

Voluntary omission, erasure, withholding, and concealment: these are the methods the artists in Limited Visibility employ in order to draw attention to that which is missing. The representations of absence such as the missing object of labor in Allora & Calzadilla’s sandpaper composition or the cutouts in Jose Dávila’s photographs play a key role in this exhibition as they determine, border and define the void they surround. What we see in these images, paintings, and installations is what is not there: each work absents presence and presents something absent. Seer, seen, and unseen come together here to evoke the haunted sensation of searching and looking. Though the aims of each of the works in this exhibition are different—from a demand for political representation to the materialization of an otherwise ephemeral moment—the artists in Limited Visibility draw our attention to the omitted, giving it a kind of determination or persistence that is hard to ignore. In each case, the viewer is required a certain amount of belief to fill in that which is not visibly available—these are not riddles, but questions with actual answers in the form of artworks.
Patricia Garcia-Velez Hanna and Natalia Zuluaga

Image: Top – Left to Right: Jorge Méndez Blake – Hotel Monturiol, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer – Make Out, Jose Dávila – Topologies of Belief, Allora & Calzadilla – Shape Shifter. Bottom – Left to Right: Laura Belém – Temple of One Thousand Bells, Santiago Sierra – 89 Huicholes, Moris – Miradas I

 

October 14, 2014 Patrick Hamilton & Aníbal López A-1 53167: Dear Mr. Thanatos https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/patrick-hamilton-anibal-lopez-1-53167-dear-mr-thanatos/

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Artists: Regina José Galindo, Patrick Hamilton, Anibal López A-1 53167, Ana Mendieta, Teresa Margolles, Alejandro Almanza Pereda, José Guadalupe Posada, and Jorge Tacla.

Dear Mr. Thanatos, Modern and Contemporary Art from Latin America
Curated By Christian Viveros-Fauné
October 2 – December 13, 2014
Cristin Tierney Gallery
New York, USA

Dear Mr. Thanatos: Modern and Contemporary Art from Latin America
 curated by Christian Viveros-Fauné, is a missive or love letter to the dark forces—death, destruction, war, political violence, etc.—as seen through the lens of modern and contemporary Latin American art.Proposed by psychoanalytic theory as the “death drive” in opposition to Eros—the tendency toward survival, propagation, and the life-giving pleasure principle—Thanatos describes, in Sigmund Freud’s terms, “the inclination to aggression,” which the Austrian thinker defined “[as] the greatest impediment to civilization.”The themes of death, aggression, and psychic and physical violence have long been central to contemporary Latin American artists. Because of Latin America’s violent history, most artists from the region find themselves at most a single generation away from large-scale collective manifestations of the “instinct toward aggression”—with its devastating effects on local societies. From the repeated figure of Santa Muerte evoked by turn of the century Mexican engraver and cartoonist José Guadalupe Posada to Jorge Tacla’s paintings of bombed out buildings in the Middle East to the mortuary and burial-related video and sculpture of Guatemalan Regina José Galindo, artists throughout Latin America have repeatedly turned to the subject of death to express not just existential dread, but the reality of living the examined life in situations of heightened insecurity.
Some Latin American artists—like those in this exhibition—draw creative sustenance from these experiences and often interpret their reflections in the context of social, political and cultural advances. That is the role the destabilizing spirit of Thanatos assumes in the minimalist-inspired sculptures of Chilean artist Patrick Hamilton and the radically unstable structures of Mexican sculptor Alejandro Almanza Pereda. Others, like Ana Mendieta and the Guatemalan Anibal López connect dramatically to specific narratives of violence as urgent subjects for their video and photography.
The death instinct is familiar to all of them, as it is to millions of other people around the world. Like language, geography and identity, Thanatos remains an important part of Latin American art’s peculiar symbolic inheritance to this day.

Image: Patrick Hamilton, Wheel lock #1, 2014. Copper. 5.9 x 21.65 x 5.11 inches.
October 9, 2014 tepeu choc, Aníbal López A-1 53167 & Antonio Pichillá: The Thin Line https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/tepeu-choc-anibal-lopez-1-53167-antonio-pichilla-thin-line/

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Artists: Mauricio Esquivel, Adam Winner, Esvin Alarcón Lam, Marilyn Boror, tepeu choc, Jorge Linares, Aníbal López A-1 53167Antonio Pichillá, Gabriel Rodríguez, Diego Sagastume, Inés Verdugo.

The Thin Line
October 16, 2014
The 9.99 Gallery
Guatemala City, Guatemala

The exhibition will show the work of the artists Mauricio Esquivel (El Salvador), Adam Winner (USA), Esvin Alarcón Lam, Marilyn Boror, Tepeu Choc, Jorge Linares, Aníbal López (A-1 53167), Antonio Pichillá,  Gabriel Rodríguez, Diego Sagastume, Inés Verdugo (Guatemala).

October 9, 2014 Iván Navarro: The Music Room https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ivan-navarro-music-room/

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Artist: Iván Navarro

The Music Room
With Hueso Records
MoMA PS1, NY Art Book Fair and Printed Matter
New York, USA

Iván Navarro with Hueso Records is pleased to present The Music Room, at the NY Art Book Fair presented by Printed Matter, at MoMA PS1, opening Thursday September 25th from 6 to 9 pm. Room #S201.

The Music Room is a self-contained project room within the fair, where visitors are invited to listen to musical recordings pressed onto vinyl, at a single central playing station, controlled by one record handler. Inspired by the 1958 Bengali film by the same title (Satyajit Ray’s The Music Room), the installation seeks to create a sensorially rich environment conducive to the experience of listening. Records, selected from Hueso Records’ collection, are played one at a time and the sound is transmitted into the atmosphere through a pair of hand-built speakers. The interior, designed by artist Courtney Smith, is a wall-to-wall padded spongy lounge, with reconfigurable foam alleys, terraces and alcoves where listeners can curl up and contemplate. The Music Room wall space will contain a wrap-around display of the records and various types of publications that Hueso Records is presenting – a combination of HR productions, guest participations, and its private collection of music made by artists.

The Music Room is a multi-disciplinary, collaborative project that celebrates the creation of music both formal and informal, and in such is particularly interested in music made by artists who are not necessarily musicians. It will feature a collection of historic recordings by visual and performance artists, as well as recordings of live performances and experiments that are otherwise forgotten, among them are recordings by Lawrence Weiner, La Monte Young, Martin Kippenberger, Rita Ackermann / Dave Nuss, Christian Marclay and many more. Other categories presented in The Music Room are visual and conceptual artists who use music as their primary medium, or collaborations between visual and musical artists, or performance artists whose work involves music. Among the many artists, musicians and artist non-musicians whose work is presented in The Music Room are New York-based Cecilia Vicuña, Rio-based Jarbas Lopes, London-based group Tetine, Chile-based Mario Navarro, and New York-based collective Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere. Finally, Hueso Records’ own publications will also be presented, among them vinyl releases of music by Alvaro Peña, Atom™, Tunde Adebimpe, and Leonino aka Jorge Gonzalez.

Hueso Records is a music label conceived and run by visual artist Iván Navarro. HR began releasing recorded projects in Brooklyn, NY in 2006 as a way of independently publishing music made in collaboration for Navarro’s sculpture and video works. The label quickly expanded to include an ambitious program of finding and releasing historic Chilean music that was never produced at the time of its original recording such as the Pinochet Boys from 1988, Electrodomesticos from 1990, Minimal Technology from 1994 and Acid Call from 2007. HR developed a division called “Undefined Records”, publishing the music of non-musician artists and thinkers, but balances this by publishing creative and experimental projects with established professional musicians. HR currently works with artists and musicians in the US, Chile, Brazil, France, Germany and England.

October 8, 2014 Esvin Alarcón, Marcius Galan & Jorge Pedro Núñez: Spatial Acts https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/esvin-alarcon-marcius-galan-jorge-pedro-nunez-spatial-acts/

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Artists: Esvin Alarcón, Marcius Galan, Elena Damiani, and Jorge Pedro Núñez.

Spatial Acts, Americas Society Commissions Art
October 7, 2014
Americas Society
New York, USA

The exhibition Spatial Acts: Americas Society Commissions Art features works of artists Esvin Alarcón Lam (Guatemala, 1988), Elena Damiani (Peru, 1979), Marcius Galan (Brazil, 1972) and Jorge Pedro Núñez (Venezuela, 1976), who were selected to be part of Americas Society’s new initiative to commission an in-situ artwork especially conceived for the David Rockefeller Atrium, located in the organization’s landmark building in Park Avenue. The four artists will participate in a panel discussion with Manuel Cirauqui, writer and assistant curator at Dia Foundation, and Gabriela Rangel, curator and director of Visual Arts at the Americas Society.

At the beginning of 2014, a Nominating Committee put together a list of nineteen artists from the Americas who were invited to submit proposals for the David Rockefeller Atrium. During the second stage of the process, a selection committee designated four semi-finalists whose recent works are gathered in this group show. The name of the winning artist will be announced in November. The permanent piece will be placed in an adjacent section to the entrance of the Americas Society’s visual arts gallery, whose history includes the first U.S. exhibitions of many artists from the Americas. The artwork will serve as a testament to the tradition of the Americas Society’s Visual Arts program and its commitment to foster creativity and experimentation for the engagement of diverse audiences.

October 8, 2014 Alejandra Barreda: Geometría extendida https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alejandra-barreda-geometria-extendida/

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Artist: Alejandra Barreda

Geometría extendida
Curator: Danielle Perret
September 18 – November 12, 2014
Ro Galería de Arte
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Según Danielle Perret, curadora independiente y autora del texto que acompaña la exposición: “La pintura de Barreda podría definirse, más que por el término de «geometría sensible» –utilizado por los críticos más o menos recientemente–, por el de «geometría prospectiva», es decir un arte (geométrico) que tiende, cada vez, a explorar el espacio pictórico comprendido también como un espacio significante que incluye, además, una dimensión metafórica.”

Alejandra Barreda vive y trabaja en Buenos Aires. Recientemente recibió el 2° premio del 9° Concurso Nacional de Pintura organizado por la Universidad Argentina de la Empresa (UADE). Su obra formó parte de numerosas exposiciones y entre las últimas se destacan Geometría al límite organizada por el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires (MACBA) y Geometría desvíos y desmesuras, curada por Danielle Perret en Espacio de Arte de la Fundación OSDE. Su obra forma parte de colecciones privadas en Argentina y en el exterior, de la Colección MACBA (Buenos Aires) y la colección Sayago-Pardon (EE.UU)

October 7, 2014 Edgar Guzmanruiz: Myth Germania: Vision and Crime https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/edgar-guzmanruiz-myth-germania-vision-crime/

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Artist: Edgar Guzmanruiz

Myth Germania: Vision and Crime
September 17 – November 30, 2014
Berliner Unterwelten e.V.
Berlin, Germany

Die Ausstellung beleuchtet Architektur und Städtebau im Berlin der NS-Zeit, analysiert die ideologischen Zielsetzungen und dokumentiert die mit der „Neugestaltung“ aufs engste verbundene Verfolgung jüdischer Berliner. Darüber hinaus werden Legenden und Klischees rund um die „Welthauptstadt Germania“ dekonstruiert.

October 7, 2014 Carmela Gross: Marapé https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/carmela-gross-marape/

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Artist: Carmela Gross

Marapeé, Project Parede
July 2 – December 14, 2014
MAM
Sao Paulo, Brazil

This work of Carmela Gross is composed by names of foreign immigrants, of the countries they came from, and the age they had when they arrived in Brazil, together with names of places of São Paulo state and other words in Portuguese that came from the Tupi language of the Brazilian indian population. The contrast between the recent immigration to Brazil and the ancient immigration from indian populations, that arrived in America coming from northeast Asia, addresses our ideas of national and foreign.

October 3, 2014 Aníbal Catalán: Beyond Limits, Postglobal Mediations https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/anibal-catalan-beyond-limits-postglobal-mediations/

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Artists: Bank og Rau, Hector Canonge, Anibal Catalan, Charlie Citron, Cesar Cornejo, Einar & Jamex de la Torre, Blane de St. Croix, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Ira Eduardovna, Glenda & Jesse Drew, Angela Freiberger, Marlon Griffith, Pablo Helguera, Debby & Larry Kline, Arun Kumar, JaeWook Lee, Mary Mattingly, Saul Melman, Yunmi Her, Oyvind Renberg & Miho Shimizu, Margaret Noble, Don Porcella, Mei Xian Qiu, Jose Hugo Sanchez, Zachary Royer Scholz, Adriana Varella, Alex Villar, Theis Wendt.

Beyond Limits, Postglobal Mediations
October 4 – November 15, 2014
San Diego Art Institute
San Diego, CA, USA

Curated by SDAI Executive Director Ginger Shulick Porcella and Brazilian curator Denise Carvalho, this exhibition will demonstrate that the future of the arts lies on a borderless, multidimensional circuit of experimentation. Featuring both local and international artists, “Beyond Limits” will bypass all borders that create hierarchies or limit the exchange of ideas. The exhibition will feature a series of lectures, performances, and video screenings.

“Beyond Limits” is an exhibition in which artists have envisioned a world without boundaries—whether physical, racial, technological, or psychological. “Beyond Limits” will bypass all national representations and increase the focus on a multinational, multicultural, multi-identity, multimedia, and multi-language based society. This exhibition is held in tandem with the international Mediational Biennale, occurring in parallel exhibitions in distinct international venues and museums including the Mediations Biennale in Poznan, Poland; Museo de la Ciudad, urugual; Petah Tikva Museum in Israel; MareArticum—Baltic Contemporary Art Biennale, Nakanajo Biennale, Japan; and the Kunsthall Fuast in Hanover, Germany.

October 3, 2014 Omar Barquet: 1M1A https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/omar-barquet-1m1a/

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Artist: Omar Barquet

Solo show
November 2 – 30, 2014
1M1A
Mexico City, Mexico

 

September 29, 2014 Jorge Pedro Núñez: Entre Machine et moi Machin https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/jorge-pedro-nunez-entre-machine-et-moi-machin/

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Artist: Jorge Pedro Núñez

Entre Machine et moi Machin
September 12 – October 26, 2014
Galerie Crèvecoeur
Paris, France

The artist presents an abstract landscape, between sculpture and in-situ installation, composed by geometric figures human-scale based, featuring machine and motor. Symbols of the modern era defined by “the cult of the rapid combustion”, according to Peter Sloterdijk, motor and machine are still characteristic of the contemporary economy, even though the digital world, both in a real and fantasy process, is overwhelming. He uses standards materials of our developed environment like metal, glass, plaster and oil, combines heterogeneous logicals and creates an itinerary dividing, in an invisible way, the space. By creating a situation which tends to modify our gathering and our wandering, the artist follows his reflexions about the reception of the art forms, the display of existing objects and history of surfaces and materials. The theme of the machine, and its anthropomorphic projections, is in the title of the show, ironically reminded by the artist, quoting Serge Gainsbourg, author of Machins Choses, a 1965 song.

September 29, 2014 Marcius Galan: Inside https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcius-galan-inside/

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Artists: Jean-Michel Alberola, Dove Allouche, Yuri Ancarani, Sookoon Ang, Christophe Berdaguer & Marie Pejus, Christian Boltanski, Peter Buggenhout, Marc Couturier, Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, Dran, Valia Fetisov, Marcius Galan, Ryan Gander, Ion Grigorescu, Hu Xiaoyuan, Eva Jospin, Jesper Just, Mikhail Karikis & Uriel Orlow, Mark Manders, Bruce Nauman,  Mike Nelson, Numen, Abraham Poincheval, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Reynold Reynolds & Patrick Jolley, Ataru Sato, Stéphane Thidet, Tunga, Andra Ursuta,  Andro Wekua, and Artur Zmijewski.

Inside
October 20, 2014 – January 11, 2015
Curators: Jean de Loisy, Daria de Beauvais and Katell Jaffrès
Palais de Tokyo
Paris, France

Inside is a group exhibition that is, above all, a voyage within, an exploration of self, and a unique experience that transforms the building into an organism to be traveled. This season will also be the occasion to discover David Maljković, an artist chosen together with the Paris Festival d’Automne, who will fill an entire floor of the Palais de Tokyo with his retro-futurist science fiction games. Finally, Inside China will present the first selection of works chosen by a Palais de Tokyo curator who went to meet with artists in China during a prospecting expedition conducted over the course of the year.

Inside offers visitors a passage to the interior of the self, for which the exhibition space serves as a metaphor. This immense odyssey, both physical and psychological, invites us to walk through two floors of the Palais de Tokyo that have been transformed by artists in such a way that, from one installation to the next, we remain constantly immersed in the works, which lead us within ourselves—from our skin to our most intimate thoughts.

September 25, 2014 Clarissa Tossin: Unsettled Landscapes https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/clarissa-tossin-unsettled-landscapes/

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Artists: Shuvinai Ashoona, Jamison Chas Banks, Raymond Boisjoly, Andrea Bowers, Matthew Buckingham, Adriana Bustos, Johanna Calle, Luis Camnitzer, Liz Cohen, Minerva Cuevas, Blue Curry, Agnes Denes, Juan Downey, Gianfranco Foschino, Futurefarmers, Anna Bella Geiger, Andrea Geyer, Frank Gohlke, Pablo Helguera, James Hyde, Deborah Jack, Yishai Jusidman, Leandro Katz, Irene Kopelman, Miler Lagos, Glenda León, Ric Lum, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Gilda Mantilla & Raimond Chaves, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Jason Middlebrook, Ohotaq Mikkigak, Kent Monkman, Patrick Nagatani, Florence Miller Pierce, Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Marcel Pinas, Edward Poitras, Marcos Ramirez ERRE & David Taylor, Kevin Schmidt, Allan Sekula, Melanie Smith, Charles Stankievech, Clarissa Tossin, and Antonio Vega Macotela

Unsettled Landscapes
July 20, 2014 – January 11, 2015
Santa Fe SiteLines, New Perspectives on Art of the Americas
Santa Fe, NM, USA

Unsettled Landscapes looks at the urgencies, political conditions and historical narratives that inform the work of contemporary artists across the Americas – from Nunavut to Tierra del Fuego. Through three themes – landscape, territory, and trade – this exhibition expresses the interconnections among representations of the land, movement across the land, and economies and resources derived from the land.

September 25, 2014 Horacio Zabala: Espacio entre paréntesis https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/horacio-zabala-espacio-entre-parentesis/

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Artists: Horacio Zabala, Gabriela Golder & Mariela Yeregui, Horacio Gallo, Gaspar Libedinsky and Luciana Lamothe.

Espacio entre paréntesis
Novembre 1 – December 30, 2014
Microcentro / BA Sitio Específico
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Se conocieron los cinco ganadores de “Buenos Aires – Sitio Específico” el concurso de intervenciones urbanas lanzado el 25 de mayo pasado por el Gobierno de la Ciudad. Cada uno de los ganadores recibirá 250 mil pesos para la realización de los proyectos que serán emplazados en la vía publica antes de fin de año. Los ganadores son: Horacio Zabala por Microcentro; Gabriela Golder y Mariela Yeregui por Distrito de las Artes; Horacio Gallo por Distrito del Diseño; Gaspar Libedinsky por Distrito Tecnológico y Luciana Lamothe por Distrito Audiovisual.

De esta manera, en pocos meses, los habitantes y los turistas que caminen por Buenos Aires podrán encontrarse por ejemplo con un signo entre paréntesis tamaño humano que funciona como un intervalo en medio del fluyo vertiginoso de la calle Florida; subirse a una calesita de bicicletas que funciona a fuerza de pedaleo en el Parque de los Patricios; jugar con un metegol para equipos de once jugadores con los muñequitos tallados a imagen y semejanza de los vecinos de Barracas; reflexionar con los carteles de neón con textos creados por un taller para jóvenes del barrio de La Boca y subirse a una escultura de caños de andamio que se levanta a 15 metros de altura y balconea sobre la confluencia de las avenidas Forest, Corrientes y Jorge Newbery en Chacarita.

Sin dudas, experiencias atractivas y excitantes que invitan a la participación colectiva al mismo tiempo que le suman identidad y atractivo a cinco espacios emblemáticos de la ciudad.

El jurado estuvo integrado por Victoria Noorthoorn, directora del Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (MAMBA); Máximo Jacoby, coordinador de Artes Visuales del Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas; Valeria González, licenciada en Historia del Arte por la Universidad de Buenos Aires; Augusto Rodríguez Larreta, subsecretario de Gobierno de la Ciudad; Patricio Di Stefano, subsecretario de Uso del Espacio Público y Enrique Avogadro, subsecretario de Economía Creativa.

Sobre un total de 108 propuestas recibidas el jurado distinguió también, con menciones de honor, a los proyectos de Luis Terán, Patricio Larrambebere, Fernando Brizuela, Carlos Huffmann, Julián D’Angiolillo y el colectivo Las Sin Futuro, cuyos proyectos serán incluidos en una publicación junto a la obra de los ganadores.

El proyecto de Horacio Zabala se compone de dos volúmenes idénticos, separados entre sí, que visualmente componen dos paréntesis con un espacio entre ellos. El título del proyecto indica y describe la obra misma: en esa esquina de alto tránsito peatonal se emplazarán dos paréntesis enfrentados a una distancia de 1,50 metros. Por su uso en el lenguaje corriente, por su poder referencial y por su sentido figurado, los paréntesis exceden su función específica de signos gramaticales e indican una interrupción por un tiempo o un espacio determinado.

September 22, 2014 Carmela Gross: A Serpente no imaginário artístico https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/carmela-gross-serpente-imaginario-artistico/

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Artists: Carmela Gross, José de Guimarães, Mestre Didi, Kifouli, Siron Franco, Gilvan Samico, Carybé, Juarez Paraíso, Francisco Graciano, Noemisa Batista dos Santos, Benim and Haití.

A Serpente no imaginário artístico
September 6 – November 2, 2014
Museu Afro-Brasil
Sao Paulo, Brasil

A serpente sempre capturou a atenção do homem. Poucos animais possuem uma iconografia tão rica, com a presença de arquétipos contrapostos: o bem e o mal; conhecimento e desrazão; a vida e a morte. O Museu Afro Brasil, Instituição da Secretaria de Cultura do Estado de São Paulo, envereda pelos caminhos sinuosos das representações artísticas do ofídio, em duas novas exposições simultâneas: “José de Guimarães – O Ritual da Serpente: 10 Guaches inspirados na obra de Aby Warburg” e “A Serpente no Imaginário Artístico”.

As exposições serão inauguradas no próximo dia 6 de setembro, às 13h, e permanecem em cartaz até o dia 7 de dezembro. A entrada é gratuita. Também na data de abertura, o Museu Afro Brasil lançará seu aplicativo para dispositivos móveis, disponível para Android e IOS, com download gratuito na Google Play e App Store. O aplicativo traz informações sobre o Museu, o Diretor-Curador Emanoel Araujo, seu Acervo, disponibilidade de programação cultural atualizada (exposições temporárias e eventos educativos), geolocalização e funcionalidades de audioguia.
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Um dos mais importantes entre os atuais artistas plásticos de Portugal, conhecido pelo uso rigoroso das cores, José de Guimarães apresenta seu mais recente trabalho, realizado especialmente para as comemorações dos dez anos do Museu Afro Brasil. Os dez guaches espelham sua interpretação pictórica da obra do historiador da arte Aby Warburg (1866-1929). O estudioso alemão esteve na América do Norte, no final do século XIX, para pesquisar sobre o “Ritual da Serpente” dos índios hopis.
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“A arte de José de Guimarães é ao mesmo tempo una e múltipla, como o próprio artista que, ao deixar-se contaminar por uma diversidade de culturas, cria uma comunicação e uma identidade mestiças, regenerando padrões e singularidades”, afirma Emanoel Araujo, diretor-curador do Museu Afro Brasil. Ele também assina a curadoria das duas exposições. Essa é a segunda exposição dos trabalhos de Guimarães no Museu Afro Brasil. Em 2006, ele realizou a exposição “África e Africanias”.
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Já a mostra “A Serpente no Imaginário Artístico” capta toda a extensa simbologia da serpente nas artes. Ela é encontrada nas máscaras gueledé, e nas variegadas garrafas e bandeiras do vodu haitiano, que integram a mostra. Suas formas tortuosas inspiraram a visão dos artistas: ela se esgueira na escultura de Mestre Didi, e do beninense Kifouli, reverbera na tela de Siron Franco, e se incrusta na gravura de Gilvan Samico. Estarão expostas também obras de Carybé, Juarez Paraíso, Francisco Graciano, Noemisa Batista dos Santos, além de trabalhos do Benim e Haiti. As obras dessa mostra pertencem ao acervo do Museu Afro Brasil.
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September 22, 2014 Nuno Ramos: Bahia Biennale https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/nuno-ramos-bahia-biennale/

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Artists: Abbas Kiarostami, Abraham Palatnik, Adenor Gondim, Adrian Cowell, Adriana Pacheco dos Santos, Adriana Souza, Agnaldo dos Santos, Agnès Varda, Alagbês “Oritálaiyè – Encruzilhadas do Mundo”, Alba Liberato, Aldemir Martins, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Alex Andrade, Alex Oliveira, Alexia Riner, Alice Schmidt, Alighiero Boetti, Alisson Silva, Almandrade, Ana Cristina Cesar, Ana Fraga, Ana Rita Queiroz Ferraz, Ana Verana, Anísio de Carvalho, Anna Paula da Silva, Antonello L’Abbate, Antônio Brasileiro, Antonio Santos, Aristides Alves, Arlete Cruz, Arno Schmidt, Arthur Scovino, Babalu, Bakary Diallo, Baldomiro Costa, Ceguêra de Nó, Bárbara Alessandra, Barry Flanagan, Bauer Sá, Beatriz Franco, Benjamin Abrahão, Berklee Interdisciplinary Arts Institute (BIAI), Bernard Venet, Bia Medeiros, Bianca Portugal, Bloco de Hoje a Oito, Bruno Munari, Bule-Bule, Caetano Dias, Camila Sposati, Capitão Ramon Diego, Carla Brandão Zollinger, Carlos Mélo, Carlos Martiel, César Romero, Charbel-joseph H. Boutros, Chico Liberato, Chico Dantas, Clara Domingas, Claudio Manoel, Cláudio Pinheiro, Claudio Costa, Cristiana Tejo, Dalton Harts, Daniel Buren, Daniel Castanheira, Daniel Lisboa, Daniel Marins, Daniel Santiago, Daniela Azevedo, Daniela Guimarães, Danniel Ferraz, Darcy Ribeiro, David Blandy, Dennis Oppenheim, Di Cavalcanti, Diana Valverde, Dicinho, Diego Mauro, Dilson Midlej, Dimitri Ganzelevitch, Documentação Simões, Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior, Eckenberger, Edgard Navarro, Edgard Oliva, Ediane do Monte, Edinízio Ribeiro Primo, Edivaldo Bolagi, Eduardo Witzel, Efrain Almeida, Elias Santos, Elomar Figueira Mello, Emanoel Araújo, Enderson Araujo, Eneida Sanches, Etsedron, Eustáquio Neves, Evandro Sybine, Fabiana Dultra Britto, Fabiane Beneti, Fátima Pombo, Fernando Guerreiro, Fernando Pontes, Flávio de Barros, Florencia Langarica, Florival Oliveira, Fluxus, Francisco Teixeira, Frans Krajcberg, Franz Erhard Walther, Fundação Terra Mirim, Gabriel Vieira, Gaio Matos, Galeria 13, Gary Kuehn, Genaro de Carvalho, Ger van Elk, Geraldo Simões, Gerardo Mosquera, Gerry Schum, Gerson Nascimento, Gianni Piacentino, Gilbert & George, Gilberto Zorio, Gilson Barbosa, Gilson Rodrigues, Gino de Dominicis, Giovanni Anselmo, Giselle Beiguelman, Giulio Paolini, Glauber Rocha, Goli Guerreiro, Grupo Posição, Guilherme May, Gustavo Carvalho, Guto Lacaz, Hamish Fulton, Hansen Bahia, Harald Szeemann, Harry Laus, Hélio Oiticica, Hilda Baqueiro, Hilda Salomão, Humberto Aquino Rocha, Ian Wilson, Ícaro Lira, Ícaro Vilaça, Ieda Oliveira, Inaicyra Falcão, Ingmar Bergman, Isa Trigo, Itaberaba Sulz Lyra, Ivo Foguete, J. Cunha, Jaci Menezes, Jaciara Cruz Acassio, Jaime Fygura, Jan Dibbets, Janaina Conceição, Janilda Ferreira Abreu, Jason Lim, Jean-François Lyotard, Jerusa Pires, João Dannemann, João Omar de Carvalho Mello, Joaquim Lino, Johanna Gaschler, Jomard Muniz de Britto, Jonathan Monk, José Antônio Saja (Ramos Neves dos Santos), José Eduardo Ferreira Santos, José Rufino, José Umberto Dias, Joseph Beuys, Juarez Paraíso, Juca Ferreira, Juraci Dórea, Justino Marinho, Karen Silva, Kaysha Kutner, Keith Sonnier, Klaus Rinke, Laura Castro, Lauren McAdams Selden, Lawrence Weiner, Lênio Braga, Leonardo Alencar, Leonardo Villa-Forte, Lia Cunha, Lia Robatto, Lina Bo Bardi, Lisette Lagnado, Louco (Boaventura de Silva Filho), Luciano Figueiredo, Luis Berríos-Negrón, Luisa Mota, Luiz Ramos, Luiz Jasmin, Lygia Clark, Maninho Abreu, Marcelo Cunha, Marcelo Faria, Marcia Abreu, Márcia Magno, Márcio Lima, Márcio Meirelles, Marcondes Dourado, Marco Aurélio Damasceno, Marepe, Maria Adair, Maria Antonieta Tourinho, Maria Celeste de Almeida Wanne, Maria Célia Pereira da Silva (Terreiro de Mãe Stella), Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Mariete Barbosa, Marília Moreira Cavalcante, Marinus Boezem, Mario Cravo Neto, Mario Merz, Marta Argolo, Martha Araújo, Maxim Malhado, Mestre Ambrósio Córdula, Mestre Didi, Michael Heizer, Michael Walker, Milena Travassos, Mitta Lux, Mônica Hoff, Monique Evelle, Movimento Nosso Bairro é 2 de Julho, Myriam Mihindou, Nádia Taquary, Naia Alban, Nanci Novais, Naziha Mestaoui, Negro Davi, Nehle Franke, Neil Leonard, Neville King, Nino Cais, Nuno Ramos, Olga Gómez, Omar Salomão, Orlando Pinho, OSBA, Paraíba da Viola, Pascal Pique, Pasquale de Chirico, Pasqualino Magnavita, Patricia Almeida, Patrick Proctor, Paulo Bruscky, Paulo Meira, Paulo Nazareth, Paulo Pereira, Pedro Filho Amorim, Pedro Marighella, Pedro Archanjo, Perinho Santana, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Piero Gilardi, Pierre Capelle, Pierre Restany, Pierre Verger, Poro, Ramiro Bernabó, Raynolds, Regina Costa, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Renato Fonseca, Renato da Silveira, Rener Rama, Rex Schindler, Richard Long, Richard Serra, Riolan Coutinho, Robert Barry, Robert Smithson, Roberto Dias, Robinson Roberto, Rodrigo Matheus, Roger Buergel, Rogéria Maciel, Rogério Duarte, Rubem Valentim, S. da Bôa Morte, Sante Scaldaferri, Sepp Baendereck, Sergio Camargo, Sergio Guerra, Siron Franco, Solange Maria de Souza Moura, Solange, Tô aberta, Sonia Castro, Sonia Rangel, Stanley Brouwn, Sture Johannesson, Sylvie Blocher, Tata Mutá Imê, Tecco Ribeiro, Terezinha Dumet, Tetine (Bruno Verner e Eliete Mejorado), Thiago Martins de Melo, Thomas Farkas, Tiago Ribeiro, Tobi Maier, Tonico Portela, Torquato Neto, Tracy Collins, Tuti Minervino, Tuzé de Abreu – Alberto José Simões de Abreu, Ulrich Rückriem, Universidade LIVRE de Teatro Vila Velha, Vadim Zakharov, Valerie O’Hara, Vânia Leite Leal Machado, Vauluizo Bezerra, Vieira Andrade, Viga Gordilho, Virginia de Medeiros, Vítor Rios, Wagner Lacerda, Walter de Maria, Walter Smetak, Waly Salomão, Washington Queiroz, Willyams Martins, Yêda Maria, Yoko Ono, Yves Klein, Zé de Rocha, Zé Sergio Gabrielli, Zu Campos, and Zuarte Júnior.

Bahia Biennale
May 29 – September 7, 2014
Museu de Arte Moderna de Bahia (MAM-BA)
Salvador BA, Brazil

Actions and exhibitions are scattered between Bahia’s Museum of Modern Art (main) and 30 locations in Salvador and other ten cities in the State of Bahia, Brazil.

The 3rd Bahia Biennale (Bienal da Bahia) enters its final phase with all of the 30-plus exhibitions, film cycles and actions spread all over Salvador and the state of Bahia along with several artistic occupations of public and private spaces. Artists in residence unveil their final works, developed since the start of the year, while the ongoing debates about the possibilities of a Biennial model outside of the established system and its markets extend to actual instances of living art.

Camila Sposati digs her Earth Anatomic Theatre in Itaparica Island, where it will stay long after the Biennale is finished, while Nuno Ramos’s Iluminai od Terreiros project explores inaccessible sites of Salvador in one-off interventions offering a unique experience of estrangement and illumination. Teatro Castro Alves’s modernist design, in downtown Salvador, is the locus of an architectural intervention by Luís Berríos-Negrón, and Salvador’s Central Library (Barris) awakens its ghosts with Omar Salomão’s sound installation.

The Archive and Fiction Working Group, curated by Ana Pato, deepens its original proposal to exchange experiences, research and content production about artistic practices and archival procedures. Throughout its workshops, lost archives and collections are being identified and mapped, offering a broad range of materials for commissioned artists (Eustáquio Neves, Gaio Matos, Rodrigo Matheus, Paulo Nazareth, Ícaro Lira, Gisele Beiguelman) to carry out artworks specially designed for the 3rd Biennale. The State Archives, located in a 16th-century building, displays the results of these works together with an exhibition of articles unearthed from the police archives—including Candomblé items confiscated throughout decades of repression of the Afro-Brazilian religion as well as mortuary masks and mummified corpses of cangaceiros(country bandits of the 1920s and 1930s).

The Imaginary Museum of the Northeast spreads its occupation of public spaces with exhibition sets designed to offer a critical alternative to the very concept of the museum: as a privileged space to reinvent and reorganize the past in order to tune it to the public. According to chief curator Marcelo Rezende, “we see the Northeast, the cradle of the ‘Brazilian civilization,’ as a place where actions, ideas and objects from all over the world have set foot, and now we collect the pieces of all this history in different spaces, each dedicated to a particular subject.” The I.M.N. brings together artists from different nationalities, such as Charbel-joseph Boutros (Lebanon), the works of Yves Klein or the German writer Arno Schmidt, interacting with the local production and the cultural heritage of Salvador. As a conceptual centrepiece of the Bienal, theNaturalisme Integral of Pierre Restany, Frans Krajcberg and Sepp Baendereck is regaled with a special exhibition dedicated to the pioneers and followers of environmental art.

The extensive research on a whole generation of Bahia artists working since the 1960s and 1970s brings comprehensive exhibitions of Bahian masters left in the fringes of the art circuit until now: Rogério Duarte, visual guru of Tropicalism; Juarez Paraíso and his cosmic-fiction universe on canvas and other dimensions; the environmental art of pioneer Juraci Dórea; and the psychedelic creations of Dicinho and Edinízio Primo. Borne out of an original research by chief curator Ayrson Heráclito, rare works, previously regarded as long lost, of the PEBA movement, from which some of the most important names of the Brazilian art scene of the last 40 years emerged (e.g Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil), have their first significant exposure since the heyday of the late 1960s/early 1970s.

Since May 29, the 3rd Bahia Biennial has offered a privileged ground for artists and creators from 22 countries and several states of Brazil to develop independent works and research, while also spreading contemporary issues and artistic experiences to communities dwelling in the margins of the art circuit. This is not a one-way movement as the actions have furthered the exchange of practices, issues and ideas from different, and sometimes opposite social spheres.

Churches, universities, cultural centres, libraries, Candomblé temples, schools and ateliers host exhibitions, workshops and artistic occupations, offering not only a broad range of visiting circuits but also an active dialogue about spaces and the artistic endeavours interacting within them. It is the process that matters, material or immaterial: Bahia closes a gap of 46 years since its last Biennale was closed by the military regime (1968), and the third edition is proud to bring back to life the spirit of an artistic élan long repressed.

The 3rd Bahia Biennale reaffirms the intentions of the original project: to establish a counter-discourse that is suitable for creating, promoting and establishing alternative routes in the art field, without the need to depend on legitimation from other national and international centres. The Biennale also updates the original project to the current Brazilian and international contexts, where the concepts of center and periphery are being redefined.

The 3rd Bahia Biennale is a project of Secretaria de Cultura do Estado da Bahia (State of Bahia’s Culture Department), organised by Bahia’s Museum of Modern Art (MAM-BA) through a joint venture between Hansen Bahia Foundation and Instituto do Patrimônio Artístico e Cultural (IPAC – Institute for the Cultural and Artistic Heritage). The Biennale curatorship is led by MAM-BA director Marcelo Rezende, assisted by Ana Pato and Ayrson Heráclito (chief curators), Fernando Oliva and Alejandra Muñoz (co-curators).

Image: Nuno Ramos, Iluminai os Terreiros (Set the Terrace Alight). Series of one-off interventions exploring inaccessible sites in Salvador. Photo: Alfredo Mascarenhas.
September 18, 2014 Christian Camacho Reynoso: El acto de ver https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/christian-camacho-reynoso-el-acto-de-ver/

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Artists: Christian Camacho Reynoso, Leo Marz and Apolo Cacho.

El acto de ver
Curator: Octavio Avendaño Trujillo
September 19, 2014
Myl Arte Contemporáneo / Gallery Weekend Mexico
Mexico City, Mexico

En la historia del arte, el acto de ver ha sido motivo de investigaciones filosóficas y poéticas como las de Michel Foucault, quien en su estudio de las Meninas de Velázquez, señalaba la enunciación del artista a través de lo no develado. Sin embargo, a partir de la segunda mitad del siglo XX, con la crisis de la imagen fotográfica -por su explotación mediática- y la preponderancia de los lenguajes conceptuales; el cine abrevó las exploraciones poéticas y contemplativas del “ver”, como es el caso del cineasta alemán Wim Wenders, que acuñó la noción de einstellung que hace referencia a la estrategia del ocultamiento que asola al espectador quien se divisa ante la mirada del artista dejándole una incertidumbre de la “realidad” de lo que está viendo.

Leo Marz (Jalisco, 1979), Christian Camacho (Ciudad de México, 1985) y Apolo Cacho (Ciudad de México, 1987) exploran esta noción que les permita ahondar en la relación de obra-visión-espectador a partir de estrategias de ocultamiento en “El acto de ver”.

September 16, 2014 Erica Muralles Hazbun, Aníbal López A-1 53167, Darío Escobar: Dependencia inDEPENDENCIA2 https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/erica-muralles-hazbun-anibal-lopez-1-53167-dario-escobar-dependencia-independencia2/

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Artists: Lourdes de la Riva, Erica Muralles Hazbun, Aníbal López A-1 53167, Darío Escobar, Pablo Boneu, Hellen Ascoli, Luis González Palma, Mauricio Contreras-Paredes, Paola Beverini and Douglas Witmer.

Dependencia inDEPENDENCIA2
September 2 -30, 2014
Sol del Río Galería
Guatemala, Guatemala

 

September 16, 2014 Georgina Bringas: Nada está inmóvil; todo se mueve, todo vibra https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/georgina-bringas-nada-esta-inmovil-todo-se-mueve-todo-vibra/

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Artist: Georgina Bringas

Nada está inmóvil; todo se mueve, todo vibra
September 10, 2014 – January, 2015
Museo Universitario del Chopo
Mexico City, Mexico

Georgina Bringas presenta la instalación Nada está inmóvil; todo se mueve; todo vibra, que consiste enun dispositivo mecánico colgado del techo del edificio histórico que mantendrá en oscilación continuatres cuerdas de diferentes características. A través de ese movimiento cobrará notoriedad el espacio, el tiempo y la energía, resaltando la idea de que todo se encuentra en movimiento constante.

La artista parece sugerir, de este modo, que si todo está moviéndose, el campo de representación en el arte también debe hacerlo mediante su transformación constante. Esta obra subraya dos dimensiones: una temporal, donde las oscilaciones continuas y cíclicas de las cuerdas marcan el paso del tiempo; y una espacial que enfatiza la vertical, dirige la atención de los visitantes a las proporciones originales del edificio, las cuales están fuera de toda escala humana. El movimiento de la pieza refuerza esa escala y la experiencia espacial de quien la visita.

El coordinador de exposiciones del Museo, Daniel Garza Usabiaga, señala que a diferencia de otros trabajos de Georgina Bringas, la que presentará en el museo se distingue por ser dinámica. La artista ha analizado el espacio y el tiempo, conceptos abstractos que, mediante sus piezas, adquieren visibilidad. Con sus intervenciones a edificios y lugares de diversa índole, Bringas ha hecho explícitas las dimensiones de esos sitios. También ha desarrollado trabajos que denotan la cuantificación y organización del tiempo. Las soluciones plásticas a las que ha recurrido son sutiles (como el uso de hilo para hacer retículas métricas en los espacios que interviene), y en muchos casos rechazan el terreno de la representación en su totalidad.

Georgina Bringas (ciudad de México, 1975). Es miembro del Sistema Nacional de Creadores  de Arte del FONCA. Estudió la Licenciatura en Artes Plásticas en la Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado “La Esmeralda”. Desde 1996 ha trabajado con video, instalación, dibujo y escultura, entre otros soportes, como recursos para investigar la percepción del espacio, el tiempo y sus representaciones plásticas.

September 16, 2014 Omar Rodríguez-Graham, Sandra Nakamura: Ouroboros / Dominio In UrgenteArtists https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/omar-rodriguez-graham-sandra-nakamura-ouroboros-dominio-urgenteartists/

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Artists: Omar Rodríguez-Graham, Sandra Nakamura

Ouroboros
Omar Rodríguez-Graham
Dominio In Urgente
Sandra Nakamura
September 19, 2014
Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo / Gallery Weekend Mexico City
Mexico City, Mexico

Ouroboros

Omar Rodriguez-Graham

This exhibit by Omar Rodriguez-Graham is articulated under the premise that everything changes. Thus, the constructions of the present are cemented on the wreckage of the phantoms from the past, which distort memories, destroy narratives and create renewed histories. The works of the artists are cannibalistic in nature: they are based on iconic images of Western painting, taking over their outlines, while reassembling the abstract compositions granting them new parameters. This way, the work goes beyond figurations and restores them, rendering them unrecognizable. However, the artist does not infringe the pictorial restrictions, nor move away from a transcendental idea in art: all acts of destruction are acts of creation.

Dominio In Urgente

Sandra Nakamura

The day this exhibit opened was the anniversary of the 1985 earthquake, an impossible detail to ignore for Nakamura. The artist thus investigated the memory inscribed in the soil of Mexico City, seeking to comprehend (at a distance) a place she has never been to. For Juan Villoro, the memory of water is an essential element in the imagery of the city. The works that make up this exhibit have as a starting point, archived photographs, survivor testimonies, seismological reports and topographic maps. They also recover the image of underground water to suggest change, referencing the moment in which, according to seismologist Cinna Lomnitz, Mexico City became a lake again.

September 12, 2014 Amadeo Azar: Patience is a Mine Field https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/amadeo-azar-patience-mine-field/

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Artist: Amadeo Azar

Patience is a Mine Field
September 11 – November 4, 2014
Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

An artist who wishes to introduce himself to a new context draws a map. He places the pieces in such a way so that we can understand the new fragments in the landscapes of those that preceded them, establishing a mental cartography where to hear one’s questions in reverse.

This exhibition is in the spirit of a retrospective in the sense of steering our sight both backwards and forwards so as to perceive the totality of his ideas. What does an Artist do when he creates a work? He formulates a plan. In this case to take the technique to the extreme so that it collapses. To become an expert in the tradition of the pictorial ingredient -this time the watercolor- in order to betray that capacity until it all but disappears.

Image: “Rusakov Club”, 2014, 132 photocopies on call, 84.65 x 128 inches. Edition 1/3
September 12, 2014 Célio Braga: Célio Braga and Judith Maria Kleinthes https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/celio-braga-celio-braga-judith-maria-kleinthes/

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Artists: Célio Braga and Judith Maria Kleinthes.

Célio Braga and Judith Maria Kleinthes
September 7 – October 12, 2014
Hein Elferink Gallery
Staphorst, Netherlands

 

September 12, 2014 Mauro Giaconi: Hay una imagen de esa idea https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/mauro-giaconi-hay-una-imagen-de-esa-idea/

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Artists: Camila Ramírez, Magdalena Jitrik, Daniel Santoro, Aurelio García, Mauro Giaconi, Leonel Luna, and Nicolás Arispe.

Hay una imagen de esa idea
August 30, 2014
Curators: Andrés Labaké and Emmanuel Muleiro
Centro Cultural de la Memoria Haroldo Conti
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Una muestra colectiva con diversos abordajes, posicionamientos y poéticas desde las artes visuales y la literatura al imaginario y a la construcción de discurso y pensamiento político revolucionario y emancipatorio.

Organizada en conjunto con el Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación. La exposición cuenta con textos y publicaciones de Juan Forn, Yuyo Noé and Etienne de la Boetle, entre otros.

September 10, 2014 Fernando García Correa: Paraíso en Sombra https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/fernando-garcia-correa-paraiso-en-sombra/

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Artists: Paul Muguet, Rocío Asensi, and Fernando García Correa.

Paraíso en Sombra
August 13 – October 4, 2014
Curator: Berta Kolteniuk
Celda Contemporánea
Mexico City, Mexico

Los tres artistas reunidos en la exposición Paraíso en sombra, producen obras que evidencian la relación del hombre con el principio de aprehensión del universo y de su ser presente, es decir su conciencia y representación de la realidad metafísica en el tiempo y espacio que les toca vivir. La intención introspectiva, tanto intelectual como espiritual, de buscar el origen o esencia de las cosas es la que genera el impulso para luego transformarlas o representarlas en signos (imágenes, palabras, sonidos, gestos, etc.). Podría interpretarse este acto como la ideación que el filósofo alemán, Max Scheler analiza en su conferencia sobre El puesto del hombre en el cosmos. La ideación resulta de una red de actos o prácticas de “anulación ficticia del carácter de realidad”, o de “reducción fenomenológica” para alcanzar la esencia de las ideas. El recorrido metafísico y antropológico de Scheler reúne visiones de oriente y occidente para formular una conducta ascética que le permita al hombre –en este análisis particular, al artista- resistirse al mismo tiempo que hacer conciencia de su vida.

La obra de Paul Muguet, siguiendo esta lectura filosófica, es una metáfora de lo que Scheler resume como la vieja idea de Spinoza, Hegel y otros, sobre la conciencia que el Ser primordial adquiere de sí mismo en el acto de contemplarse y saberse como hombre, en un acto de trascendencia o advenimiento donde lo creado es parte de una unidad funcional, dado que se construye a partir de la individualidad de algunos objetos o signos que representan la impermanencia de las ideas, más allá de la materialidad de las cosas. Es así que sus objetos y esculturas componen figuras abstractas o representacionales de un todo, a partir de la singularidad de un objeto o palabra determinada y conocida a priori.

Rocío Asensi también trabaja a partir de la indagación y meditación de la realidad y sus manifestaciones sociales antagonistas en el mundo occidental y oriental, reconociendo, a partir de sus viajes y experiencias la complementariedad entre ambos. La aceptación de esas realidades mediante la obra y el hacer artístico, permite otro acceso espiritual a la impresión de la vida, donde incluso los actos negativos dotan de energía al espíritu, como dice el metafísico alemán. De esta manera podemos entender al acto creativo no como una denuncia moral, sino como una intención ética o voluntad espiritual por reconocer el lugar del hombre en el universo.

Finalmente, el trabajo de Fernando García Correa se relaciona con las primeras aclaraciones que Max Scheler hace en relación a los grados o estructura del ser psicofísico para diferenciar al hombre de los demás seres vivientes con los que convive. Sin caer en un simple juego de dualidades, las obras de este artista buscan presentar las diversas formas del ser, partiendo de las experiencias afectivas e instintivas comunes entre hombres, plantas y animales, a su vez que la asociativa e intelectiva, que constituyen cualidades desarrolladas por la psique humana. Las imágenes y formas creadas establecen un puente entre las abstracciones simbólicas y las figurativas, que activa el flujo de conexiones que el espectador puede establecer al observarlas.

El artista como asceta, en un sentido actualizado de la palabra, puede enmarcarse en la charla TED que Alain de Botton titula Ascetismo 2.0, donde propone al arte y la cultura como la nueva religión. Ambos filósofos, Scheler y Botton, entienden al arte como un encuentro con las ideas más esenciales del mundo y del ser. El siglo que los separa confirma la esencia en las ideaciones presentes y pasadas.

September 9, 2014 Marta Chilindrón, Magdalena Fernández & Jaime Tarazona: Degrees of Separation https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marta-chilindron-magdalena-fernandez-jaime-tarazona-degrees-separation/

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Artists: Marta Chilindrón, Magdalena Fernández, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Caio Fonseca, Julio Le Parc, Cipriano Martínez, Daniel Medina, Abraham Paltnik, Rafael Reveron-Pojan, Jesús Rafael Soto, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, and Jaime Tarazona.

Degrees of Separation
June 27 – September 14, 2014
Maddox Arts
London, UK

Curated by Mario Palencia and Laura Culpan, this exhibition looks specifically at the legacy of the Modern Masters born in the 1920s who were pioneering geometric abstraction and kinetic art across Latin America in the 1950s and 60s and how the younger generation is carrying this aesthetic on, in their own contemporary way.

 

September 9, 2014 Danilo Dueñas: Como Es https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/danilo-duenas-como-es/

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Artist: Danilo Dueñas

Como Es
August 28 – September 27, 2014
Casas Riegner
Bogotá, Colombia

For over three decades, artist Danilo Dueñas has been experimenting with abandoned materials and found objects for the creation of pictorial constructions that offer multiple interpretations. Adjusting harmoniously to their exhibition context, Dueñas’ uncanny installations manage to question, evoke and destabilize the viewer.

Dueñas’ most recent solo exhibition titled COMO ES (As It Is), elucidates the artist’s astounding ability to experiment with forms and materials. On this particular occasion however, this experimentation process is induced by the artist’s profound reflection on the human condition, which stems from his personal reading of Saint Augustine’s teachings. According to Possidius, Augustine’s biographer, while on his deathbed the Saint wept over his sins upon studying the penitential psalms which he had posted on the walls of this room. Inspired by the specific circumstances leading up to Augustine’s death, and by the presence of sacred words visualized on the saint’s wall, Dueñas revitalizes and expands his utilization of text dating back to the 90s, by emphasizing its formal power and grandeur. Recalling the functional nature of the medieval artistic object, the words “HOLY GHOST”, “SCRIPTURE”, “COVENANT” and “PSALM”, written out in black adhesive vinyl along several walls of the gallery, become the leading actors of the exhibition thanks to their enormous scale, austere form and visual and cognitive impact.

The visual alteration of the exhibition context and the harmonious and often unsettling presence of found objects such as used books, discarded pedestals and rusted architectural elements, all of which seem to be faded and warn out, comprise a powerful one room installation imbued with the artist’s personal religiosity. This artful orchestration of heterogeneous elements however, is brought into existence thanks to Dueñas’ profound ability to grant new life to abandoned spaces and objects.

Danilo Dueñas was born in Cali, Colombia in 1965. He has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions including: Sense of Mendicity, Alejandra von Hartz, Miami, USA (2013); A Door Repeated and the Wardrobe Fell Corner Space, Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin, Germany (2012); Flying, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany (2012); Beuys y más allá – El enseñar como arte, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, Bogotá, Colombia (2011); La vitrina abierta, Lugar a Dudas, Cali, Colombia (2010); y A Flight (Un vuelo), Casas Riegner, Bogotá, Colombia (2009). In 2011, Dueñas took part in the Artists-in-Berlin Program, Berliner Künstlerprogramm, one of the most renowned international programs offering grants to artists in the Visual Arts. His work can be found in important art collections in Latin America including: Museo de Arte Moderno de Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil); Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional (Bogotá, Colombia); Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas (Caracas, Venezuela); and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, Sofia Imber (Caracas, Venezuela).

 

September 5, 2014 Darío Escobar: Provisionals https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/dario-escobar-provisionals/

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Artists: Ana Bidart, Martí Cormand, Elena del Rivero, Darío Escobar, Sérgio Sister, and Adam Winner.

Provisionals
August 7 – September 6, 2014
Josée Bienvenu Gallery
NY, USA

The title refers to a term coined by Raphael Rubinstein* in 2009 to describe an ongoing trend:  Provisional paintings, “look casual, dashed-off, tentative, unfinished, self-canceling”. They “demolish their own iconic status before they ever attain such a thing.” Their genealogy includes Robert Rauschenberg’s “cardboards” of the 1970s, Raoul de Keyser, Christopher Wools, Mary Heilman and extends to a younger generation of artists who have been working across the map from Berlin to Bushwick and Mexico City, qualified as “the new casualists” by artist and critic Sharon L. Butler*.  The exhibition connects three generations of artists whose work oppose to the monumental, the official, and the permanent to embrace the off-kilter and the awkward in a playful combination of deliberation and indecision.

Dario Escobar’s Blacksmith Paintings are based on two absences: the absence of the painted object and the absence of the subject who painted it. Part of a larger body of ‘self-generated’ or ‘performative’ works, the painting in the exhibition documents the back wall of a blacksmith workshop in Guatemala city.  A blank canvas, stapled to the backdrop wall used to spray paint metal objects, accumulates layers and layers of paint residue. The painting is executed unknowingly by blacksmith workers without direct intervention of the artist’s hand whose only decision is to pick-up the work after a certain time. The result is a condensed and effortless journey through the main painting movements of the last century – from 1960s color field painting, to Latin American geometric abstraction, minimalism, pop, and street art, depending on the day-to-day order of business at the shop.

Elena del Rivero’s Letter from Home in Cerulean is a monument to domesticity and its monstrosity. It is a giant canvas hanging from one nail in the corner, just like a dishcloth in a kitchen. The process starts with the traditional blue pattern of a European dishcloth made with stitch-like brushstrokes, followed by staining and altering the surface with dirt from the studio floor, coffee from the breakfast table, or leftover paint smudged on the surface.  Like in most of del Rivero’s work, delicacy and a sense of loving attention coexist with a feeling of neglect and abandonment.

In Pasaportes, Mexico based conceptual artist Ana Bidart examines access and identity. The paintings are a record of her last two years working as an artist’s assistant, her time spent packing and labeling the works of other artists. Incorporating the vocabulary of tracking numbers and of various discarded materials, the paintings allude to various techniques of mechanical reproduction to explore traces left of relationships. Silkscreening, xeroxing, and photoshopping are done here in a low-tech, low-key way, by directly applying objects to the canvas (bubble wrap, footprints) and rubbing the surface with solvents in large areas of grayish brushstrokes.

Martí Cormand’s work is a testimony to the degradation of certainty. For the past two years, he has been investigating the notion of conviction by observing and rendering iconic works of the conceptual art movement  “When no one has too many certitudes any more, processes become essential. I have nothing urgent to communicate, no absolute convictions. I investigate the certainties that others had in the 1960s and 1970s. My favorite subject is the study of conviction” (Martí Cormand).  With no effort to hide its labor and adjustments, the work in the exhibition, a rendering of Yoko Ono’s 1964 Grapefruit, dissects its own process by showing the three stages to a finished painting. As if scanned at three points during its making, it becomes a self-amused and unassuming work that does not invite any transcendental reading.

Most of Sérgio Sister’s work stands at the edge between painting and sculpture. The small monochromatic paintings, from 1995 – 2010 included in the exhibition, convey a sense of calculated tentativeness. The individual paintings, made with an unflashy handling of paint can be re-positioned into distinct groups and assemblages, within a skillful game of subtle tonal variations.

Adam Winner’s paintings are concerned with multiple forms of imperfection. Made with a palette knife, in layer upon layer of oil, gesso and linen, the paintings expose their own accidents and mistakes, laying bare the seams, showing ripped linen strips and frayed edges. Winner’s paintings of imperfect gestures are imbued with a feeling of permanent self-doubt. They embrace a sense of their own failure yet reveal an intimate familiarity with the materials.

September 5, 2014 Christian Camacho Reynoso: La Chinche https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/christian-camacho-reynoso-la-chinche/

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Artist: Christian Camacho Reynoso

Solo exhibition
August 20 – September 20, 2014
La Chince / Museo Experimental El Eco
Mexico City, Mexico

La práctica del creador, que el año pasado expuso I wished to say YES and NO at the same time en la galería 4 Windmill Street de Londres, explora el plano en la obra pictórica y el dibujo: «mi interés no está en imágenes específicas, sino la experimentación con materiales y procesos». El artista expone un filtro de privacidad, una película para proteger información. «La pequeña pieza que preparé para La Chinche es una brevísima muestra de material que otorga al observador distinta información, dependiendo del ángulo desde el que se mire. La idea es trabajar con la probabilidad de notar o no a la galería, debido a sus dimensiones y dirección». La inauguración de la muestra se realizó en La Chinche, y es un proyecto enmarcado en la muestra Desafío a la estabilidad. Procesos artísticos en México 1952-1967.

September 2, 2014 Aníbal Catalán & Omar Barquet: XVI Bienal de Pintura Rufino Tamayo https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/anibal-catalan-omar-barquet-xvi-bienal-de-pintura-rufino-tamayo/

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Artists: Agustín González García, Alberto Ibáñez Cerda, Alejandra Venegas, Allan Villavicencio, Ángel Solano, Aníbal Catalán, Benjamín Valdés Álvarez, Bernardo Soriano, Carlos Cárdenas, Carlos Bernal Mata, Cecilia Barreto, Claudia Gallegos, Cora Van, David Garza, Enrique Oroz, Eric Pérez, Fabián Ugalde, Felipe Núñez, Fernando Correa Arrazola, Fernando Sandoval García, Franco Manterola, Francisco Muñoz Pérez, Gerardo Monsiváis, Guillermo Álvarez Charvel, Heriberto Quesnel, Iván Villaseñor Castañeda, Javier Peláez Gómez, Jazael Olguín Zapata, Jc Zubiaur, José Ángel Robles, José Luis López Galván, Juan Astianax Hernández Téllez, Karen Dana, Linda Lea Harbert, Lucía Álvarez Martínez, Luis Alfonso Villalobos, Luis Verdejo, Manuel Mathar, Manuel Velázquez, Marco Arce, Mauricio Limón, Miguel Ángel Vega Magallón, Natalia Ibáñez Lario, Omar Barquet, Oscar Wilfredo Mendoza Mancillas, Oscar Ratto, Pablo Cotama, Pablo Serrano, Paul Lozano, Rafael Uriegas, Rodrigo Treviño Barroso, San Martín Roura, Saúl Gómez Jiménez, Sofía Fernández Díaz, Víctor Rodríguez, and Yolanda Mora.

XVI Bienal de Pintura Rufino Tamayo
August 14 – October 19, 2014
Museo Tamayo
Mexico City, Mexico

La Bienal de Pintura Rufino Tamayo tiene el objetivo de fortalecer las expresiones pictóricas nacionales y brindar un espacio de reflexión y análisis sobre la producción actual. Para el 2014, se conformó un comité curatorial integrado por dos pintores y un curador de reconocida trayectoria, quienes definieron el concepto de pintura que guía esta edición. La exposición XVI Bienal de Pintura Rufino Tamayo, después de presentarse en esta sede, viajará al Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca y posteriormente será itinerante durante un año por diversas entidades del país.

September 2, 2014 Nicolás Consuegra & Bernardo Ortiz: XI Bienal Monterrey FEMSA https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/nicolas-consuegra-bernardo-ortiz-xi-bienal-monterrey-femsa/

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Artists: Javier Areán, Melba Arellano, Sebastián Beltrán, Irène Blaise, Hernán Bravo, Alejandro Cartagena, Colectivo Estética Unisex, Colectivo Objeto Posible, Irene Clouthier, Hugo Crostwaite, Alejandro Equihua, Marco Esparza, Oscar Farfán, María García Ibáñez, David Garza, Rubén Gutiérrez, Miguel Ledesma, Juan Rodrigo Llaguna, Ammner López Bautizo, Pablo López Luz, Amalia Lucrecia López Vélez “Lukresya”,  Jacqueline Judith Lozano “JJ Lozano”, Andrea Martínez, Antonio Monroy, Eliud Nava, Felipe Núñez, Antonio Medina, Coral Revueltas, Eduardo Romo, Marco Vinicio Rosales, Oswaldo Ruiz, Rocío Sáenz, Emilio Said, Mariela Sancari, Fabián Ugalde, Rolando Jacob, Héctor Velázquez Gutiérrez, Gustavo Villegas, Ryuichi Yahagi, Milton Zayas, Marta Combariza, Nicolás Consuegra, Graciela Duarte y Manuel Enrique Santana, Humberto Junca, Deky Morelos, Oscar Moreno, Mario Opazo, Bernardo Ortiz, María Isabel Rueda, Mapa Teatro -laboratorio de artistas.

XI Bienal Monterrey FEMSA
August 14 – November 9, 2014
Centro de las Artes, Parque Fundidora
Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico

La Bienal Monterrey FEMSA fue instituida en 1992 con el propósito de reconocer, fortalecer y estimular la creación artística en México. Su consolidación a través de los años, le ha dado el reconocimiento como uno de los certámenes de artes plásticas de mayor prestigio en el país.

August 29, 2014 Silvana Lacarra: Itineraria. 10 mujeres, 2 territorios https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/silvana-lacarra-itineraria-10-mujeres-2-territorios/

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Artists: Marta Ares, Patricia Bentancur, Claudia del Río, Colette Hillel, Silvana Lacarra, Ester Nazarian, Teresa Puppo, Silvia Rivas, Mónica Rojas, Anaclara Talento, and Cecilia Vignolo.

Itineraria. 10 mujeres, 2 territorios
August 7, 2014
Curator: Kekena Corvalán y Laura Reginato
Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo
Montevideo, Uruguay

“Mujeres Artistas, re[gener]adoras e inapropiables, contaminando las estructuras del arte, de la identidad, del enunciado, del deseo; desbordan las categorías claras e instituidas, las promesas de paraíso y subordinación; proponiendo nuevas geometrías posibles para considerar relaciones atravesadas y creadas por diferentes contrastes y asimetrías”.
Síntesis de texto curatorial

18:00 hs. – Charla con Francis Alÿs
19:30 hs. – Inauguración de exposiciones

“La acción reveladora o Poética de los intentos”
Francis Alÿs (Bel / Mex)
Curaduría de Fernando Sicco y el propio artista

August 29, 2014 Patrick Hamilton: Proyecto Lanz https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/patrick-hamilton-proyecto-lanz/

Lanz Cigueñal (2009)

Artist: Patrick Hamilton

Proyecto Lanz
August 2 – September 20, 2014
FLORA ars+natura
Bogotá, Colombia

Heinrich Lanz AG dates back to 1859, when it was founded by Heinrich Lanz (1838-1905) in Germany. The original heavy machinery factory remained operational until slightly after World War II, when it was acquired by John Deere. In 1960, the company’s name was changed from Heinrich Lanz AG Mannheim to John Deere-Lanz AG. Shortly thereafter, the word Lanz was also dropped from its name.
According to a myth popular throughout southern Chile, a group of Nazis hid gold in Lanz tractor parts as the allied forces bore down on Germany. These gold- laced components were then shipped to Chile and elsewhere in South America.
For the past several years, stories have abounded of Germans traveling around Chile and buying 1945 Lanz tractors, better known as the Lanz Bull- dog. It is estimated that the quantity of gold melted into the parts of each one of these machines is about 2 kilograms. After World War II, the ounce of gold was pegged at 35 US dollars. At present, an ounce is worth more than 1500 US dollars. This explains the increased interest in the Lanz tractors and the large sums of money paid for each tractor.
More than 1000 Lanz Bulldogs have been bought in Chile and shipped back to Germany. The best-known buyers are Thomas Tisch and his brother, who have paid as much as 15,000 US dollars for tractors that would otherwise be junked.
Speculation about “Nazi gold” is not limited to Chile’s borders. It is said that the Vatican received some of this illicit treasure as compensation for helping some Nazis escape to remote locations in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. Other stories suggest different destinies for the Nazi gold: deposited in Swiss bank accounts, sunk below the waters of Austria’s Lake Toplitz, hidden in Germany or placed in submarines with a destination unknown.
Lanz 45 (2009-2014)
August 29, 2014 Adriana Minoliti, Graciela Hasper & Silvia Gurfein: PintorAs https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/adriana-minoliti-graciela-hasper-silvia-gurfein-pintoras/

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Artists: Adriana Minoliti, Carla Bertone, Catalina León, Claudia del Ríó, Deborah Pruden, Diana Aisenberg, Florencia Bohtlingk, Graciela Hasper, Ines Raiteri, Leila Tschopp, Maria Guerrieri, Mariana Lopez, María Ibañez Lagos, Paola Vega, Silvia Gurfein, Valeria Maculan, and Veronica Di Toro.

PintorAs
July 31 – August 31, 2014
Sala Rivadavia
Diputación de Cádiz, Spain

PintorAs es la reunión de artistas contemporáneas que centran la creación de su obra en la pintura y son un recorte posible de la producción pictórica en la Argentina de los últimos 20 años. Convocadas por Paola Vega y Adriana Minoliti en 2009, cada artista seleccionó distintas obras de su acervo y PintorAs realiza la primera exposición en el MACRO (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario) en marzo del 2010, con la participación de Roberto Echen. Después de esa experiencia inicial Carla Bertone propone el proyecto PintorAs a la Fundación Andreani para el Premio Itinerancia por el país. Una nueva versión de PintorAs se exhibe en el MAC (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo) de Salta; el Museo Vidal de Corrientes y el Museo de Casilda de Santa Fe. Posteriormente, por invitación del curador, Benjamín Aitala, PintorAs se exhibe en el Centro Cultural Hogar San José de Olavarría. Por iniciativa de Claudia del Río la muestra se instala en el Auditorio de Mar del Plata recibida por Daniel Besoytaorube. Verónica Di Toro logra aterrizar una nueva versión en el Centro Cultural Borges de Buenos Aires, gracias a Lía Cristal. Estas muestras son asistidas por PintorAs que curan el montaje y realizan talleres, visitas guiadas y charlas, en relación a la pintura como dispositivo. El grupo toma decisiones expositivas en reuniones reales y virtuales intentando el consenso y se propone como continuación producir nuevas reflexiones teóricas acerca de su trabajo para publicarlas en este blog y eventualmente en formato papel.

 

August 26, 2014 Óscar Figueroa: BAVIC https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/oscar-figueroa-bavic/

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Artists: Diana Barquero, Javier Calvo, Carlos Fernández, Oscar Figueroa, Priscila González, Edgar León, Guillermo Araujo, Rodrigo Dada, Natalia Domínguez, Mauricio Esquivel, Jaime Izaguirre, Javier Ramírez -Nadie-, Andrea Aragón, Hellen Áscoli e Inés Verdugo, Andrés Asturias & Marlov Barrios, Benvenuto Chavajay, Andrea Mármol, Jaime Permuth, César Chinchilla, Luis Landa & Legan Rooster, Jorge Oquelí, Ariel Sosa, Alejandra Vaquero & Yapci Ramos, Sandra Herrera Dean, Fredman Barahona, Alejandro de la Guerra, Milena García, Maruca Gómez, Claudia Gordillo, Raúl Quintanilla, Darién Montañez, Pilar Moreno, Ismael Ortiz, Ela Spalding, Sofia Verzbolovskis, Eugenio Ampudia, Daniel G. Andújar, María Cañas, Colectivo PSJM, Jordi Colomer, Marta de Gonzalo, Chus García-Fraile, Jorge García, Nuria Güell, Mateo Maté, Plubio Pérez, Avelino Sala, and Pelayo Varela.

Visual Arts Biennial of the Central American Isthmus (BAVIC)
July 31 – August 24, 2014
Zona 4
Guatemala City, Guatemala

The ninth edition of the Visual Arts Biennial of the Central American Isthmus (BAVIC, in its Spanish acronym) will be held in the area known as 4 Grados Norte, located in Guatemala City’s Zone 4. The event’s exhibitions will be presented in a pedestrian circuit with 8 fixed sites, and will open on Wednesday, July 30.

The cycle of forms titled Meeting Points will take place on Thursday, July 31 through Saturday, August 2. The exhibition will remain open to the public through Sunday, August 24.

BAVIC began in 1998. The first edition was held at the national theater, in Guatemala. Today, BAVIC is a platform where participating artists have found a space for their expression in contemporary art languages: installations, video, video installations, photography, art actions, public-space interventions, among others. Six proposals from each country participate, and each one of the organizing institutions designates its own mode of selection.

For its ninth edition, the Visual Arts Biennial of the Central American Isthmus will implement the incorporation of a guest country, and Spain was selected for the occasion. The Spanish delegation includes the show Hic et Nunc. Sobre Paradojas Democráticas, curated by Imma Prieto, featuring thirteen of Spain’s most notable contemporary artists.

August 26, 2014 David Peña Lopera: Meñique https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/david-pena-lopera-menique/

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Artist: David Peña Lopera

Meñique
August 8, 2014
LA Galería
Bogotá, Colombia

“Meñique” reúne un grupo de obras que especulan sobre la escala humana a través del diálogo con disciplinas que la problematizan: astronomía, anatomía, ergonomía, arquitectura y dibujo.

La exposición incluye piezas recientes y otras que proceden de proyectos anteriores. A través de múltiples estrategias formales y referencias a elementos de diversas capas de la cultura, estas obras, en conjunto,sugieren una genealogía de ideas recurrentes en el trabajo actual de David Peña: los límites de la percepción y de la representación visual, del conocimiento y de la memoria.

Image: “Catedral”, 2014, Drum set stand and glass.
August 25, 2014 Felipe Mujica: Arriba como ramas que un mismo viento mueve https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/felipe-mujica-arriba-como-ramas-que-un-mismo-viento-mueve/

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Artist: Felipe Mujica

Arriba como ramas que un mismo viento mueve
August 15 – November 19, 2014
Museo Experimental El Eco
Mexico City, Mexico

Felipe Mujica trabaja dentro de los territorios del diseño de exposición y la práctica artística. Utilza paneles de tela o “muros de cortina” para dividir o reorganizar el espacio de exhibición, creando nuevas configuraciones espaciales para el espectador, así como espacios únicos para la presentación de arte. Al construir estos paneles de tela, el espectador queda sicológicamente capturado pero no físicamente contenido, de tal modo que puede participar activamente en este diálogo lanzado por el artista.

Como chileno viviendo en Nueva York, la obra de Mujica refleja un sentido de desplazamiento. Para él, no hay un sólo punto de referencia, un discurso dominante: todo y todos existimos en relación los unos a los otros. Para el Eco, Mujica realizará una serie de paneles que contendrán tanto obra suya como de otros artistas invitados por él. Las acciones, proyecciones y piezas activan el espacio articulado por Mujica, y viceversa.

Los participantes de este proyecto son: Manuel Casanueva, Ericka Florez, José Luis Villablanca, Adriana Lara, Julia Rometti y Victor Costales, Poul Gernes y Johanna Unzueta

Primera acción:

16 de agosto, 19:30 horas.

August 25, 2014 Mariángeles Soto-Díaz, Ricardo Alcaide, Emilia Azcárate, Juan Pablo Garza & Jaime Gili: Unsettled Primaries https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/mariangeles-soto-diaz-ricardo-alcaide-emilia-azc/

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Artists: Mariángeles Soto-Díaz, Ricardo Alcaide, Emilia Azcárate, Juan Pablo Garza, Jaime Gili, Dulce Gómez, Esperanza Mayorbe, Ana María Mazzei, Teresa Mulet, Susana Reisman, Luis Romero, and Fabian Salazar.

Unsettled Primaries -Project by Mariángeles Soto-Díaz
Online gallery launch on August 23, 2014
Torrance Art Museum
Torrance, CA, USA

The Venezuelan flag features horizontal bands of the primary colors, yellow, blue and red, occupying equal parts in its rectangular composition. It is said that Francisco de Miranda, the Venezuelan transatlantic revolutionary known as “The First Universal Criollo” who inititated the process that would lead to the independence of Venezuela and Latin America, conceptualized the Venezuelan flag for independence after exchanging ideas about color theory with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Europe. While this is only one myth among many surrounding Miranda’s inspiration of primary colors for the flag, the story still resonates with Miranda’s interdisciplinary and philosophical interests, which are well documented in his extensive journals chronicling encounters with Europe’s leading intellectuals, artists and politicians.

For this project, Mariángeles Soto-Díaz invited Venezuelan artists to choose and interpret a set of open instructions to make an abstract work with equal distribution of primary colors. The instructions were meant as a productive challenge to the artists, particularly in light of the volatile political climate in Venezuela today and especially the many conflicts surrounding the use of the national flag in recent years.*

This experimental abstract project is a proposition put forth to think through many questions: Is it possible to reconcile formal and political meanings on a plane of simultaneity? Can color help us activate a shared experience of ambiguity and nuance, or are the established “universal” primary colors, an essential discovery in color theory, always mired in nationalism or flag-waving for Venezuelan artists? Is viewing art through the screen of a computer while imagining its materiality in real space a new kind of phenomenological experience? For individual artists, can a simultaneous performance of instructions interpreted in different parts of the world feel like a collective gesture?

Unsettled Primaries explores the potential of making something charged, tired and familiar new again, examining settled meanings. As in past projects directed by Soto-Diaz under the umbrella of her entity Abstraction At Work, Unsettled Primaries rests on the underlying premise that there is a conceptual and ambiguous border in the notion of abstraction that encroaches upon and even overlaps with symbolic representation, underscoring the uncomfortable fuzziness and fluidity of meaning in subject matter.

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* In 2013, as the two major candidates for presidential elections dressed in primary colors, government officials forbid the opposition from using them in their campaign despite the fact that the flag and its colors in various configurations were being used by the incumbent presidential candidate and precisely in that context. The rationale used by government officials was that using primary colors was an inappropriate use of patriotic symbols as per the Constitution passed in 2006 revising the Ley de Bandera Nacional, Himno Nacional y Escudo de Armas de la República Bolivariana Venezolana and/or the Supreme Justice Tribunal’s own judgment.

August 21, 2014 Darío Escobar: Gold https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/dario-escobar-gold/

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Artists: Olga de Amaral, Eric Baudart, Carlos Betancourt, Chris Burden, James Lee Byars,Elmgreen and Dragset, Dario Escobar, Sylvie Fleury, Cyprien Gaillard, Patricia Hernandez, Glenn Kaino, Alicja Kwade, Sherrie Levine, Kris Martin, Fernando Mastrangelo, John Miller, Martin Oppel, Ebony G. Patterson, Todd Pavlisko, Robin Rhode, Cristina Lei Rodriguez, and Rudolf Stingel.

Gold
August 8, 2014 – January 11, 2015
Bass Museum of Art
Miami, FL, USA

This exhibition is exploring how gold has been used in the past, present, and how it is referenced today by contemporary artists, both physically and conceptually. Works in this exhibition include historical objects from the permanent collection, painting, sculpture, video, photography, and design.

Image: “Untitled (McDonald’s Cup)”, 1999, Carboard, plastic, gold and pigments, 9 x 3 1/2 in. Collection of Vivian and Ken Pfeiffer.
August 21, 2014 Patrick Hamilton: Slow Future https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/patrick-hamilton-slow-future/

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Artists: David Adamo, Bigert & Bergström, Bianca Bondi, Tania Bruguera, Fernando Bryce, Ella de Búrca, Luis Camnitzer, Jota Castro, Joachim Coucke, James Deutsher, Maarten Vanden Eynde, Kendell Geers, Nuria Güell, Patrick Hamilton, Cinthia Marcelle, Tiago Mata Machado, Gordon Matta-Clark,Ingrid Wildi Merino, Mariele Neudecker, Wilfredo Prieto, Aleksandra Wasilkowska, and David Zink Yi.

Slow Future
June 19 – September 7, 2014
The Centre for Contemporary Art
Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland

The theme of the exhibition Slow Future is degrowth, in other words, a social movement postulating a break with the current paradigm of economic growth in favor of aspiring to improve the quality of life within the capabilities of the environment. The propagators of degrowth, also known as degrowthists, oppose the dogma of economic growth, negate the supreme value of material goods, and propose alternative models of exchange – barter, cooperatives, co-ownership, and community exchange. According to them, assuming that economic growth is essential for development and constitutes a fundamental value to which we should all aspire – is a mistake.

August 18, 2014 Silvana Lacarra: ZavaletaLab https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/silvana-lacarra-zavaletalab/

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Artists: Florencia Bohtlingk and Silvana Lacarra.

Florencia Bohtlingk + Silvana Lacarra
July 8 – August 10, 2014
Zavaleta Lab Arte Contemporáneo
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Esta serie salio de una obra anterior, Jardín, cuando charlaba con otro artista. Un arte que surgió del arte. Arte al cuadrado. La profundización de otra obra, llevándola más allá de la obra misma. Arte naciendo del arte por el camino de la profundización de lo formal, de las luces y las sombras generadas por los huecos circulares y las raíces de mi Jardín. Aparición de lo que no suele ser visible por estar debajo de la tierra. Según como se mire, pueden hallarse en esas proyecciones de luz, imágenes figurativas: cielos estrellados; autos avanzando caóticos en coreografías extrañas por ciudades completamente oscuras; el mapa de un radar. Quién sabe. Lo que vemos de las cosas son, en última instancia, luces y sombras. Las cosas son apariencias, lo que aparece tal como aparece: fantasmas.

August 18, 2014 Alejandra Barreda: 9 Concurso Nacional UADE de Pintura https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alejandra-barreda-9-concurso-nacional-uade-de-pintura/

UADE Art

Artists: Pablo Archetti, Marta Ares, Alejandra Barreda, Juan Becu, Alejandro Bonzo, Santiago Cabré Flores, Valeria Calvo, Andrés Compagnucci, Daniel Corvino, Eugenia Descalzo, Verónica Di Toro, Juan Dolhare, Diana Dreyfus, María Ferrari Hardoy, Liliana Fleurquin, Juan Manuel Funes, Fernando Goin, Paula Grazzini, Nora Lestón, Balbina Lightowler, Emiliano López, Juan Facundo Maldonado, Mariela Marcus, Alberto Méndez, Mariano Molina, Alejandra Noguera, Adrián Paiva, Isabel Peña, Diego Perrota, Leonardo Robertazzi, Susana Rodríguez, Viviana Rodríguez, Matias Siragusa, Valeria Traversa, and Pablo Zicarello.

9 Concurso Nacional UADE de Pintura
September 4 – 26, 2014
Universidad Argentina de la Empresa
Buenos Aires, Argentina

En su reunión del jueves 12 de junio de 2014, el jurado del 9° Concurso Nacional UADE de Pintura, integrado por Laura Feinsilber, Valeria González, Fabián Lebenglik, Diana Wechsler y Horacio de las Carreras en representación de UADE, seleccionó la obra de los siguientes participantes: Pablo Archetti, Marta Ares, Alejandra Barreda, Juan Becu, Alejandro Bonzo, Santiago Cabré Flores, Valeria Calvo, Andrés Compagnucci, Daniel Corvino, Eugenia Descalzo, Verónica Di Toro, Juan Dolhare, Diana Dreyfus, María Ferrari Hardoy, Liliana Fleurquin, Juan Manuel Funes, Fernando Goin, Paula Grazzini, Nora Lestón, Balbina Lightowler, Emiliano López, Juan Facundo Maldonado, Mariela Marcus, Alberto Méndez, Mariano Molina, Alejandra Noguera, Adrián Paiva, Isabel Peña, Diego Perrota, Leonardo Robertazzi, Susana Rodríguez, Viviana Rodríguez, Matias Siragusa, Valeria Traversa, and Pablo Zicarello.

La artista Alejandra Barreda fue seleccionada con el segundo premio con la obra “Reverso III”, 2013, 150 x 150 cm.

El día 4 de septiembre de 2014 será la entrega de premios e inauguracion de la muestra en UADE Art, Lima 775, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. La exposición podrá ser visitada hasta el viernes 26 de septiembre, de lunes a viernes de 12 a 20, con entrada libre y gratuita contra acreditación de identidad.

August 12, 2014 Sandra Nakamura: Una promesa es una nube https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/sandra-nakamura-una-promesa-es-una-nube/

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Artists: Miguel Andrade, Rubén Gutiérrez, Eduardo Hirose, Sandra Nakamura, Raura Oblitas, Amapola Prada y Verónica Luyo.

Una promesa es una nube
July 11 – August 15, 2014
Centro Cultural de España
Lima, Peru

UNA PROMESA ES UNA NUBE comprende una reflexión crítica sobre Lima a partir de sus condiciones climáticas: una ciudad emplazada sobre el desierto, cuya principal fuente de agua potable proviene del deshielo de los nevados andinos, y que se encuentra recubierta por una nubosidad constante que rara vez produce lluvia.

En el contexto de la migración, esta gran nube que ensombrece la ciudad durante la segunda mitad del año -a punto de ahogarla a falta de luz y de excesiva humedad- puede entenderse como la promesa incumplida de la ciudad, o más bien, como una promesa en estado permanente de suspensión.

Es bajo estas condiciones, agudizadas por la expansión explosiva de la ciudad y la creación informal de barrios espontáneos, además de la carente infraestructura pública a causa del abandono de las autoridades, que millones de limeños en diversos distritos de la ciudad no sólo carecen de agua, sino que tampoco tienen acceso a la red de agua potable.

El proyecto pretende llamar la atención sobre esta alarmante situación a la vez que resaltar la capacidad de autogestión de varias comunidades afectadas, quienes utilizan técnicas artesanales para recolectar agua de la neblina. Así, en colaboración con el Movimiento Peruanos Sin Agua, se implementará un gran cartel atrapanieblas con la frase “UNA PROMESA ES UNA NUBE” en las lomas de Villa María del Triunfo, con el potencial de proveer diariamente hasta 1,000 litros de agua a la comunidad aledaña.

UNA PROMESA ES UNA NUBE ha sido desarrollado con ocasión de la exposición “Desplazamientos: colonización y conquista. La narrativa de la ciudad y la ocupación del espacio”, curada por Luisa Fernanda Lindo.

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August 12, 2014 Ramiro Oller: LPS (luz/shoji/piel) https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ramiro-oller-lps-luzshojipiel/

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Artist: Ramiro Oller

LPS (luz/shoji/piel)
Opening May 14, 2014
Centro Cultural San Martín
Buenos Aires, Argentina

“Subiendo las escaleras a oscuras, veo, en cada piso un haz de luz debajo de cada puerta; cada pliegue de cada ropaje de cada pintura”.

Este nuevo ciclo inaugura con una obra del artista Ramiro Oller, LPS (luz/shoji/piel): un objeto lumínico de escala monumental, que juega con la idea del vitral pero reformulado en torno a la abstracción y al concepto de negativo fotográfico.

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August 6, 2014 Omar Barquet, José Luis Landet, Christian Camacho Reynoso & Mauro Giaconi: Diferencias sobre lo blanco https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/omar-barquet-jose-luis-landet-christian-camacho-reynoso-mauro-giaconi-diferencias-sobre-lo-blanco/

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Artists: Omar Barquet, José Luis Landet, Ernesto Alva, Christian Camacho Reynoso, Ricardo Cuevas, Julie Escoffier, Mauro Giaconi, Blanca González, Sergio Gutiérrez and Nelson Santos.

Diferencias sobre lo blanco
July 5 – August 23, 2014
Curated by Marissa Viani Serrano
Casa Galeria D.F.
Mexico City, Mexico

La muestra multidisciplinaria Diferencias sobre lo blanco, se presentará del 5 de julio al 23 de agosto en Casa Galería, proyecto independiente de producción de arte contemporáneo situado en el sur de la ciudad. Con esta muestra Casa Galería pretende celebrar haberse convertido en proyecto exitoso dentro la plataforma Fondeadora, produciendo una exposición de alta calidad que incluye el trabajo de 10 artistas de contrastada trayectoria, tanto mexicanos como internacionales de países como Argentina, Francia y Ecuador. Encontramos entre los participantes a artistas como Omar Barquet (Mx) (becario del FONCA, beca Bancomer-MACG Arte Actual, seleccionado en la Bienal Rufino Tamayo) o el argentino José Luis Landet (también becario del FONCA y con una larga trayectoria en México…entre otros países). El plantel lo completan Ernesto Alva (Mx); Christian Camacho Reynoso (Mx); Ricardo Cuevas (Mx); Julie Escoffier (Fr); Mauro Giaconi (Ar); Blanca González (Mx); Sergio Gutiérrez (Mx); y Nelson Santos (Ec), todos de una reconocida y consolidada trayectoria.

Bajo la curaduría de Marissa Viani (cineasta, curadora e investigadora), tercera dentro ciclo de curadoras jóvenes que participan en Casa Galería este año,Diferencias sobre lo blanco aborda el concepto de lo “neutro” en la obra artística.

La muestra propone que cada artista, independientemente de su estilo, reflexione sobre su propio proceso encontrando la figura más sencilla o más acabada que le permita recuperar el sentido esencial de su pieza a través de la exposición de un fragmento o resto de ella misma.

Viani asegura que las pinturas, dibujos, collages, videos e instalaciones de esta muestra, se construyen tomando distancia de cualquiera que sea su objeto para poner de manifiesto una relación de infinitud en su propio dis-cursus, curso desunido e interrumpido.

De esta manera, lo “neutro” encuentra su expresión en un objeto que se desobjetiviza para dar origen a un nuevo objeto neutro. Lo “neutro” aparece en el momento en que se comienza a (des)dibujar, a encontrar (perder) el tono, el color, el aspecto, la forma o el motivo. Roland Barthes lo relaciona con el “Minimal Art”, surgido en Nueva York en la década de los sesenta, como reacción al desborde del expresionismo abstracto del action-painting, donde existe un renunciamiento a cualquier significación extra-visual de un objeto presentado como evidencia simple de una realidad irrefutable.

August 6, 2014 Emilio Chapela: Réquiem Opus II https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilio-chapela-requiem-opus-ii/

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Artists: Emilio Chapela

Réquiem Opus II
July 19 – September 13, 2014
Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo
Mexico City, Mexico

 

August 1, 2014 Ricardo Alcaide: The Language of Human Consciousness https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ricardo-alcaide-language-human-consciousness/

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Artists: Josef Albers, Ricardo Alcaide, Salwa Aleryani, Afruz Amighi, Rasheed Araeen, Dana Awartani, Marlon de Azambuja, Rana Begum, James Clar, Graham Day, Ayman Yossri Daydban, Richard Deacon, Adrian Esparza, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Mounir Fatmi, Basmah Felemban, Babak Golkar, Hazem Harb, Nargess Hashimi, Sahand Hesmayan, Saba Innab, Nadia Khawaja, Sol LeWitt, Hazem Mahdy, Sama Mara & Lee Westwood, Moataz Nasr, Timo Nasseri, Mujahidin Nurrahman, Seckin Pirim, Younes Rahmoun, Dania Al Saleh, Nasser Al Salem, Sara Salman, Gulay Semercioglu, Seher Shah, Ayesha Sultana, Gebran Tarazi, Michael John Whelan, and Ralf Ziervogel.

The Language of Human  Consciousness
July 11- October 10, 2014
Athr Gallery
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

For thousands of years, the question of whether the basics of geometry came naturally to all humans or if they had to be taught has been explored. According to Plato’s writings, Socrates attempted to determine how well an uneducated slave in a Greek household understood geometry, and eventually concluded that the slave’s soul “must have always possessed this knowledge.”

In the midst of startling havoc; humans by this very instinct seek to find order in this chaos, to reason with it; translating it to a language that is perhaps visual and universal is a common field of exploration for scientists and artists alike.

Athr Gallery will deliver a groundbreaking exhibition titled The Language of Human Consciousness in July and will include work by over 39 artists from around the world. Most of these artists will be exhibiting work for the first time in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East at large. To inaugurate the opening on July 10, Director of Tate Modern, Chris Dercon will moderate a discussion with pioneering artists in the field whom are Rasheed Araeen, Dana Awartani, Richard Deacon and Founder of Agial Gallery Saleh Barakat, who will be representing the late Gebran Tarazi.

Work by pioneering artists such as Josef Albers, Rasheed Araeen, Richard Deacon, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Sol Lewitt and Gebran Tarazi will be exhibited: Rasheed Araeen—a Pakistani national and London-based conceptual artist, sculptor, painter, writer, curator and founder of the The Third Text—will also be participating in the exhibition with his work, Zero to Infinity—of which a variation of the work was exhibited and acquired by the TATE Modern. The installation consists of 36 multi-colored cubes. The discussion will end with Rasheed inviting guests to move the units around the gallery, disrupting the uniform display to leave the cubes in a more complex and spontaneous arrangement.

The Language of Human Consciousness takes geometry as a starting point, accepting its heritage as a symbol of purity, intelligence and perfection and bringing it towards a more contemporary interpretation as a language for exploring the atypical, the imperfect and the alternative. Works are brought together that seek to dissect segments of times, contexts and places and open them up to universal interpretation. The works, in the potency of the contradiction between their infinite possibilities as geometric compositions and the range of their references—social, political, art historical or other—are reduced to a neutral ground: to a human and conceivable form.

August 1, 2014 Ricardo Rendón: Flatland https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ricardo-rendon-flatland/

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Artists: Carlos Aires, Mark Hogensen, Leigh Anne Lester, Rigoberto Luna, Francisco Merel, Ann-Michele Morales, Ricardo Rendón, Ansen Seale, Xochi Solis, and Jason Villegas.

Flatland
July 11 – October 11, 2014
Curated by Patty Ortiz
Museo Guadalupe
San Antonio, TX, USA

In a time of globalization, transcultural movement and the leveling of world commerce, economists believe that today the earth could be perceived as becoming flat. They have used this metaphor to describe the world economy. This condition can also be utilized in describing transcultural movement. With the ease of cross migration, cultures are continuing to collide at a more rapid rate. The globalization of culture, ideas and artistic practice is creating a new balance, interface and flat playing field.  Artists further the notion of “flatness” by the appropriation of popular imagery from their own and other cultures. The exponential growth of digital communication has accelerated this process. The universal presence of the actual flat screen monitor has brought about a flat screen mentality. Yet artists are able to juggle their ethnicity, cultural experience and global views to create works that are multilayered and distinct. The presenting artists of FLATLAND are at the intersection of cultural form, process and meaning in this emerging flat world.

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Images: Installation view, courtesy of the artist.
July 28, 2014 Pablo Jansana: Summer Exhibition https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/pablo-jansana-summer-exhibition/

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Artists: Pablo Jansana, Evan Nesbit and Letha Wilson.

Summer Exhibition
July 9 – August 8, 2014
Eleven Rivinqton
NYC, NY, USA

Eleven Rivington’s summer schedule includes two group shows-work by three late abstractionists at the gallery’s Rivington Street Space (Moira Dryer, Elizabeth Murray and Alan Shields) and, to balance it out, mixed-medium works by three emerging artists around the corner on Chrystie Street. Letha Wilson is probably the best known of the group; her photo-sculpture hybrids incorporate landscape snapshots and concrete, the outcome resembling a geological cross-section. Evan Nesbit’s large-scale paintings seemingly vibrate off the wall, their nubby surface texture achieved by forcing brightly colored acrylic paint through stretched burlap. Rounding out the show are Chilean-born Pablo Jansana’s crisply geometric photo, wood and aluminum compositions.

This exhibition has been mentioned by Art in America magazine as one of the must-see 5 shows in NYC. To read more about it visit Art in America.

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Image: “Waitress 2”, 2014, Ultrachrome 4880 inkjet, aluminum, fiber glass, plexi, fluted poly pro and enamel, 24 x 18 x 5 in. (61 x 45.7 x 12.7 cm)

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Image: “Waitress 3”, 2014, Ultrachrome 4880 inkjet, aluminum, fiber glass, plexi, fluted poly pro and enamel, 24 x 18 x 5 in. (61 x 45.7 x 12.7 cm)

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Image: “Waitress 1”, 2014, Ultrachrome 4880 inkjet, aluminum, fiber glass, plexi, fluted poly pro and enamel, 24 x 18 x 5 in. (61 x 45.7 x 12.7 cm)

 

July 28, 2014 Omar Barquet: Ghost Variation’s Prelude: The Midnight Sun https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/omar-barquet-ghost-variations-prelude-midnight-sun/

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Artists: Omar Barquet, Tamara Uribe, Rafael Pérez y Pérez, Irma Palacios, Roger von Gunten, Antonio Chemor, Benito Cabañas and Levi Ponce, Sketch & Noookye.

Ghost Variation’s Prelude: The Midnight Sun
July 18 – September, 2014
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Yucatán MACAY
Yucatán, Mexico

La exposición está organizada por la Fundación Cultural Macay A.C. y el Museo Fernando García Ponce-Macay. A continuación se enlistas los artistas participantes y sus respectivas obras.

Tamara Uribe: Frontera invisible
Sala 1

Rafael Pérez y Pérez: Si yo descubriera América
Sala 2

Irma Palacios: El color de la tierra
Salas 4 y 5

Omar Barquet: Ghost variation ́s prelude: The mindnight sun
Salas 6 y 7

Roger von Gunten: ¿Ante quién ocurre el mundo?
Salas 9, 10 y 11

Antonio Chemor: La mirada de las piedras
Sala 11 bis

Benito Cabañas: Por siempre y para siempre
Galería Norte

Levi Ponce, Sketch y Noookye: Muros pintados
Expoforo

July 25, 2014 Martin Pelenur: Konkurso https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/martin-pelenur-konkurso/

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Artistas: Diego Focaccio, Diego Masi, Pablo Conde, Jacqueline Lacasa, Martín Verges, Federico Arnaud, Ernestina Pereyra, Gabriel Regal, Andrea Finkelstein, Gustavo Fernández, Alejandro Turell, Sergio Porro, Rita Fischer, Alvaro Gelabert, Andres Santangelo, Gustavo Jauge y Martín Pelenur.

Konkurso
July 1 – August 10, 2014
Centro de Exposiciones Subte
Montevideo, Uruguay

Se propone como un proyecto curatorial que  pretende intervenir (y no solo reflexionar acerca de) las relaciones de poder, incluso las que corresponderían a su propia existecia y al lugar en el cual existe.
Esta intervención se propone no solo desde lo formal, sino también desde su producción y circulación, en sentidos que se desarrollan más adelante.
Konkurso no es precisamente un concurso de arte aunque se presenta como tal, es más bien un encuentro entre colegas artistas para accionar y pensar.
Es una exhibición colectiva de 21 artistas invitados por el curador a formar parte de un concurso de arte donde el jurado está constituido por los propios artistas participantes.
La mayoría de los artistas invitados pertenecen a un mismo corte generacional, nacidos en los años 60s y 70s, salvo algunas excepciones pero todos vienen desarrollando una producción estética contundente y han participado activamente en exposiciones dentro y fuera de Uruguay, así como de los Concursos y Premios que  se desarrollan en nuestro país.

Existe una cierta diversidad y calidad en sus obras y en sus carreras que hace que sean atractivos para este tipo de proyecto. Los artistas, además de presentar una obra, tienen que participar de manera colectiva, proponiendo, discutiendo, argumentando, pensando y haciendo.
Konkurso es un concurso donde el jurado son los artistas, ellos determinaran cual es la obra merecedora del primer premio.
Ellos decidirán si existe tal premio o simplemente es una mención. También ellos decidirán cual es el montaje más apropiado para la exhibición así como el tipo de charlas y/o encuentros que se realizaran con el público.
A partir del panorama de los concursos en nuestro medio, se intenta reflexionar y cuestionar la actividad de competencia en el arte, así como de la sobrevaloración de los concursos y sus jurados.
Pretende ser una experiencia abierta y un trabajo en proceso.
ALGUNAS POSIBLES PREGUNTAS SOBRE LOS CONCURSOS DE ARTE EN URUGUAY

¿Es saludable competir en el Arte?
¿Por qué hay artistas que solo aparecen en los concursos y casi nunca se los ve exponiendo?
¿Hay artistas concurseros?
¿Podrían definirse como artistas oportunistas?
¿La presentación de carpetas con fotos y proyectos es mejor y ha facilitado la participación de más artistas que la presentación directa de la obra en primera instancia?
¿Tienen la misma oportunidad de participar los artistas del interior que los de la capital?

¿Hay acomodo en los Concursos de Arte?

En nuestro medio donde hay muy poca presencia de Galerías y el Mercado es pequeño. ¿Los concursos son una forma de dar visibilidad, además de “vender” la obra?

¿Por qué en la década de los 80´s y los 90´s había tantos concursos?
¿Por qué, paulatinamente, dejaron de hacerse  los concursos organizados por privados (Coca Cola, Inca, Alcan, United Airlines, etc.)?
¿Por qué, paulatinamente, dejaron de hacerse casi todos los concursos organizados por Bancos y Entes del Estado (Banco Hipotecario, Banco República, etc.?

¿Por qué el Premio Nacional no se realiza todos los años, como lo indica la ley que lo promulga?
¿Por qué cada vez que se realiza se cambian sustancialmente las bases del concurso?
¿Por qué se propone que los participantes voten a uno de los jurados?
¿Traer jurados del exterior, ayuda a la transparencia de los concursos?
¿Quiénes organizan y por consiguiente designan a los jurados, establecen las pautas y los lineamientos para que se premie a tal o cual lenguaje y “tipo” de artista y obra?
¿Los veedores, que se supone representan y defienden los intereses de los artistas, son útiles realmente?

¿Por qué la Intendencia de Montevideo dejo de hacer el Salón Municipal?

July 23, 2014 Aníbal Catalán: AKA : POLCO https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/anibal-catalan-aka-polco/

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Artists: Aníbal Catalán

AKA : POLCO
March 30 – July 13, 2014
Gran Centro Cultural Acapulco
Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico

La Gran Galería del Centro Cultural Acapulco es la sede más importante del arte contemporáneo en Guerrero, donde fue inaugurada la obra estética y visual Aka:polco, del artista guerrerense Aníbal Catalán, acompañado por el secretario de Cultura del estado, Arturo Martínez Núñez.

De acuerdo a un comunicado de prensa, el secretario Arturo Martínez señaló a Aníbal Catalán, como el artista más importante de Guerrero por su trayectoria y representatividad a nivel internacional, y se congratuló que su obra Aka:polco, que aborda un concepto sobre el puerto de Acapulco, pueda ser disfrutada por acapulqueños y visitantes en la Gran Galería.

Asimismo, Aníbal Catalán agradeció la oportunidad que se le brinda de exposición en un espacio “tan apropiado como éste, que ya quisieran tenerlo en cualquier ciudad”, y expuso que el proceso creativo para esta muestra implicó viajar varias veces al puerto, además de un montaje de cinco días.

El artista Aníbal Catalán nació en la ciudad de Iguala en 1973; cuenta con una formación inicial en Arquitectura y con estudios en Artes Plásticas en la Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado La Esmeralda; su actual quehacer se apropia de los procesos de conceptualización de la arquitectura, así como en sus herramientas de producción.

El trabajo del igualteco se ha exhibido en la ciudad de México, así como en Los Ángeles, San Francisco, Suiza y Beijing. Su obra forma parte de la CAN Foundation (Contemporary Art Network Foundation) en Seoul. Korea, y de la Friedrich Ebert Foundation. FES Berlín. Ger, así como de la colección del Museo de Arte Moderno de México MAM y de la Estampa de la Casa, proyecto de apoyo a la producción de obra en el estado de Guerrero. La exposición Aka:Polco utiliza diferentes medios como la escultura, la gráfica digital, instalaciones de sitio específico y video, donde el objeto de estudio de Anibal Catalán es la arquitectura y el paisaje. Este proyecto derivó de la observación y la contemplación durante una serie de caminatas por Acapulco: dentro de las piezas de formato mural denominadas Zonas Morfológicas. La exposición Aka:polco en la Gran Galería forma parte de La Estampa de la Casa y podrá ser visitada hasta el 13 de Julio del presente año en el Centro Cultural Acapulco.

July 23, 2014 Marta Chilindrón & Graciela Hasper: Dialogues https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marta-chilindron-graciela-hasper-dialogues/

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Artists: Marta Chilindrón and Graciela Hasper.

Dialogues
July 10, 2014
Sicardi Gallery
Houston, TX, USA

In Dialogues, both artists explore geometry and transparency within their respective practices. Chilindron’s brightly-colored acrylic sculptures range from 12-inch cubes to almost 6-foot high movable trapezoids and spirals. Hinged together, these works can be reconfigured into variations on each shape, creating an interactive conversation with the viewer. Hasper’s untitled acrylic paintings on canvas also take geometry as their starting point. Overlapping and repeated shapes in a palette of bold colors are layered to allow for surprising juxtapositions and vibrant relationships between forms. Hasper’s paintings, like Chilindron’s sculptures, are not fixed in space; they can be installed vertically or horizontally, or changed over the course of the exhibition.

Dialogues places these exquisite constructions and paintings in counterpoint with one another, pointing out their conceptual and aesthetic points of intersection.

July 18, 2014 Artists: Dario Escobar, Diana de Solares, tepeu choc & Patrick Hamilton: Height x Width x Depth https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/artists-dario-escobar-diana-de-solares-tepeu-choc-patrick-hamilton-height-x-width-x-depth/

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Artists: Dario Escobar, Diana de Solares, Diego Sagastume, Esvin Alarcón Lam, Sandra Monterroso, tepeu choc, Alejandro Almanza Pereda, Carolina Caycedo and Patrick Hamilton.

Height x Width x Depth
July 31, 2014
The 9.99 Gallery
Guatemala City, Guatemala

Group exhibition celebrating one year anniversary of The 9.99 Gallery.

July 18, 2014 Sandra Nakamura: Instrucciones https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/sandra-nakamura-instrucciones/

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Artists: Natalia Revilla, Alvaro Icaza, Sandra Nakamura, Carolina Cardich, Gianine Tabja, Ignacio Alvaro, Jesus Morate, Rhony Alhalel, Rocio Gomez, Jose Ignacio Iturburu, Santiago Quintanilla, Ana Teresa Barboza, Luisa Fernanda Lindo.

Instrucciones
July 3 – August 15, 2014
Wu Galeria
Lima, Peru

Instrucciones es un proyecto experimental que complementa el Laboratorio 2013 y que busca materializar los temas surgidos en las discusiones entre los artistas participantes durante los seminarios del programa de la galería dirigido por el curador Max Hernández Calvo.

En Instrucciones cada artista participante ha preparado indicaciones para la realización de una obra de arte que luego fueron repartidas aleatoriamente entre los demás integrantes del grupo. Esta premisa responde la lógica del Laboratorio, que proponía abrir los procesos creativos de los artistas con miras a examinarlos. Las instrucciones buscan sistematizar dichos procesos creativos para ser emprendidos por otros artistas.

Las obras presentadas muestran aproximaciones diversas en su elaboración y reflejan las posibilidades de interpretación del lenguaje de las instrucciones. Si entendemos estas instrucciones como obras en sí mismas, con el experimento no solo se consigue compartir un proceso creativo desde la mirada del otro, sino también cuestionar el concepto de autoría en el arte y la relación entre el original y su copia, planteando la pregunta sobre el valor que cobra el proceso sobre la idea original y sobre la forma resultante.

Una selección de las obras creadas en Instrucciones será exhibida en el local de Wu Galería en Av. Sáenz Peña 129, Barranco del 03 de julio al 15 de agosto, mientras la totalidad de las propuestas junto con información detallada del proceso de desarrollo del proyecto podrá ser vista en versión virtual a partir del 03 de agosto en el blog del proyecto www.wugaleria.com/instrucciones.

Image: Sandra Nakamura, “Sin título”, 2014, Piezas de máquina de escribir
July 15, 2014 Pia Camil: The Little Dog Laughed https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/pia-camil-little-dog-laughed/

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Artist: Pia Camil

The Little Dog Laughed
July 12 – August 23, 2014
Blum & Poe
Los Angeles, CA, USA

Camil presents three interrelated bodies of work — a large-scale hanging curtain, paintings, and ceramic vases — which are inspired and based on abandoned billboards found around Mexico. Camil appropriates elements, such as strips of color or fragments of a letter or number, and transforms public advertisements into intimate household items, emphasizing the dysfunctionality of a mass consumer lifestyle with a playful but critical gesture.

The title for the exhibition derives from John Fante’s novel Ask the Dust, where Arturo Bandini, a struggling writer based in Los Angeles during the Depression, publishes an insignificant short story titled The Little Dog Laughed.  The story’s publication offers Bandini a glimpse of success. Interested in the main character’s false sense of self, Camil delves into the relationship between the personal and public in a modern dystopia.

A large hanging curtain, which typically references domestic and interior space, partially covers the entrance to the gallery and alludes to the idea of a theater backdrop or spectacle (the word for billboard in Spanish is espectacular). In the middle of the room, a large billboard-like structure functions as both a transparent screen and a shelving unit. Upon closer inspection, handmade ceramic vases become visible through the sheer canvas.

The paintings, like the curtain, are created using hand-dyed and stitched canvas, which has often been related to the so-called feminine. Though shapes and colors are repeated, each piece is uniquely constructed in an artisanal manner in order to decelerate the process of massive cultural production. In The Little Dog Laughed, Camil engages with an abstract image in different ways, uncovering the symbols and messages encoded in the cultural landscape.

Pia Camil (b. 1980) lives and works in Mexico City. She has a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art. In November 2014, she will complete a commission for the plaza of the Museo Jumex in Mexico City. She has exhibited internationally, including at ARTIUM, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain; the Biennial of the Americas, Denver, CO; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain; and Universidad de Guanajuato, Guanajuato, Mexico.

July 15, 2014 Leyla Cárdenas: Légère Inquiétude https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/leyla-cardenas-legere-inquietude/

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Artists: None Futbol Club, Léa Le Bricomte, Leyla Cárdenas, Olivier Magnier, Saad Qureshi, Valerie Vaubourg, David Renault (Les Frères Ripoulain), Claire Froës, Théo de Gueltzl & Octave Marsal.

Légère Inquiétude
June 12 – July 20, 2014
White Project Galerie
Paris, France

Through a series of new works of art by emergent artists, Légère Inquiétude explores the concept of concern as a way to question the restlessness that troubles the contemporary society as well as the young art scene. LI questions the syntax of the exhibition itself as well as the languages of the objects displayed in their intangible form, the materiality of the work and even the possibility of its disappearance and its re-enactment.

July 11, 2014 Mariano Dal Verme, Barbara Kaplan & José Luis Landet: Castillo Abierto https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/mariano-dal-verme-barbara-kaplan-jose-luis-landet-castillo-abierto/

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Artists: Basualdo, Mariano Dal Verme, Barbara Kaplan, José Luis Landet, Soriano and Luis Terán.

Castillo Abierto
July 4, 2014
Document Art Gallery
Buenos Aires, Argentina

 

July 11, 2014 Juan Pablo Garza, Marta Chilindrón & Marcolina Dipierro: New Dialogues https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/juan-pablo-garza-marta-chilindron-marcolina-dipierro-new-dialogues/

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Artists: Marta Chilindron, Matthew Deleget, Marcolina DipierroJuan Pablo Garza, Pachi Giustinian, Gerardo Goldwasser, Lynne Golob Gelfman, Artur Lescher, Lori Nozick, Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova, and Sam Winston.

New Dialogues
June 12 – August 16, 2014
Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

New Dialogues is a curatorial exercise, work in progress, that will reflect on the resignificance of the work of art through dialogue, contextualization, association, and juxtaposition. Throughout the summer, selected works of the gallery’s artists will share the space creating situations that will generate or identify new perspectives.

Image: Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova. Round Faux Marble, 2014, Vinyl, Wood, Steel, 41 1/2 X 41 1/2 X 12 Inches (105.41 X 105.41cm).
July 9, 2014 Clarissa Tossin: Transplanted (VW Brasilia) https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/clarissa-tossin-transplanted-vw-brasilia/

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Artist: Clarissa Tossin

Transplanted (VW Brasilia)
July 3 – August 2, 2014
Galeria Luis Strina
Sao Paulo, Brazil

Transplanted (VW Brasilia), is a natural latex cast of a Volkswagen Brasilia car. The first model entirely designed and manufactured by Volkswagen in Brazil, and named after the city which urban design emphasizes the usage of the car. A popular car, the Brasilia soon became a national design icon. The car used for the latex cast in Transplanted (VW Brasilia), is the central piece in the installation Brasília, Cars, Pools and Other Modernities, which will be on view at the Hammer Museum’s Los Angeles Biennial, Made in L.A., from June 15 to September 7, 2014.

The skin-like imprint is evocative of mass production processes since casting mimics the idea of endless copies.Transplanted (VW Brasilia), approximates industry and its abstracted processes to the individual body by anthropomorphizing a car. Moreover, the sculpture’s skin-like formal quality provokes considerations about the pursuit of cars as a third skin in consumer society.

The sculpture uses latex as an art material while also considering its cultural and historical background as an industry commodity within the context of Brazil. The titled, Transplanted (VW Brasilia), was inspired by a passage in Brazil’s latex history: Henry Wickham’s successful quest to smuggle seeds from the rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis, from the area of Santarém, in Brazil to Kew Gardens in London from where seedlings were dispatched to Malaysia thus dooming the Amazonian rubber boom. The word “transplanted” also further emphasizes the sculptural transformation of a hard car-body into a soft, malleable, cast/imprint of it.

Clarissa Tossin has a BFA by Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado, São Paulo, Brazil and a MFA in Art by the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Valencia, CA. Recent solo shows include: Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), Long Beach, EUA (2014); Brasília, Cars, Pools & Other Modernities, Artpace – San Antonio, Texas, EUA; Blind Spot, Blaffer Art Museum – University of Houston, Houston, Texas, EUA; Study for a Landscape, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, Texas (2013). Recent group shows include: Liberdade em Movimento, Fundação Iberê Camargo, Porto Alegre, BR (curated by Jacopo Crivelli); Bringing the World into the World, The Queens Museum, New York, NY (curated by Hitomi Iwasaki); Made in L.A. 2014, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA – curated by Connie Butler and Michael Ned Holte; Dispositivos para um mundo (im)possível, Roesler Hotel, São Paulo, BR (curated by Luisa Duarte); Unsettled Landscapes, SITE Santa Fe, NM – curated by Lucía Sanromán and Candice Hopkin, 2014).

July 9, 2014 Tulio Pinto: Tohu Wa-Bohu https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/tulio-pinto-tohu-wa-bohu/

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Artists: Martha Gofre, Túlio Pinto and Ío

Tohu Wa-Bohu
June 6 – July 11, 2014
Bolsa de Arte
SP / RS Brazil

Tohu wa-Bohu, surge de um termo hebraico que se refere, no Gênesis,  ao universo antes da criação. De difícil tradução, o espectro de sua interpretação ocupa desde a ideia de ruína até a de uma dimensão de infinita potência que nos permite aproximações com o Tao, por ser algo que não se pode expressar; e o Big Bang, por ser um paradoxal não-tempo que antecede o instante zero.

A exposição Tohu wa Bohu, por sua natureza diversa, cria um ecossistema em que a produção plástica dos artistas Martha Gofre, Túlio Pinto e Ío coabita em simbiose, ao mesmo tempo em que ressalta as especificidades e as volições particulares. Há um denominador comum, um ponto de intersecção que une as obras e são os fundamentos da exposição Tohu Wa Bohu: a pulsão escultórica, que funciona como motor para cada artista explorar a maneira como forças invisíveis, de natureza física e cultural, transformam a matéria; e a compreensão desta através do tempo. Cada artista articula esse universo, através de sua obra, de formas distintas. A produção de Túlio Pinto gira em torno do conceito de efemeridade e transformação exploradas a partir das características próprias dos materiais trabalhados. A Ío manipula a matéria como fonte para exercícios mnemônicos onde signos tem seu significado de origem obliterado e são substituídos por redes de relações formais e culturais abertas. Martha Gofre repensa o que seja limite, não só através dos objetos e materiais – nas associações feitas, mas também pela insistência dos gestos, resistência e falha. A exposição busca ressaltar os diálogos, as semelhanças, os encaixes e as possibilidades de recombinação das obras. Cada peça proposta ecoa e se reflete em outras obras da exposição. Estas interconexões ocorrem de maneiras distintas em todos os trabalhos, sendo esses alguns dos caminhos e leituras possíveis que expõem os liames conceituais e formais que formam as redes rizomáticas que as obras estabelecem através de si e do espaço expositivo. Além disto, há uma outra instância que entrelaça as obras para esta exposição, que é o exercício de tornar verbo uma das faces da infinita polissemia de Tohu wa-Bohu – suas forças constituintes e as leis que as regem – estabelecendo consonâncias fenomenológicas ou manipulando imagens mentais como objetos culturais em uma gramática em constante constituição e esquecimento. Esta natureza especulativa se reflete na disposição em que as obras se manifestam, sem limitar-se às formas tridimensionais: fotos, textos, vídeos e esculturas que se mantém, tanto, em uma tensão estática em meio a um acontecimento, quanto, em um aglutinador de diversas temporalidades. Tohu wa-Bohu é um exercício de reflexão e experimentação da aura, da fáscia ou tecido conjuntivo que recobre as propriedades que ordenam e desestruturam o cosmos que nos cerca.
July 3, 2014 Guido Ignatti: Premio Lucio Fontana https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/guido-ignatti-premio-lucio-fontana/

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Artists: Nicolás Mastracchio, Guido Yannitto, Julieta Bech, Erica Bohm, Ayelen Coccoz, Mariano Ferrante, Carolina Fusilier, Guido Ignatti, David López Mastrángelo, Milca Ronzoni, Rosana Simonassi, Mariana Sissia, Rodolfo Schmidt, Alejandro Somaschini and Valeria Traversa.

Premio Lucio Fontana
Exposición de los finalistas
June 28 – August 3, 2014
Museo Sivori
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Premiación de los trabajos de los dos artistas ganadores y de los artistas distinguidos con mención del jurado e la segunda edición del Premio Lucio Fontana.

El Premio, gracias al apoyo de Pirelli Neumáticos S.A.I.C., le permitirá a dos jóvenes artistas argentinos de origen italiano permanecer por dos meses en la ciudad de Turín, donde podrán desarrollar su propia capacidad creativa en contacto con el ambiente cultural y artístico local contando con el apoyo de la fundación IGAV (Instituto Garuzzo por el Arte Contemporáneo).

Con esta iniciativa, el Consulado General desea contribuir a renovar y recrear, aunque sea idealmente, el trayecto del gran lazo artístico-cultural entre Italia y Argentina, que en la figura de Lucio Fontana encuentra una de las expresiones más emblemáticas: nacido en Rosario en 1899, después de sus primeros estudios en Italia regresa a la Argentina donde inicia su actividad artística para luego establecerse definitivamente en Italia en 1947, donde concretará lo escrito previamente en Buenos Aires en el “Manifiesto blanco”, fundando el “movimiento espacialista” que lo llevará, con sus famosos “tajos”, a ser considerado uno de los más grandes innovadores del arte contemporáneo.

La selección de los artistas será realizada por un jurado compuesto por personalidades de reconocida experiencia de la realidad artística argentina contemporánea y cuyos nombres serán anunciados en el curso de la presentación del premio.

July 3, 2014 Eduardo Santiere: Traces of Creation https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/eduardo-santiere-traces-creation/

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Artists:  Anna Jóelsdóttir, Ásmundur Ásmundsson, Bjarni H Þórarinsson & Goddur, Creighton Michael, Davíð Örn Halldórsson, Eduardo Santiere, Eiríkur Smith, Friederike von Rauch, Georg Guðni,Guðrún Kristjánsdóttir, Hildur Bjarnadóttir, Hreinn Friðfinnsson, Hörður Ágústsson, Ilmur Stefánsdóttir, Ingólfur Arnarsson, John Fraser, Jónatan Grétarsson, Jónína Guðnadóttir, Karl Kvaran, Ólafur Elíasson & Elías Hjörleifsson, Ólafur Ólafsson & Libia Castro, Pétur Thomsen, Rúna (Sigrún Guðjónsdóttir), Sigurður Guðjónsson,Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir and Stefán Jónsson.

Traces of Creation
June 21 – August 24, 2014
Hafnarborg
Iceland

An exhibition of works that have been added to the Hafnarborg collection in the last five to ten years, made between the years 1952 and 2014.

July 1, 2014 Dario Escobar, Silvana Lacarra, and Pepe López: Punto de Quiebre https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/dario-escobar-silvana-lacarra-pepe-lopez-punto-de-quiebre/

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Artists: Joao Castilho, Deborah Castillo, Isabel Cisneros, Pietro Daprano, Rodrigo Echeverri, Dario Escobar, Mauricio Esquivel, Silvana Lacarra, Pepe López, Cipriano Martínez, Jesús Matheus, Jason Mena, Nydia Negromonte, Cecilia Paredes, Bernardita Rakos, and Marcos Temoche.

Punto de Quiebre, 16 ensayos latinoamericanos
June 26, 2014
Beatriz Gil Galería
Caracas, Venezuela

El siglo XXI se ha caracterizado por trazar una nueva geografía en el desempeño actual del arte contemporáneo. Dos ejes de acción, relativos y paralelos han dinamizado un complejo nudo de enlaces, novedades, descubrimientos y fluctuaciones: al alimón de las descollantes aperturas que la tecnología y el mundo web 2.0 ofertaron para todos los participantes de la cultura global se inició un ciclo donde el debate abierto comenzó a revelar nuevas zonas sombrías dentro de esas “supuestas verdades” compartidas por todos. Luego de una antesala plena de rupturas, de postulados teóricos, de conjeturas albergadas en el ejercicio humano y social de la escalada triunfal de la cyber-democracia, la nueva era sembró el desconsuelo de estridentes imposibilidades de conexión: guerras, desmanes, una miseria generalizada y un funesto desarrollo de neo-fundamentalismos reciclados que ya han devastado las lejanas esperanzas del progreso.

Sin embargo, la posibilidad individual ha surgido con empeño en medio de la crisis y el caos mundial que nos envuelve. Desde ese punto de quiebre que transformó las relaciones de lo particular con el entorno entre finales del siglo XX y los inicios del XXI, también se han develado nuevas estrategias de acción: eslabones donde el documento, la memoria, el testimonio y las diversas formas de asentar la fugacidad de la experiencia privada y colectiva anclan el poder de un individuo que ya no observa lugares soñados a dónde debe llegar para ser alguien, o inaccesibles utopías impuestas por otros que deben ser alcanzadas para encontrar algo. Ahora, más que nunca, las ilusiones particulares saben que es solo desde el constructo crítico de sus propias fronteras y desde su capacidad para aglutinar las voluntades que le rodean, el sitio real donde pueden y podrán consolidar un mejor lugar para sí mismo y para los otros.

En este sentido, las perspectivas del arte en general y muy especialmente del arte latinoamericano han transformado una buena parte de sus inquietudes, desviando esa área inicial insertada en la necesidad de colocar el propio discurso dentro de los movimientos legitimadores de la cultura foránea hacia una mirada interior mucho más plural, zona refractada de un arte que se levanta en el punto de quiebre de estas antiguas prácticas territoriales para presentarse como la reedición de una nueva sensibilidad, ahora focalizada en los propios problemas formales, conceptuales, políticos y sociales de los creadores, sin dejar de ser áreas de contenido capaces de albergar un carácter mundial-global.

Este ejercicio entra en conexión directa con varias de las pautas teóricas que para el arte actual ha introducido el crítico Nicolas Bourriaud quien se apropió del vocablo post-producción con la finalidad de concertar las señales de esa ebullición creativa distintiva de nuestro tiempo: empalmes donde la materia manipulada por el artista ha dejado de ser «materia prima» para elaborar «formas» a partir de productos culturales «in-formados» por otros; derivaciones artísticas donde el arte ya no es el aspaviento inédito heredado de la modernidad o la obra única capaz de sostener la verdad y la esencia de un lenguaje oculto. Ahora, son obras a partir de obras, productos de consumo, retazos culturales, trozos de film, objetos varios, material web, sonidos reeditados, estereotipos, reciclaje y apropiación, algunas de las destrezas y mecanismos que determinan el arte más reciente. La consecución de los procesos ya no guarda relación con las famosas rupturas formales de la vanguardia de turno o la necesidad latinoamericana de reinsertarse en las líneas de acción de este perímetro hegemónico. El acontecer que la globalización y la era de internet le han conferido a las relaciones entre autor, medios, lugares de difusión, obra y receptor, ha encaminado los procesos hacia la ilación de retazos donde la memoria, el fragmento, la historia individual y la metáfora serán las claves para una obra que más que asentamiento de verdades es discurso en proceso, periplo del sí mismo, puesta en escena de todas las inquietudes que ese sujeto artístico está tratando de convocar y transmitir.

En Punto de quiebre hemos querido medir y poner en relación las propuestas visuales de dieciséis artistas de generaciones distintas y de contextos latinoamericanos diversos (algunos residentes en países diferentes a su lugar de origen) que se insertan en el desarrollo de estas aristas tan características de nuestra contemporaneidad. A través de tácticas diversas y con la expectativa única de responder y preguntar a través del arte, revisitan y escamotean lugares donde la fotografía, la pintura, el dibujo, la performance, el collage, el video, la instalación y la escultura se enlazan como las bases de una acción en plena resonancia con los tránsitos vitales del contexto y la experiencia particular del yo dentro de los vaivenes virtuales y las huellas materiales del ser social. La investigación se inició sin temas específicos, pero poco a poco, en los intercambios desarrollados durante varios meses, miles de zonas en comunión vinieron a correr la cortina de ese lugar central que le dio el título a la muestra; Punto de quiebre, ruptura con las formas y los medios tradicionales de ejecución formal y conceptual que vienen a levantar una sucesión de crónicas visuales cercanas entre sí: desde los gestos efímeros, la permanencia de lo visual y las alegorías trashumantes de una presencia humana a contrapunto de la imagen (Joâo Castilho, Bernardita Rakos, Isabel Cisneros, Mauricio Esquivel); en las resonancias de un presente que reposiciona la historiografía latinoamericana, generando disposiciones fracturadas, residuos ancestrales y compendios críticos de una gran fuerza visual (Jesús Matheus, Silvana Lacarra, Darío Escobar, Cipriano Martínez); en los vínculos de la presencia, la acción del cuerpo físico y su relación con los elementos como foco que reinstala el ciclo vital de una memoria subterránea desprendida desde la referencia local hacia los vericuetos de la memoria colectiva (Nydia Negromonte, Cecilia Paredes, Pietro Daprano, Pepe López); hasta las señales de lo urbano, los olvidos de la historia oficial y sus contradicciones, así como las prácticas, movimientos y manipulaciones de un poder transfigurado y suscrito por relaciones ocultas y golpes ambivalentes en el día a día del ciudadano común (Jason Mena, Rodrigo Echeverri, Déborah Castillo y Marcos Temoche).

En Punto de quiebre todos los artistas dispusieron sus proyectos como una jugada verbal, un enunciado iconográfico alrededor de las distintas temáticas generales que los agrupan y que también podrían conectarlos transversalmente. Es por ello que se ha usado la figura del “ensayo” como núcleo central de descripción y reunión de los distintos entramados formales que cada uno ha aplicado para este primer encuentro; una apuesta curatorial que también funciona como un proceso abierto en el diálogo sostenido con ellos y que en ambos casos trabaja como un campo de investigación compartido, dando como resultado una cartografía amplia, plena de evidencias e incertidumbres, de discursos visuales transitivos, de engranajes implícitos y elementos fugaces que van tras esa imagen plural que está intentando narrar y narrarse frente a las fracturas individuales y colectivas- que inundan las mudables verdades de nuestra cultura contemporánea.

Lorena González I.

July 1, 2014 Pablo Jansana: I with out Kleenex https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/pablo-jansana-kleenex/

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Artist: Pablo Jansana

I with out Kleenex
June 4 – July 2, 2014
ArtEspacio
Santiago, Chile

La profunda crisis actual en la sociedad chilena, llena de marginalidades y gestos fallidos tanto en su discurso como en su arquitectura, es lo que denuncia el artista Pablo Jansana en I without Kleenex, exposición la que presenta alrededor de 20 piezas, entre pinturas escultóricas monumentales  y  piezas fotográficas escultóricas, donde los materiales usados poseen una fuerte carga simbólica, siendo casi en su totalidad industriales, varios de ellos provenientes de la alta industria fotográfica, además de aluminio, resinas, alquitrán, madera y elementos pre confeccionados, entre otros desechos de las grandes urbes.

Tras cinco años viviendo y trabajando en su taller en Nueva York, ciudad que ha marcado intensamente  su obra, el artista retorna unos meses a Santiago con motivo de preparar su próxima exposición en los dos pisos de Artespacio. En este periodo observa y reflexiona sobre las transformaciones tanto urbanas como sociales que han acontecido en nuestra capital. Su obra, marcada siempre por una profunda conciencia social y reflexiva, nuevamente absorbe su entorno y se expresa con un claro contenido político y una materialidad simbólica.

Jansana, quien no mostraba su trabajo en Chile desde  hace 7 años, ha sido avalado tanto por la crítica europea como americana. Fue representado por la Galería The Gomaen Madrid y fue artista destacado por ella en la Feria Arco en el año 2012. Recientemente,  expuso su obra en la Bienal del Museo del Barrio en New York; curada por Chus Martínez. Actualmente presenta su trabajo en Sculpture Center. En Julio de este año inaugurará en Eleven Rivington Gallery, también en dicha ciudad. En 2015 expondrá en Washington junto a 30 artistas latinoamericanos la muestra “New Geometrics”, en el Museo  de las Américas, Museo AMA en Washington DC.

Carolina Castro, investigadora y curadora de Arte Contemporáneo explica el título de la muestra:

“I with out Kleenex” confronta la maquillada y retocada imagen de la ciudad, como fachada de un país económicamente estable, con la realidad y el descontento visible en la fallida geometría de su urbanización simbolizada en sus desechos.”

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June 27, 2014 Clarissa Tossin: Made in L.A. 2014 https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/clarissa-tossin-made-l-2014/

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Artists: Juan Capistrán, Danielle Dean, Harry Dodge, Lecia Dole-Recio, Kim Fisher, Judy Fiskin, Magdalena Suarez Frimkess & Michael Frimkess, Mariah Garnett, Gerard & Kelly, Samara Golden, Piero Golia, Marcia Hafif, Channing Hansen, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, James Kidd Studio, Barry Johnston, Kchung, Devin Kenny, Gabriel Kuri, Caitlin Lonegan, Los Angeles Museum of Art, Tala Madani, Max Maslansky, Emily Mast, Jennifer Moon, Brian O’Connel, Harsh Patel, Marina Pinsky, Public Fiction, Sarah Rara, A.L. Steiner, Ricky Swallow, Tony Greene: Amid Voluptuous Calm, Clarissa Tossin and Wu Tsang.

Made in L.A. 2014
June 15 – September 7, 2014
Curated by Connie Butler and Michael Ned Holte
Hammer Museum
Los Angeles, CA, USA

The Hammer’s biennial exhibition Made in L.A. 2014 features works by 35 Los Angeles artists with an emphasis on emerging and under recognized artists. It debuts recent work and new painting, installation, video, sculpture, photography, and performances created specifically for the exhibition. The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive hardcover catalogue, as well as a full roster of free public programming.

June 27, 2014 Clarissa Tossin: Bringing the World into the World https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/clarissa-tossin-bringing-world-world/

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Artists: Alighiero Boetti, Chris Burden, Ray and Charles Eames, Harun Farocki, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Hikaru Hayakawa, Yumi Kori, L十 (PAK Sheung Chuen, WO Man Yee, LEE Soen Long), Liu Wei, Reanimation Library, Jessica Rylan, Tavares Strachan, Clarissa Tossin, Lawrence Weiner, and Wong Kit Yi.

Bringing the World into the World
June 15 – October 12, 2014
Queens Museum
New York, USA

Bringing the World into the World is an exhibition of international contemporary art about the experience of the act of seeing, and is inspired by the largest object in the Museum’s collection, the Panorama of the City of New York, a 9,335 sq.ft. scale model of the New York City’s five boroughs. Recapturing the lure and the wide-eyed amazement triggered by this historical artifact, Bringing the World revisits the panoramas—the 18th Century crowd-pleasing spectacle of 360-degree circular paintings—and their concepts and roles in the development of visual culture. The exhibition features a diverse body of works exploring the formal, conceptual, and psychological principles of panoramas as devices of wonder and the many ways in which we see, imagine, and comprehend worlds both familiar and unfamiliar.

Organized by Hitomi Iwasaki, Director of Exhibitions/Curator

June 23, 2014 Amalia Pica: One Thing After Another https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/amalia-pica-one-thing-another/

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Artist: Amalia Pica

One Thing After Another
June 5 – August 17, 2014
Curator: Sophie Kaplan
La Criée Centre for Contemporary Art
Rennes, France

Argentinian artist Amalia Pica‘s first solo show in France is a continuation of a project begun at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City in the summer of 2013. At La Criée she is presenting a group of sculptures and a new film in which she pursues her formal and political exploration of mathematical set theory. Pica’s works suggest systems of exchange, transmission and reception of information, at the same time as they offer a fresh reading of the avant-gardes and abstraction.

The issue of communication—of the statement and the performativity of verbal and non-verbal language—is a core concern for an artist committed to exploring its systems and modes of functioning. Through sculpture, photography, installation, performance and video, her work sets out to define the communicational codes we share beyond the barriers of language.

At the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011 Pica presented Venn Diagrams (under the spotlight), a projection of two coloured circles inspired by the set theory John Venn developed to describe the logical-mathematical relationships of inclusion and exclusion. The Venn diagram reference is especially significant for this artist: under the 1976–1983 dictatorship in her native Argentina the diagrams were banned from the school curriculum on the grounds of their subversive potential for instigating group dynamics and expressions of collectivity. Thus her work foregrounds the inherent political aspect of information exchange.

Since 2013, first at Museo Tamayo in Mexico with the exhibition ABC, then at Herald St Gallery, London, Kunsthalle Lisbon, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, and now at La Criée, Rennes, Pica has been replaying the issues raised by Venn’s diagrams. For ABC she arranged coloured geometrical plexiglas shapes along the gallery walls: the exhibition was regularly activated by performers who brought the shapes together at the centre of the space, held them up in a way that gave rise to certain combinations, put them back in a different place, and then repeated the exercise forming a new composition.

Photographs and a film resulted from these performances, and the film is being shown at La Criée together with a group of sculptures specially made for the exhibition. A joint venture with Mexican filmmaker Rafael Ortega, the film shows the shapes at rest, their slow activation by the performers and then the way they are combined, making up a new ‘sentence’ each time. As an attempt to start at the crucial point (the intersection) the two screens projection starts with such close angles of the shapes that the narrative appears extremely abstract and it slowly unveils the performance as the zoom travels outwards.

The sculptures—metal structures with the same coloured Perspex shapes suspended from them—are memorials of the different compositions formed by the performers in the film. Functioning as ‘fixatives’ of the shapes meetings, these visual statements form possible interpretations and narratives. Moreover the series synthesises many aspects of the history of abstract sculpture, including Minimalism, Kinetic Art and Constructivism.

Amalia Pica‘s exhibition at La Criée is a wordless narrative, an invitation to reflect on the construction, composition and effectiveness of all narrative and all language: in short, a visual semiotics.

Amalia Pica is born in 1978 in Neuquèn, Argentina. She lives and works in London.

Image: Amalia Pica, “Memorial for intersections #2″(detail), 2013. Courtesy Stigter van Doesburg, Amsterdam; Herald St., London; Johann Koenig, Berlin; Marc Foxx, Los Angeles. Photo: Bruno Lopes.
June 23, 2014 Alexander Apóstol, Iván Navarro, Amalia Pica and Gabriel Sierra: Under the Same Sun https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alexander-apostol-ivan-navarro-amalia-pica-gabriel-sierra-sun/

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Artists: Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, Carlos Amorales, Armando Andrade Tudela, Alexander Apóstol, Tania Bruguera, Luis Camnitzer, Mariana Castillo Deball, Alejandro Cesarco, Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker, Adriano Costa, Minerva Cuevas, Jonathas de Andrade, Wilson Díaz, Juan Downey, Rafael Ferrer, Regina José Galindo, Mario García Torres, Dominique González-Foerster, Tamar Guimaraes, Federico Herrero, Alfredo Jaar, Claudia Joskowicz, Runo Lagomarsino, David Lamelas, Gilda Mantilla and Raimond Chaves, Marta Minujín, Carlos Motta, Iván Navarro, Rivane Neuenschwander, Gabriel Orozco, Amalia Pica, Wilfredo Prieto, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Gabriel Sierra, Javier Téllez, Erika Verzutti, and Carla Zaccagnini.

Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today
June 13 – October 1, 2014
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
New York, USA

Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today reconsiders the state of contemporary art in Latin America, investigating the creative responses of artists to complex, shared realities that have been influenced by colonial and modern histories, repressive governments, economic crises, and social inequality, as well as by concurrent periods of regional economic wealth, development, and progress. The exhibition presents contemporary artistic responses to the past and present that are inscribed within this highly nuanced situation, exploring the assertions of alternative futures.

Organized by Pablo León de la Barra, Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator, Latin America, Under the Same Sun features works by 40 artists and collaborative duos from 15 countries. The artworks are organized around five themes: “Conceptualism and its Legacies,” “Tropicologies,” “Political Activism,” “Modernism and its Failures,” and “Participation/Emancipation.”

 

June 19, 2014 Eduardo Santiere: Inter-Spaces https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/eduardo-santiere-inter-spaces/

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Artist: Eduardo Santiere

Inter-Spaces
June 26 – August 1, 2014
Henrique Faria Fine Art
New York, USA

Today, most of us are quite comfortable with Google maps, and the ease with which we are able to shrink our search from a continental scope all the way down to a street view in a matter of seconds. The enhanced clarity that comes with each click of the mouse leads us to greater detail and ultimately to something we can easily relate to. In a similar way, one can easily become sucked into a drawing by Eduardo Santiere, graduating from an appreciation of the work as a cosmos on paper to getting lost in the most minute mark. The difference is that the map search takes us on a linear journey from macro to micro, whereas Santiere offers up every layer simultaneously, an entire world where neurons and Neptune are treated as equals.

Biologically, our brains are not wired for a non-hierarchical understanding of our world, either real or imagined, and we can’t help but impose some organization, even subconsciously. The smallest detail in any given quadrant of one of Santiere’s works—each blot, elliptical form, scratch or puncture— is arguably as significant as any other, or even as important as the piece in entirety. So while we may be programmed to organize these disparate parts into a global whole, something about his unique treatment of the forms forces us to look and perceive each part in a multi-textural way.

Santiere claims that he finds truth and beauty through the process of drawing. Without going from pre-conceived images, but rather allowing imperceptible traces and a kind of automatic marking process to guide him, he comes to a composition that vibrates with life. Once he turns these works out into the world, each of us digests that energy in a different way. The elements of his drawing have been likened to cells, computer circuitry, musical notation, outer space, utopian urban plans and dreamscapes, to name only a few. One thing each of these interpretations has in common, however, is growth or movement.

Santiere’s largest work to date, titled Inter-Space is unique in that he sticks to graphite solely, removing the color that is an integral part of much of his work. As the name implies, we see a complex web of stipple dots and clusters that conjure galactic bodies and constellations, seen in reverse negative. The individual dots seem to be magnetically drawn together at certain spots, perhaps slave to a pattern or rhythm of some unknown origin. It is somehow both violent and balletic, with markings that look to be the result of forceful contact with the paper, yet when viewed as a group seem to float and dance across the page.

In another series in the exhibition, titled Symphonies, we have a fairly encyclopedic sampling of Santiere’s gestural vocabulary. In particular, his “scratching”, as he calls it, is the result of his careful manipulation of the paper’s surface. This treatment creates a kind of relief that is similar to the burr created in the dry-point etching technique. The use of graphite and colored pencils adds yet another layer. In music, the term simultaneity is used to describe musical texture that occurs at the same time instead of in succession. In this musically-inspired series, it seems Santiere has visualized this construct.

Santiere’s incredible ability to render life and energy, both as whole forms and as individual stimuli, offers us a rare opportunity to experience art in a rich, textured way. Whether we are imagining our universe or an imaginary microscopic universe that exists on a speck of dust within our planet, experiencing simultaneity in art.

Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox, curators

Image: Eduardo Santiere, “Blind Date” (Detail), 2010, Graphite, colored pencil and scratching on paper, 11 1/8 x 15 in. (28.3 x 38 cm)
June 19, 2014 Omar Barquet: Ghost Variations https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/omar-barquet-ghost-variations/

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Artist: Omar Barquet

Ghost Variations
June 18 -20, 2014
Performance: June 17, 2014
MAAS Performance 
Long Island City, NY, USA

“Ghost Variations” is an interdisciplinary proposal launched in 2012 by artist Omar Barquet (Chetumal, México 1979), comprising a sequence of five projects organized like the movements of a symphony, as well as a series of five subprojects generated from experimental collaborations understood as “fugues”. Together they pose an analogy to the distinct evolutionary phases of a hurricane, emulating its intensities and movements, like the sketch of a spiral shape, mainly reflecting on the perception of time through the transformation cycles of a landscape.

2nd Fugue: The Groans of White Noise, brings forth an environment of tension which occurs at a sonorous and performatic level, carrying the spectator’s imagination into the most intense part of a hurricane. It is a project which is based in the emotional and physical tensions experienced in this phase of the meteorological phenomenon, occasionally verging on moments of delirium and using the acceleration of the pulse of the breath as patterns to elaborate the evolution of intensity.

This sonorous action also uses as reference a few fragments of the poems of Licofron, El Obscuro, where he constructs a labyrinth of associations around the ravings of Cassandra, Greek mythological character and Trojan princess.

This epiphany of catastrophe articulates a connecting link in which madness constitutes a repetition of certain phrases of the poem in a sort of mantra, whose progressive acceleration and intensity drift into meaninglessness, generating a confused and dense state, similar to the most intense phase of the storm creating a soundscape. The performance and sound experimentation will be in collaboration with sound and visual artist Richard Garet, and with experimental musician Javier Barquet. Both artists are based in New York City.

5th Fugue: The Broken Poem, is an action taken through video, based on a phrase from a poem by Paul Éluard. It is conceived from fragments of broken chairs, articulating a sculptural typography which quotes the poem slowly, and in fractures. Simultaneous to the projection of these phrases, there is a mound created randomly with the remains of the broken chairs, on a floor soaked with water, corresponding to the flood – the final phase of the Ghost Variations project sequence. Both these fugues depict an analogy of the storm and the chaotic nature of thought, where human emotionality manifests as an unstable and complex phase of the renewing energy of life cycles – a breath which changes in intensity, and as such, the state of things.

Omar Barquet was born in Chetumal, México, September 10th 1979. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from ENPEG La Esmeralda, in México City. He has exhibited in various national and international forums, in cities like New York, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Lima, Miami, Basel, Madrid and México City. He is a founding member of the Segundo Piso art collective, composed of Augustin Gonzales, José Luis Landet y Moris. He was the recipient of the Jóvenes Creadores Arts and Culture Fund National Grant, as well as the Arte Actual Bancomer MACG Grant. In 2009, he obtained a two-month residency in Capacete, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 2010, he performed his solo show REVERB, at the Museo Experimental El Eco, and in 2011 was commissioned to develop the LAPSES installation for the brand Hermés Paris – México. In 2013 he completed his residency for Casa Tomada art ists, which concluded with his solo show, entitled Ghost Variations’ 1st Fugue: “The Flock”, in Kunsthalle, Sao Paulo. For the second half of 2014, he is preparing a series of solo shows starting at the MACAY Museum in Mérida, Yucatán, a residency for his first solo show at Mandragoras Arts Space in New York, and a solo project at 123 Space in México City.  Since 2013, he collaborates in GRAMA RUINA, a visual and sound experimental collective with Fernando Soberanes, Javier Loyola, and Xavi Cunilleras.

June 13, 2014 Clarissa Tossin: Liberdade em Movimento https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/clarissa-tossin-liberdade-em-movimento/

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Artists: Allora and Calzadilla, Andrei Monastyrski, André Severo, Ariel Orozco, Arthur Barrio, Christian Marclay, Cildo Meireles, Clarissa Tossin, Dennis Oppenheim, Emily Jacir, Francesco Arena, Francis Alÿs, Lygia Clark, Mario Garcia Torres, Meriç Algün Ringborg, Multiplicity, Richard Long, Runo Lagomarsino and Stanley Brouwn.

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Curator: Jacopo Crivelli Visconti
May 30 – August 10, 2014
Fundaçao Iberê Camargo
Porto Alegre, Brazil

Adotado esporadicamente desde a década de 1920, o caminhar se consolida e difunde como prática artística a partir do final dos anos 60, mais ou menos no mesmo período em que a Internacional Situacionista e seu mâitre a penser Guy Debord, autor do clássico Teoria da deriva, abandonam a atividade artísticaem favor de um engajamento político explícito e militante, motivado pelos acontecimentos de 1968. Próximas das derivas situacionistas, as ações dos artistas que, ao redor do mundo, se lançam a andar sem muito mais do que “uma câmera na mão e uma ideia na cabeça” (como diria em âmbito brasileiro e de uma perspectiva distinta, mas de certa maneira complementar, Glauber Rocha) buscavam consolidar a ideia de uma arte não comercializável, que pudesse minar as bases da sociedade capitalista recusando a obrigação de produzir obras tangíveis e vendáveis. Em alguns casos, essas ações se opunham diretamente ao clima político em que foram concebidas, mas logo o “campo expandido do movimento” se firmou em contextos menos conflituosos, resistindo como técnica artística até os dias de hoje, apesar das mudanças do clima político.

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O conflito entre a unicidade e a efemeridade da ação, e o registro que, apesar de incompleto, é o que sobra dela e passa a ser conhecido pelo público constitui, sem dúvida, uma das idiossincrasias mais fascinantes e inegáveis do âmbito do movimento. Qualquer relato ou registro de uma ação é, por sua própria natureza, parcial, já que condensa algo muito maior: uma ação com uma determinada duração no tempo e extensão no espaço, um desenvolvimento, um acúmulo de experiências. Ao trabalhar frequentemente com materiais frágeis e em constante transformação (gelo, neve, areia, terraetc.), os artistas evidenciam essa condição, ao passo que apontam para a possibilidade de se criar laços mais duradouros, e uma noção de comunidade real e profunda, exatamente através do momento, do ato, do movimento que precisam ser vivenciados e experimentados. A disposição para entregar o aspecto final da obra ao acaso, pelo viés da intervenção mais ou menos direta dos outros,confirma o desinteresse dos artistas aqui reunidos para um objeto artístico convencional, perfeitamente acabado. Mesmo quando acontece em completa solidão, mais do que produzir algo novo essas ações visamà fusão do artista com o espaço,à simbiose com a sociedade. As trilhas espontâneas que se formam, em Brasília, em aberta contraposição e contravenção ao traço livre e poético, mas raramente prático, de quem desenhou a capital, sintetizam perfeitamente essas considerações: o movimento é o caminho para a liberdade.

June 13, 2014 Nuno Ramos: Ensaio sobre a Dádiva https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/nuno-ramos-ensaio-sobre-dadiva/

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Artist: Nuno Ramos

Ensaio sobre a Dádiva
May 29 – August 10, 2014
Fundação Iberê Camargo
Brazil

De 29 de maio a 10 de agosto de 2014, a Fundação Iberê Camargo apresenta a mostra Nuno Ramos – Ensaio sobre a dádiva. Pensando o conceito antropológico de dádiva – troca entre dois objetos distintos com base em valores simbólicos, e não econômicos – o artista desenvolveu o trabalho especialmente para o espaço do 4º andar da Fundação, em diálogo com a arquitetura do edifício. Na exposição, que tem curadoria do crítico de arte e filósofo Alberto Tassinari, objetos se lançam no vão do espaço expositivo e ocupam o interior das salas, acompanhados por doiscurtas-metragens intitulados Dádiva 1 – copod’águaporvioloncelo e Dádiva 2 – cavaloporPierrô, desenvolvidos pelo artista e produzidos em Porto Alegre pela Tokyo Filmes.

Toda a instalação gira em torno dessas duas trocas, que se desdobram em três formas: escultura, vídeo e réplica da escultura. Na sala de Dádiva 1, um pedaço de barco – elemento recorrente na obra de Nuno – se projeta sobre o parapeito da sala, sustentando um violoncelo sobre o vão do átrio e fazendo a ligação entre ele e o copo d’água. Na parede oposta, é exibido o curta-metragem correspondente, que mostra uma mulher recolhendo o copo d’água na praia, trocando o objeto por um violoncelo em um bar e devolvendo o violoncelo para a água. No roteiro original de Nuno, um mar calmo remete à metáfora purificadora da água marinha, porém, durante a produção, o mar virou o Guaíba e a Lagoa dos Patos.

O espaço dedicado a Dádiva 2 recebe um trilho de montanha russa que lança um cavalo de carrossel no vazio e o liga a Pierrô, aqui representado por um aparelho de som que toca o samba Pierrô Apaixonado, de Noel Rosa e Heitor dos Prazeres. O curta apresenta a história de um Pierrô, interpretado pelo artista Eduardo Climachauska, que é sequestrado por motociclistas em Porto Alegre e preso em uma casa, sendo devolvido um cavalo em seu lugar. Segundo o curador, a personagem tradicional e carnavalesca da Commedia dell’Arte, que, pela mão de artistas do início do século XX,  vira Pierrô Lunar, encarnação do artista, repete sua transformação na mostra de Nuno.

Na sala central, são colocadas réplicas em tamanho real das duas esculturas das salas anteriores, uma em latão e outra em alumínio, interligadas por tubos de vidro em que circulam dois líquidos diferentes, representando o sono e a vigília. Além das esculturas, são expostas gravuras produzidas pelo artista no Ateliê de Gravura da Fundação, com auxílio técnico de Eduardo Haesbaert.

Nascido em 1960, Nuno Ramos tem formação em Filosofia pela USP e se debruça sobre diversas formas artísticas, como pintura, desenho, escultura, vídeo, instalação, poesia, prosa e ensaio.  Na juventude, participou do ateliê Casa 7, integrando a Geração 80, responsável pela volta à pintura e fortemente influenciada por Iberê Camargo.

Em Ensaio Sobre a Dádiva, o público porto-alegrense terá a oportunidade de conferir de perto o trabalho de Nuno Ramos. A mostra será aberta no dia 29 de maio de 2014, às 19h.

June 11, 2014 Claudio Alvarez: Color, Light and Movement https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/claudio-alvarez-color-light-movement/

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Image: Ali se Vê – Objeto I”, 2013, Madeira, aço inox, alumínio, espelho, 9 x 9 x 31 cm, Ed. 2/2

Artist: Claudio Alvarez

Color, Light and Movement
May 30 – June 15, 2014
Ybakatu, Espaço de Arte
Curitiba PR, Brazil

Argentinean artist residente in Brazil will present the 3 pieces: “Isto não é uma lâmpada “This is not a Lamp”, “Ali se Vê – Objeto I” and “Sem Título”.

The exhibition “Color, Light and Movement” begins the project “Art and Industry”, which will accompany Marcantonio Vilaça Award for future editions . This initiative will enhance the relationships between the processes of artistic creation and industrial production. In the special edition , there will be a special room dedicated to Abraham Palatnik , pioneer of kinetic art in Brazil In this environment , will also be exposed productions of artists who provide provocative points of contact with the work of Palatnik.

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Image: “S’título”, 2014, Stainless Steel and Acrylic, 110 x 24 x 17cm, Ed. 5/5

Isto não é uma lâmpada

Image: “Isto não é uma Lâmpada” This is not a Lamp, 2013, Wood, stainnless steel, super led and eletric motor, 40 x 17 x 26cm.
June 11, 2014 Túlio Pinto: Lines https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/tulio-pinto-lines/

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Artist: Túlio Pinto

Lines
May 14, 2014
Springsnow in Amsterdam
Artigo Rio Feira de Arte Contemporânea and Arttown Rio

PRÊMIO ARTIGO Rio 2013 – a 1a. etapa da residência do artista Túlio Pinto, foi concluída com este lindo workshop em Frankendael – Amsterdam. Em breve ele volta para ser uma das principais atrações do Springsnow Festival.

 

June 6, 2014 Felipe Mujica: Idea di Frattura https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/felipe-mujica-idea-di-frattura/

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Artists: Armando Andrade Tudela, Alejandro Cesarco, Elena Damiani, Clara Ianni, Runo Lagomarsino, Mateo Lopez, Felipe Mujica, Laercio Redondo.

Idea di Frattura, Opinione Latina 2
May 8 – July 19, 2014
Curated by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti
Francesca Minini Gallery
Milano, Italy

As the collaborator of Oscar Niemeyer on some of the most suggestive projects in Brasília, Athos Bulcão is the creator of the tiles that adorn so many of the public buildings as well as the edifices of the capital’s superquadras. The peculiarity of Bulcão’s method was to leave room for the creativity of the workers installing the tiles, to whom he supplied only some general instructions (usually concerned with avoiding the creation of compositions that would be too “obvious”), leaving them for the most part free to juxtapose the designs how they saw fit. If, over the course of his very long career, Oscar Niemeyer has on more than one occasion affirmed his militant communism (a claim belied, or at least weakened, by his innumerable public commissions realized for various political regimes), Bulcão’s activity reveals authentically and deeply democratic aims. The great mural painting by Laercio Redondo (part of the series Lembranças de Brasília, 2012) pays homage to Bulcão and to his method which is so open and subject to the circumstances life that are beyond one’s control; in this sense he is subtly anti-modernist. Although not directly inspired by Bulcão, the curtains produced by Felipe Mujica for the exhibition, part of a series in progress, should be interpreted in an analogous manner, since the artist defines some fundamental parameters, formally ascribable to the modernist tradition, but then goes on to leave a certain margin of freedom to the collaborators who produce them, by allowing them, for example, to choose the color of the fabrics. The collages and the sculptures by Elena Damiani often take the same repertory of modernist architecture as a starting point, but in this case the purity of the forms appears as contaminated, almost repudiated by the surprisingly fluid juxtaposition of utterly distinct architecture and spaces, in the case of the collages; and by the very widely differing materials such as glass and marble (the one transparent and fragile, the other strong and opaque), in the case of the sculptures. Through the images Damiani moreover establishes, albeit in a fragmentary and non-linear fashion, a narrative; a fantastical and complex universe in which we feel it would be possible to live, and, perhaps, in which someone does indeed live.

Despite not having a soundtrack, Foro (Armando Andrade Tudela, 2013) is intrinsically musical: the hands of the artist and of the architecture students who have helped him to build a model of the Endless House developed by Friedrich Kiesler have designed a concert of extremely melodic forms and gestures. The synesthetic experience transmitted by the film is coherent with its subject: Kiesler’s utopian house was at the same time an idea and the realization of an idea, fusing in a single artifact two theoretically distinct moments. The sculptures of the seriesLores (2014), produced by Andrade Tudela for this exhibition, use the same material and a principal which is in some way specular, as they do not allude to a hypothetical future construction on a larger scale, of which they would constitute the model, but of the modus operandi according to which they are constructed. The artist prepares the molds for the sculptures so that, when they are removed from the mold, some “linings” break, and join the final form by painstakingly observing the sculpture from every angle to find the exact point in which to insert the broken section. Andrade Tudela has realized two versions for each mold, inevitably different from one another because he cannot control the exact point in which the “lining” will break, and, consequently, where the right place to insert the broken section will be. The idea of a fracture, of a violence often invisible, but which lies beneath the creation of utopian, spectacular and charming architecture, forms in a certain sense the core of the exhibition. The ruthless suppression of workers’ strike during the construction of Brasília, and above all the manner in which this suppression is denied by Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa in the interviews conducted by Clara Ianni in Free Form / Forma LivreParte I and II (2013), speak of precisely this fracture that has never-quite-healed on which the capital was built, and by metonymy the country and even the continent itself. An atavistic fracture, which can be traced all the way back to the founding trauma of colonization, and the way in which, in the following centuries, the sociopolitical arena has remained substantially the same, continuously showing the same asymmetric division of power and access to natural resources. The war to which Ianni alludes in War II (2011-12) is only by appearances that of a board game: what makes these ruthless and totalitarian aims suddenly frightening and yet familiar, it not their insertion in a different context, but the manner in which, in this new context, they echo a tragic past, and perhaps an unobserved present. Like architecture, language can both reveal and hide, it can propose military aims, or, more subtly, choose not to speak of the problem directly, but to allude to it transversally, silently.

This is what forms Alessandro Cesarco’s Footnotes, 2014, which evoke, in a seemingly unintellectual context, parallel realities, the capacity of art and language to transform reality, revealing its fantastic side. In this sense, even though they may seem like a digression from the exhibition’s main themes, Cesarco’s notes in fact constitute the key to understanding all that can be (and is) said and denied, that language is an architecture of the word, which, by constructing various levels of interpretation, on one hand conceals, almost protectively, the state of things, and on the other allows it to be filtered, sifting out the fracture that is to be sought, once again, beyond what we believe we see. Analogously, the graphic alphabet invented by Mateo López to compose his poetry-sculptures, which allude to the great tradition of concrete poetry in Latin America, is not immediately comprehensible. With his words made of folded sheets of paper, López doesn’t so much say as refer, suggest, and open up a field of possible combinations. Thus the lithograph which provides the key to interpreting the work is a sort of dictionary that should allow one to understand, but it is clear that it does not tell us everything, because that would be impossible: some things, when one attempts to explain them, dissolve into thin air. And it is in this unsayable context, which in certain sense precedes the works, or underlies them, almost to highlight the need to look beyond appearances, that Runo Lagomarsino has installed it wallpaper, transforming the exhibition space into a theatrical stage adorned with a sign that is apparently decorative, but which actually speaks, once again, of violence and colonization. Illiterate, the conquistador Francisco Pizarro would sign is name by twice repeating a sort of abstract scrawl, a sign as arbitrary and personal as any violence, which always had to be authenticated by a public notary who signed in the middle. If, as suggested by the title of another works of Lagomarsino’s, Colombo’s enterprise might seem, at the beginning, like a joke (We All Laughed at Christopher Columbus, 2003), today nobody is laughing; Pizarro’s lopsided signature closes the circle opened by the cordial forms of Athos Bulcão, and reminds us that it remains, indelible and alert, underneath any new attempt to establish an authentically democratic process in Latin America.

Jacopo Crivelli Visconti

June 6, 2014 Nicolás Gómez: Highway https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/nicolas-gomez-highway/

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Artist: Nicolás Gómez

Highway
May 15, 2014
Galería Nueveochenta
Bogotá, Colombia

June 2, 2014 Julián León & Carola Zech: About Wall https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/julian-leon-carola-zech-wall/

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Artists: Elena Dahn, Julián León Camargo, Kirsten Mosel, Carola Zech

About Wall
May 18 – June 20, 2014
EspacioKamm
Buenos Aires, Argentina

ESPACIO KAMM is a new project room which is located in the heart of the Argentinian neighborhood Palermo. This initiative is a project in Buenos Aires that begun with the association of the two foreign artists: Kirsten Mosel (Germany) and Julián León Camargo (Colombia) plus the Swiss art gallery, specialized in contemporary Latin-American art, IVO KAMM (Zurich). This art space opens its doors to continue with the project that has started by this European gallery, to establish a dialogue between the artists in both continents.

This month ESPACIO KAMM inaugurates its art space with “ABOUT WALL”, a collective exhibition integrated by four artists (Argentinians and foreigners), that functions as a foretaste of its annual cycle which involves six exhibitions of international artists. This event is taking place this year, first in Buenos Aires and then in Zurich.

This show consists in site-specific pieces by Elena Dahn (Argentina), Julián León Camargo (Colombia), Kirsten Mosel (Germany) and Carola Zech (Argentina). Each intervention thinks about the nature of the pictorial issue in an space expansion, both conceptual and physical.

 

Ubicado en el corazón del barrio porteño de Palermo, ESPACIO KAMM es un nuevo emprendimiento expositivo en Buenos Aires que surge de la asociación de los artistas extranjeros Kirsten Mosel (Alemania) y Julian León Camargo (Colombia) y de la galería suiza IVO KAMM (Zurich) . Se abre con el objetivo de integrar el proyecto iniciado en Europa por esta galería especializada en arte contemporáneo latinoamericano de establecer un diálogo entre artistas de este continente con sus pares europeos.

Este nuevo espacio en Buenos Aires abre sus puertas en mayo con “ABOUT WALL” una colectiva de 4 artistas (extranjeros y argentinos) como antesala del ciclo anual de seis exposiciones de artistas internacionales que realizará en el 2014 y que luego viajará a Zurich.

Esta primera exposición consiste en intervenciones para espacio específico de Elena Dahn (Argentina), Julián León Camargo (Colombia), Kirsten Mosel (Alemania), Carola Zech (Argentina) con intervenciones que reflexionan sobre el carácter de lo pictórico en una expansión conceptual y física de la obra en el espacio.

June 2, 2014 Carla Arocha – Stephane Schraenen, Sigfredo Chacón & Jorge Pedro Núñez: En blanco y negro https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/carla-arocha-stepahne-schraenen-sigfredo-chacon-jorge-pedro-nunez-en-blanco-y-negro/

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Artists: Carla Arocha- Stephane Schraenen, Antonio Asis, Paulo Castro, Sigfredo Chacón, Adriana Jebeleanu and Jorge Pedro Núñez

En blanco y negro
April 2014
Kabe Contemporary
Miami, FL, USA

En blanco y negro is a group show featuring works by six contemporary artists. The works that comprise this exhibition display a diverse array of techniques: drawing, painting, photography and sculpture, dating from 1969 to the present. The common thread that bonds these pieces evoke a distinct vocabulary of mass, line and texture utilizing black and white materials.

May 27, 2014 Dario Escobar: Broken Circle https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/dario-escobar-broken-circle/

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Artist: Dario Escobar

Broken Circle
May 18 – August 27, 2014
Curated by Alma Ruiz
CAFAM Museum
Los Angeles, CA, USA

Guatemalan artist Darío Escobar famously repurposes sports equipment to construct compelling sculptures and installations that convey movement and geometry. For his first solo museum exhibition in Los Angeles, he will create a site-specific installation composed of approximately 1,000 red bike reflectors that will be attached to the wall in undulating and rotating patterns. The mural-like wall installation resembles a large scale drawing activated by light and the visitor’s own movement through the gallery space.

May 27, 2014 Mariela Scafati: Las palabras vienen después https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/mariela-scafati-las-palabras-vienen-despues/

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Artist: Mariela Scafati

Las palabras vienen después
May 11, 2014
María Casado Home Gallery
Buenos Aires, Argentina

 

May 23, 2014 Horacio Zabala: Spaces of Repression and Liberation https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/horacio-zabala-spaces-repression-liberation/

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Artists: Horacio Zabala & Eduardo Kac

Spaces of Repression and Liberation
May 15 – June 21, 2014
Henrique Faria
New York, USA

Spaces of Repression and Liberation is a dual exhibition of historical works by Horacio Zabala and Eduardo Kac. Both artists were working during tumultuous periods, one in Argentina and the other in Brazil, near the end of dictatorial regimes. As societal and political limitations bore down upon civilians, artists sought alternative modes of creative expression as a means to continue developing artistically while, importantly, responding to the harsh realities of their current situation. Through their different series of works, Zabala and Kac explore the effects that authoritarianism, censorship and violence had on the body, identity and individuality.

*Image: Horacio Zabala, Anteproyecto de arquitectura represiva, 1973. Pencil on paper, 12 3/5 x 18 in. (32 x 45.7 cm) each. (Detail)
May 23, 2014 Marco Maggi: West vs. East https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marco-maggi-west-vs-east/

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Artist: Marco Maggi

West vs. East
May 10 – June 28, 2014
Hosfelt Gallery
San Francisco, CA, USA

Uruguayan artist Marco Maggi fills more than 6,000 square feet of exhibition space with miniscule drawing and sculptures that are virtually invisible except for the shadows they cast. Glance around the exhibition and you’ll see little but vast white space. As you slow down and really look, you’ll discover astonishing density, precision, beauty and wisdom. With this warehouse-scaled, site-specific installation of inconspicuous objects, Maggi hopes to change your perspective, forcing you to examine what you think you know, and revealing it inadequate.

Marco Maggi is renowned for virtuoso drawing and innovative applications of common materials uncommonly used in art-making. His tightly-packed, inscriptive encryptions have been compared to microchips, satellite imagery and archaic alphabets. But there’s more to the work than technical skill and formal allure. Maggi continues to use blindness as a metaphor for our inability to digest the mass of information in the information age; our incapacity to see through the half-truths of mass media; our ineptitude at considering the perspective of ‘the other’; our incompetence at focus; and our unwillingness to take the time to learn.

Maggi’s art is awe-inspiring, but he makes you work for it. He compels you to move around until the light catches the glint of graphite or casts a shadow from a delicately carved slice of paper. He forces you to look obliquely at his tiny megalopolises, to gaze into security mirrors, even to crawl around on the floor. Having you physically change your position to decode his artwork is a metaphor for viewing the world from a different perspective – through someone else’s eyes – and, literally, someone else’s eyeglasses, in the case of one of the pieces in this exhibition. It’s only by changing your viewpoint that you gain insight.

The content and context of this exhibition are geopolitics. We read or see second, third or fourth-hand reports of events that don’t make sense, happening in places we’ve never been, between cultures we don’t understand. How can we begin to comprehend our world? Maggi says, “Focus is not the object or the subject, but the time between the object and the viewer. I am interested in the pace of the viewing process.” By slowing the viewer, Maggi hopes to evoke empathy and hence consciousness.

Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, Marco Maggi lives in New Paltz, New York. His work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America since 1998. His work is in major public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Daros Collection, Zurich; Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, New York; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Sao Paulo; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

*Marco Maggi, “Stacking Quotes”, 2014, Cut paper, bound notebooks, shelf
May 19, 2014 Fabián Burgos: Instante Eterno https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/fabian-burgos-instante-eterno/

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Artist: Fabián Burgos

Instante Eterno
Curated by Maria Constanza Cerullo
May 10 – July 11, 2014
MACBA
Buenos Aires, Argentina

MACBA inaugura el calendario 2014 en el mes de mayo con una exhibición antológica del artista argentino Fabián Burgos. Un conjunto de más de 15 piezas del artista realizadas entre los años 2000 y 2014, se reúnen bajo la perspectiva curatorial de María Constanza Cerullo, Curadora en Jefe de la colección MACBA.

Con un juego de sentidos opuestos y en convivencia, en palabras de la curadora, Instante eterno, nos remite a las diversas investigaciones que Fabián Burgos recorre en el terreno pictórico, asociado a las vertientes del neocinetismo y el arte óptico. Siguiendo una larga tradición que se vincula a las corrientes de la abstracción geométrica preocupadas por el efecto de la forma, el color y la vibración de los mismos que percibe la retina, Burgos dialoga de forma libre e impertinente con las figuras canónicas de la tendencia.

A partir del empleo de mecanismos de apropiación y cita, así como los efectos retinianos del fenómeno moiré, Burgos repiensa y homenajea a artistas claves de la historia del arte moderno y contemporáneo. En su texto Constanza Cerullo, a propósito del título El amor probablemente de una muestra que presentó Burgos en la que fuera durante años su galería -Dabbah Torrejón- la curadora menciona:

“Este rotulo tan provocativo pareciera referir a la admiración por los artistas que cita a la vez que un juego irreverente. La producción de Burgos esta signada por una profunda transgresión, al alterar los rasgos mas característicos de cada una de las piezas referidas. Las obras mas representativas de Soto, Riley, Max Bill y Buren fueron apropiadas y reformuladas. Esta transgresión a los artistas por los que el tiene devoción se replica en el titulo, que hace referencia a la película, El diablo probablemente (1977), de Robert Bresson, uno de sus directores favoritos”.

Asimismo se presentarán piezas de las series tituladas Sin fin, espirales y aquellas conocidas como cercos, obras donde además de la anécdota cinéfila, el accidente y la certeza conviven entre sus universos de referencia.

May 19, 2014 Edwin Monsalve: Contraexpediciones, Más allá de los mapas https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/edwin-monsalve-contraexpediciones-mas-alla-de-los-mapas/

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Artists: Mauricio Carmona, Colectivo La Colmena, Eulalia Valdenebro, Patricia Lara, Gloria Jaramillo, Paola Rincón, Santiago Vélez, María Antonia Pérez y Ana Lucia Cárdenas, Leonel Vásquez, Antena Mutante, Fernando Escobar, Julián García, Edwin Monsalve, Julián Urrego.

Contraexpediciones, Más allá de los mapas
April 8 – June 30, 2014
Curators: Carolina Chacón Bernal, Juan Alberto Gaviria, José Roca and Ana María Lozano
Museo de Antioquía
Medellín, Colombia

Contraexpediciones. Más allá de los mapas es una reflexión desde diversas prácticas artísticas sobre las formas en que las comunidades antioqueñas habitan sus territorios. Esta muestra aborda, a través del arte, temas como medio ambiente, biodiversidad, saberes ancestrales, agricultura, memoria comunitaria, desarrollo urbano, poblaciones indígenas y rurales.

La exposición revisará conceptos como el paisaje, no solo como un género del arte, sino, también, como una representación que evidencia la forma en que los grupos humanos se relacionan con el territorio desde sus contextos culturales y problemáticas sociales. El nombre de la exposición es una respuesta al imaginario colonizador, imperialista y eurocéntrico implícito en el término expediciones, como las ocurridas en Colombia en el siglo XIX, lo que motivó al Museo de Antioquia a plantear una serie de contraexpediciones que visibilizan las múltiples miradas a los territorios y la construcción colaborativa de conocimiento sobre estos.

Contraexpediciones contribuye a la discusión sobre la responsabilidad que, como grupos humanos, tenemos ante la actual crisis ambiental, y aporta desde el campo artístico alternativas de cambio frente a ella. La exposición presenta un fragmento del estado actual de diversas problemáticas ambientales, así como los conocimientos comunitarios y las alternativas micropolíticas que han surgido para combatirlas, ubicando todo esto en un contexto más amplio de conflictos socio-ambientales en el país.

Este proyecto cierra la Plataforma Antioquias, realizada desde 2013 con motivo del Bicentenario de la Independencia del departamento, y que estuvo conformada, además, por las exposicionesAntioquias, diversidad e imaginarios de identidad y ¡Mandinga sea! África en Antioquia

May 9, 2014 Eduardo Costa: Paisajes Argentinos https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/eduardo-costa-paisajes-argentinos/

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Artists: Sergio Avello, Javier Barilaro, Jacques Bedel, Antonio Berni, Carlos Bissolino, Juan José Cambre, Eduardo Costa, Eugenio Daneri, Miguel Diomede, Fermín Eguia, Raúl Escari, José Garofalo, Vicente Grondona, Estanislao Guzmán Loza, Fortunato Lacamera, Benito Laren, Rómulo Maccio, Enrique Policastro, Miguel Carlos Victorica.

Paisajes Argentinos
April 23 – May, 30, 2014
Curated by Alfredo Prior
Vasari Galeria
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Paisajes argentinos. Si, como intuyó Monet, el primer nenúfar contiene al último nenúfar, el árbol de Corot no ocultará al bosque de Klimt.

Un gesto desesperado ¿donde se niega el tiempo? sostiene al paisajista en su evaluación del último color, última luz, último trazo. Pero en su astucia, su malicia de pintor dice último trazo cuando en realidad lo que dice es el penúltimo.

¿Un momento del artista o un momento de la naturaleza?

Poussin del natural, según la proposición de Cézanne:
Es como un naipe. El sol allí tan pavoroso que me parece que los objetos no son sino siluetas.

El polo opuesto del modelado:
Una sucesión de planos. El Mont Sainte-Victoire en 3D, plenitud de sus facetas vibrantes.

¿Cepillar el espacio o pasar entre los creyentes el cepillo del agnóstico?

Paisajes argentinos. Pequeños detalles en los que parece que las manos que los ejercitan descansan también en los hombros del espectador.

¿Será, que en esa curiosidad del artista tan argentina del espectador se desespera por las variaciones, las sorpresas, las asociaciones en las que se acogerá su participación?

Pampas, Llanos, Sierras partidas que en su acabado inútil dependan las leyes circunvaladas de su sabiduría.

Acabado que depende del ojo y la cara que nos sonríe.

En primer lugar, quiero nombrar a Miguel Carlos Victorica, pintor de la pintura pura, pintor de la pintura misma. ¿En qué lugar habría que colocar a este pintor de retratos, desnudos, paisajes, naturalezas muertas, ante el folclorismo latinoamericano que aplaude el “Imperio”? ¿Cuál sería su situación de homosexual y alcohólico en las primeras décadas del siglo XX? Ecléctico, nómade de si mismo, no marca ningún rumbo sino el de su propio deseo. Paisajes, que sin enunciarlo serán Heráclito y sus fluidos.

Enrique Policastro aborda el paisaje argentino sin pintoresquismo alguno. Se imponen la riqueza (a)morosa de su materia y color.

Paisajes urbanos, paisajes de La Boca, la materialidad de Daneri, Diomede, Lacámera, podría oponerse a la fábrica pintoresca del conventillo de Don Benito.

Exhibimos aquí un fragmento de Entre en discontinuidad (1966), obra de Raúl Escari, ejemplo maximalista del arte urbano. Nos reconocemos en su literalidad, en su parquedad de medios y en la certeza de su estilo.

Eduardo Costa dialoga con los pájaros. Paisaje sonoro sin otro marco, otro límite que la bondad de su intervención, un no dormido ni despierto, que evade con elegancia los bárbaros recursos de la interpretación.

Estanislao Guzmán Loza, nacido en Ambil, llanos de La Rioja, el año 1893. Según escribe Manuel Mujica Lainez: “Lo definen una pureza, una distancia, un desinterés, una exclusión de la ‘moda’ y un lirismo de esencia aristocrática, porque busca su inspiración en el tema el pueblo, pueblerino, y lo exalta con mágico refinamiento.”

Sombras que se alargan en la noche del dolor.

Amarrado al recuerdo.

Niebla del Riachuelo, paisaje de Rómulo Macció, dialoga con el tango del mismo nombre de Cobian y Cadicamo (1937) y con una tradición que aúna a Victorica y Quinquela, artistas emblemáticos de la República de La Boca con un vasto trasfondo pictórico: La China y el Japón, Turner, Monet, Ryman, y quizás Rothko.

El tempe argentino de Marcos Sastre, libro que leía fascinado en mi niñez. ¿Cómo dejar de asociarlo con esas maravillosas pinturas de Fermín Eguía? Bagre, vieja del río, nado en su elemento: acuarelas disueltas en las aguas del Delta. Prodigios de luz detenidos en un momento incierto.

“¿Estos son surcos, esto es escarcha? … Pero sin son raspaduras de paleta colocadas de manera uniforme sobre un lienzo sucio. No tiene ni pies ni cabeza, ni parte superior ni inferior, ni delante ni atrás.” Esta apreciación formulada en 1874 ante un estudio invernal impresionista nos conduce, haciendo un alto en el estanque de Giverny, hacia Pollock y al concepto de all-over enunciado por Clement Greenberg. De la action painting al color field: paisajes en estado puro. Juan José Cambre y el estado de gracia que supone el trazo como visión del paisaje.

Las obras de Javier Barilaro son grabaciones (no audibles) de antiguas cumbias, aquellas que cantaban los yacarés y los guanacos.

Emil Nolde en clave ecuatoriana, José Garófalo y su Árbol de la vida, rastrillo de las musas mestizas, peinan el soplo de un nuevo ordenamiento.

Jacques Bedel ha hecho de la sombra imagen y he aquí su reflejo.

Antonio Berni bernea como Picasso picasseaba. Siempre igual y distinto a sí mismo.

Cartones para tapices se me ocurren los paisajes de Vicente Grondona. Tapices que serán hilados con acuarela y tinta y que humildes se entregaran a la exaltación de la lavanda y al pavor de la lavandina.

Espejismo (2006) es una instalación de Sergio Avello, de la cual presentamos algunos registros fotográficos. Emplazada en Palo Pintado, Valles Calchaquies de la Provincia de Salta, seis paneles de espejos sin interferencia al paisaje que los circunda. Vale recordar que Sergio, siguió al pie de la letra lo que su chamán Gucci Quipildor le expresara: “Bello Avello, no dejes que el espíritu de la montaña oculte a la montaña”.

Circulación circulante de Benito Laren es un paisaje cósmico. Enmarcado con una llanta de triciclo nos invita a recorrer las rutas argentinas.

En las tintas de Carlos Bissolino abstracción y figuración conviven como en moneda de una sola cara.

Lo logra gracias a la naturalidad del gesto y la suntuosidad gozosa de su color.

-Alfredo Prior, abril 2014

*texto extraido de Ramona
May 9, 2014 Diana de Solares: The Corrections https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/diana-de-solares-corrections/

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Artist: Diana de Solares

The Corrections / Las Correcciones
May 21 – June 12, 2014
The 9.99 gallery
Guatemala City, Guatemala

Diana de Solares continúa explorando la tensión entre el trabajo bidimensional y la escultura. Hay una clara conexión entre la imagen dibujada o pintada y el objeto ocupando un lugar en el espacio. En general, el proceso comienza con un elemento tridimensional: una vara de mdf, madera encontrada, cintas de zapatos deportivos, fragmentos de hierro, etc. Es a partir del material tangible que las imágenes abstractas surgen en el papel o la tela. Se trata de obras mínimas, delicadas, pero ostensiblemente materiales, estratégicamente ancladas al suelo o a la pared.

Un conjunto de ¨totems¨ interactúan activando el espacio a través de sus cualidades hápticas, su color, y la relación con los cuerpos y la mano humana . Esas características se enfatizan con las piezas de cintas de zapatos, las cuales a un tiempo nos recuerdan un objeto, una pintura o una escultura. Los enigmáticos títulos de la muestra y de las obras presentan un reto adicional en la experiencia de estos trabajos.

Image: Diana de Solares’ studio
May 6, 2014 Ishmael Randall-Weeks: Escombros https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ishmael-randall-weeks-escombros/

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Artist: Ishamel Randall-Weeks

Escombros
May 5 – July 7, 2014
Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo
Mexico City, Mexico

 

May 6, 2014 Luis Roldán: Presión y Flujo https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/luis-roldan-presion-y-flujo/

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Artist: Luis Roldán

Presión y Flujo
April 23 – June 5, 2014
Galeria Casas Riegner
Bogotá, Colombia

 

May 3, 2014 Óscar Figueroa: A Chronicle of Interventions https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/oscar-figueroa-chronicle-interventions/

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Artists: José Castrellón, Óscar Figueroa, Group Material, Regina José Galindo, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, Andreas Seikmann, Michael Stevenson, Humberto Vélez.

A Chronicle of Interventions
May 2 – July 13, 2014
Tate Modern
London, UK

Tate Modern’s Project Space presents the exhibition A Chronicle of Interventions, a curatorial-collaboration between Tate Modern in London and TEOR/éTica in San José, Costa Rica. The exhibition explores the multiple histories of intervention that have occurred throughout Central America during the 20th century through the work of eight practicing artists who each address various foreign, economic, political and military interventions which have shaped the region.

Harking back to 1980s New York, during the Reagan-Thatcher era, the exhibition begins with an archival display of the seminal installation by Group Material, entitled Timeline: A Chronicle of US Intervention in Central and Latin America, the work was originally installed in New York’s PS 1 Gallery in 1984, when Central America was in the spotlight of political and economic debate in the West. Fast forward thirty years and the exhibition returns to this history of intervention and its consequences, through the work of contemporary artists who chronicle related historical episodes, accounts and phenomena.

Two of the films found on display refer back to U.S. colonialism in Panama and more specifically to the building of the Panama Canal. Humberto Vélez focuses on the metaphor of the subjected human body and the representation of power and strength over a nation, while Michael Stevenson explores the probability of reality and fiction under the context of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties in 1977—which promised the handover of the Canal Zone to the Central American country.

The works of Óscar Figueroa and Andreas Siekmann separately address the existence of a mono-cultural economy based almost exclusively on the extraction of bananas and coffee and the impact that international corporations such as the United Fruit Company have had on the natural and social landscape of much of this region. The performance work of Regina José Galindo confronts the torrid history of Guatemala and its hidden genocide. Her explorations of unequal power relations often expose the violent consequences that regularly result from political and economic interventions.

This exhibition also explores the effects that external intervention can have on cultural aesthetics and social behaviour. This includes examples of both the infiltration and appropriation of contemporary ‘Western culture’ in remote indigenous communities, as seen in the work of José Castrellón and the imposition or adaptation of international architectural styles, which are boldly displayed and eventually destroyed during the performance work of Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa.

A Chronicle of Interventions is curated by Shoair Mavlian (Tate Modern) and Inti Guerrero (TEOR/éTica)

May 3, 2014 Pablo Rasgado: Translation Movement https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/pablo-rasgado-translation-movement/

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Artists: Jonathan Binet, Nathan Peter, Pablo Rasgado, Karin Sander

Translation Movement
April 26, 2014
Travesía Cuatro
Madrid, Spain

 

April 28, 2014 Octavio Abúndez, Adrián S. Bará, José Dávila: Leviatán https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/octavio-abundez-adrian-s-bara-jose-davila-leviatan/

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Artists: Octavio Abúndez, Adrián S. Bará, Edgar Cobián, José Dávila, Mauricio Cadena, Adrián Guerrero, Cynthia Gutiérrez, Enrique Hernández, Gonzalo Lebrija, Mario Navarro, Fernando Palomar, Gabriel Rico, Javier M. Rodríguez, Paula Silva, Emanuel Tovar, Francisco Ugarte, Luis Alfonso Villalobos, Sebastián Vizcaíno.

Architects: Andrés Aguilar, Marco Amilcar Sánchez, Aldo Álvarez Tostado + Diego Flores, Marco Betancourt, Javier Dueñas, Alejandro Guerrero + Andrea Soto, Óscar Gutiérrez, León Leroy, Rodrigo Loaiza, Juan López Newton, Salvador Macías + Magui Peredo, Javier Monteón, Álvaro Moragrega, Rafael Plascencia, Jorge Rivera, Francisco Solórzano, Alberto Villar + Gerardo Villar, Pablo Zamudio.

Leviatán
March 28 – June 29, 2014
Curator: Jorge Tejeda
Museo de Arte Raúl Anguiano (MURA)
Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

 

April 28, 2014 Jorge de León, Diana de Solares, Manuel Antonio Pichillá & Adán Vallecillo: 19 Bienal de Arte Paiz https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/jorge-de-leon-diana-de-solares-manuel-antonio-pichilla-adan-vallecillo-19-bienal-de-arte-paiz/

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Artists: Andrea Aragón, Hellen Ascoli, Victoria Bahr, Marlov Barrios, Marilyn Boror, Edgar Calel, Johanna Calle, Mariana Castillo Deball, Marco Canale, Benvenuto Chavajay, Manuel Chavajay, René Dionisio Chavajay (Tz´utu B´aktun Kan), Jorge Chavarría, Lourdes de La Riva, Jorge de León, Yavheni de León, Diana de Solares, Yasmin Hage, Quique Lee, María Evelia Marmolejo, Silvia Menchú, Andrea Monroy Palacios, Reyes Josué Morales, Carlos Motta, Nora Pérez, Manuel Antonio Pichillá, Feliciano Pop, Angel Poyón, Fernando Poyón, Naufus Ramírez, Nuno Ramos, José Alejandro Restrepo, Gabriel Rodríguez, Chemi Rosado Seijó, Diego Sagastume, Mario Santizo, Julio Serrano, Rosario Sotelo, Adán Vallecillo, Inés Verdugo.

Transvisible
19 Bienal de Arte Paiz (entre lo ya no y el aún no / between a no longer and not yet)
Fundación Paiz para la Educación y la Cultura
June 6 – July 6, 2014
Guatemala

The 19 Bienal de Arte Paiz, in its 2014 edition,  proposes a platform that relativizes  notions of model, universality, genealogy and linearity, in favor of an art that reveals itself in transition, between “a no longer and not yet”. This, within a process of critical thinking and investigation of reality and art as it is manifested in contemporary Guatemala. The “transvisible” constitutes the possibility of mediating and investigating other realities beyond established canonical notions about art.

Themes:
Self Knowledge – Healing
Body-Territory
Specificities that name themselves
Masculinity and violence

Curators:
Cecilia Fajardo-Hill
Anabella Acevedo
Rosina Cazali
Pablo Ramírez

April 25, 2014 Alexander Apóstol, Magdalena Fernández, Patrick Hamilton & Ishmael Randall-Weeks: Beyond the Supersquare https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alexander-apostol-magdalena-fernandez-patrick-hamilton-ishmael-randall-weeks-beyond-supersquare/

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Artists: Leonor Antunes, Alexander Apóstol, Alexandre Arrecha, Felipe Arturo, Alessandro Balteo Yazbek, Alberto Baraya, Carlos Bunga, Los Carpinteros, Jordi Colomer, Livia Corona, Felipe Dulzaides, Magdalena Fernández, Fernanda Fragateiro, Carlos Garaicoa, Mario García Torres, Terence Gower, Patrick Hamilton, Quisqueya Henríquez, Diango Hernández, Andre Komatsu, Runo Lagomarsino, Pablo León de la Barra, Maria Martínez-Cañas, Daniela Ortiz, Jorge Pardo, Manuel Piña, Ishmael Randall-Weeks, Mauro Restiffe, Pedro Reyes and Chemi Rosado-Seijo.

Beyond the Supersquare: On Modernism
May 1, 2014 – January 11, 2015
Bronx Museum
Bronx, NY, USA

The indelible influence of Latin American and Caribbean modernist architecture on contemporary artists will be explored by The Bronx Museum of the Arts in the exhibition Beyond the Supersquare, on view May 1, 2014 through January 11, 2015. The exhibition features 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 Modernist 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.

The exhibition represents the culmination of a four-year research initiative at the Bronx Museum spearheaded by Executive Director Holly Block and Independent Curator María Inés Rodriguez. Many of the exhibition themes have grown out of a three-day conference held at the Bronx Museum in October 2011, during which artists, architects, urban planners, and scholars convened to discuss the enduring impact of Modernist architecture and ideas in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Beyond the Supersquare explores how contemporary artists from Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions have responded to the aggressive rise of Latin America’s urban centers and the ways in which those urban areas have evolved since the mid-20th century. Also examined is the social critique of political, social, economic, and environmental issues in Latin America and the Caribbean, including unstable economies, ad hoc urbanism, militarized police forces, and rapidly exhausting natural resources. Exhibition designer Benedeta Monteverde of Mexico City has worked closely with the two curators to generate the exhibit plan for the galleries at the Bronx Museum.

Beyond the Supersquare will be accompanied by a volume, co-published by The Bronx Museum of the Arts and Fordham University Press, featuring original scholarship by noted Latin American architects, historians, and curators. Beyond the Supersquare: Art & Architecture after Modernism in Latin America will include material presented at the Museum’s 2011 Beyond the Supersquare conference led by Ms. Block and Ms. Rodríguez. The advisors for the conference were Carlos Brillembourg (Carlos Brillembourg Architects), Felipe Correa (Somatic Collaborative and Harvard Graduate School of Design), Ana Maria Duran (Estudio A0), Belmont Freeman (Belmont Freeman Architects), Jose Lira (University of Sao Paulo), Ligia Nobre (Independent Curator), and Pedro Reyes (Artist).

The volume will also include an image-rich folio highlighting artworks from the exhibition. Drawing from architectural projects of the 1940s to the 1960s, as well as from socially engaged artistic practices of the present day, the anthology will examine the consequences of the heroic and utopian ideals popular in architectural discourse during the Modernist era, which are evident in the vastly uneven economic conditions and socially disparate societies found throughout the region today

April 24, 2014 Ricardo Alcaide: Settlements https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ricardo-alcaide-settlements/

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Artist: Ricardo Alcaide

Settlements
April 5 – June 6, 2014
Baró Galeria
Sao Paulo, Brazil

The exhibition proposes a “settlement” of objects and situations that take ownership of the gallery space in an almost invasive way to freely occupy the metal structures presented as a symbol of imposing rationalist architecture. “My main interest in this show is defined by sculptural, pictorial and questions the current values of art, chaos and uncontrolled progress”, defines the artist.

For this exhibition, the artist presents a large installation of industrial steel shelves with groupings of works created in the studio and objects collected in the street -converting their vulnerable aspect into something solid and permanent, a series of sculptures made of bronze, developed from the same objects and other objects made of different materials and also paintings. That way, Alcaide evidences the “disposable” and its vulnerable, susceptible to destruction and disappearance nature and that requires an exercise of observation and rediscovery.

April 21, 2014 Rodrigo Sassi: Tenho um bom conhecimento sobre bolhas e respingo, porém informal https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/rodrigo-sassi-tenho-um-bom-conhecimento-sobre-bolhas-e-respingo-porem-informal/

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Artist: Rodrigo Sassi

Tenho um bom conhecimento sobre bolhas e respingo, porém informal
January 19 – March 30, 2014
Praça Victor Civita
Sao Paulo, Brazil

A obra “Não tão grande quanto o respingo original” tem formas de concreto armado e carrinho de mão e as medidas de A 2,10 x L 2,05 x P 1,70 m. Já ”Entre o céu e a terra, bolhas!”, é feita de madeira, concreto e cabos de aço e  as dimensões A 3,00 x L 4,50 x P 4,50 m.

As esculturas de Rodrigo Sassi surgem da relação entre uma pesquisa arquitetônica e urbanista aplicada à tridimensionalidade no campo das artes plásticas. Tendo como ponto de partida o grande e descontrolado crescimento das cidades, Sassi cria por meio do uso imaginativo de técnicas da construção civil, fôrmas de concreto armado que se compõe de maneira aleatória e independente de funcionalidades, trazendo à tona uma composição final que contrasta elementos brutos a uma falsa sensação de leveza.

Fruto do reaproveitamento de madeiras usadas anteriormente em construções, suas esculturas, ao contrario da convencional intenção das fôrmas que são descartadas após o enrijecimento do cimento em seu interior, permanecem como parte integrante da obra, apresentando sinais de uso e desgaste consequentes de sua utilização anterior, explicitando assim a ideia de surgimento e processo de criação.

Nascido em São Paulo em 1981 e graduado em Artes Plásticas pela FAAP, Rodrigo tem obras em coleções no MAB (Museu de Arte de Blumenau – SC), SENAC (Piracicaba – SP) e Centro Cultural Dannemann (Recôncavo – BA) e recebeu o prêmio do 3° Salão dos Artistas sem Galeria (São Paulo – SP/2012) e o Prêmio Funarte de Arte Contemporânea 2013 – Atos Visuais Funarte Brasília. O artista participou também de diversas exposições coletivas e entre suas dez exposições individuais realizadas entre 2008 e 2013, estão “Desdobramentos Infiltrórios” (Galeria Fayga Ostrower – Brasília/2013), “Daquele Que Se Reproduz” (Galeria Pilar – São Paulo/2012) e “Pinturas Infiltrórias e suas Ramificações Tubulares” (UNESC – SC/2011).

April 21, 2014 Barbarita Cardozo: In Situ https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/barbarita-cardozo-situ/

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Artist: Barbarita Cardozo

In Situ
April 4 – 30, 2014
Sala Macaregua, Sede Bucarica
Bucaramanga, Colombia

Esta exposición esta enmarcada en el evento ¨Las Salas abiertas¨. Estará abierta todo el mes de abril y en la inauguración nos acompañara Navegante, proyecto musical creado por el solista Oscar Gómez.

April 14, 2014 Iosu Aramburu: Exposición de arte abstracto https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/iosu-aramburu-exposicion-de-arte-abstracto/

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Artist: Iosu Aramburu

Exposición de arte abstracto
March 26 – April 26, 2014
Alianza Francesa, Miraflores
Lima, Peru

La exposición hace una indagación crítica y nostálgica de la modernidad en nuestro país. La muestra se configura a partir de dos piezas que se sitúan en la intersección entre arte y arquitectura y exploran temas relacionados con el legado del proyecto modernista del Perú de mediados del siglo veinte. Se incluye una instalación de gran formato y una serie de dibujos en cemento sobre papel.

Además de Pasaporte Para un Artista, Iosu Aramburu ha ganado el premio internacional Arcos Dorados en la feria ArteBa en Buenos Aires en 2012. Su obra ha estado presente en varias ferias internacionales. Ha realizado una residencia en La Ene en Buenos Aires y este año realizará una en Triangle France, en Marsella.

April 11, 2014 Eduardo Santiere: Lo contrario de la magia https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/eduardo-santiere-lo-contrario-de-la-magia/

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Artists: Héctor Meana, Aimé Pastorino, Eduardo Santiere, Julián Terán, Leticia Obeid, Nuna Mangiante, Pablo La Padua, Rodolfo Marqués, Julián D’Angiolillo.

Lo contrario de la magia
March 28 – July 27, 2014
Curator: Lux Lindner
Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, Argentina

La exposición propone un acercamiento a la producción reciente de artistas cuyos procesos de trabajo se alejan de los facilismos y promesas de inmediatez de la magia, y están más ligados a la paciencia y descomposición propias del método científico. Las aproximaciones son tan variadas como lo es el recorrido artístico de cada uno, aunque se ha buscado un predominio del dibujo.

April 11, 2014 Casari & PPPP: Todo está interconectado https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/casari-pppp-todo-esta-interconectado/

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Artist: Casari & PPPP

Todo está interconectado
April 2 – May 10, 2014
Galeria Pilar
Sao Paulo, Brazil

Inovador e rebelde, Casari pretende com sua recente produção fazer reviravoltas no mundo das artes, exibindo pinturas e esculturas de maneiras, até então, impensáveis. Ao invés de mostrar a face da tela, ele decide expor a parte traseira do quadro, dando importância para a estrutura de madeira, a assinatura e as informações técnicas da obra, como data de produção e materiais utilizados.

O artista define o seu trabalho das últimas décadas como uma busca espiritual. Seus tecidos apropriados e modificados, exibidos em forma de tapetes monocromáticos, trazem mensagens zen, olhando para além do consumo. Segundo ele, suas obras servem como um meio de relaxamento que produz pensamento e estranheza. Casari gosta de pensar que suas obras podem manifestar o satori nas pessoas, termo zen budista que se refere a um estado de profunda iluminação e o final de alguma coisa. Para o artista, o período em que vivemos será marcado pelo fim da arte e do artista.

Criado por Casari em 1994, durante um período em que o artista viveu na Itália, o PPPP é apresentado como uma empresa em que a figura do artista é despersonalizada, optando pelo anonimato de uma logomarca e aproveitando para criar uma produção heterogênia e diversificada. Através de seus heterônimos, Casari força o espectador a investigar e descobrir a sua arte.

Alberto Casari (Lima, 1955) estudou literatura na Universidade Católica de Lima, 1973-1975 e pintura na Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1975-1977. Entre 1978 e 1982, viajou para o Brasil, América Central e Europa. Instalou-se em Paris e depois em Florença (Itália), onde viveu até 1996. Em 1994, ele criou o projeto PPPP e em 1998, começou a experimentar produções em tecido e design de tapetes. Participou da Bienal de São Paulo, em 2012; da Bienal de Veneza, em 2011; II Bienal Internacional de Design de Saint Etienne, 2000; Iberoamericana de Lima, 1997; La Habana, 1991. Em 2006, Alfredo Covarrubias publicou livro pela Ediciones del Centro Cultural de la Universidad de San Marcos. Atualmente vive em Lima, Peru.

April 9, 2014 Emilio Chapela: Man is the Measure https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilio-chapela-man-measure/

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Artist: Emilio Chapela

Man is the Measure
March 26 – May 10, 2014
Henrique Faria Fine Art
NY, USA

“Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not.” -Protagoras, quoted in Plato’s Theaetetus

The exhibition features a selection of recent installations, videos, lithographs and paintings that speak to the themes of limits, borders and their cartographies. By invoking Protagoras’ assertion, Chapela investigates how human perception manifests physically and how it defines political, cultural and epistemological boundaries.

The works La Mojonera (2014) and Radio Latina (2013) highlight the efforts taken to map national borders, specifically between the United States and Mexico. La Mojonera stands as a replica of the landmarks placed along this border as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. Placed along the border at intervals determined by the farthest lines of sight, the obelisks were monuments that structurally delineated the exact location of national boundaries so that the border could be recognized by the human eye and thus respected. La Mojonera is juxtaposed with the video Radio Latina, which traces, using Google Street View images, an expanse of the more recently constructed US-Mexico border wall to the soundtrack of the Radio Latina station, whose listener base is made primarily of migrant workers and undocumented immigrants. Radio Latina accentuates the conflicts that arise between the arbitrary delimitation of borders and the currents of information that pass freely between them. While a stark wall attempts to separate people and territories, Google, and the Internet in general, afford the ultimate freedom and accessibility of information and radio waves move unencumbered through the air, delivering data to all who have the capability of receiving it.

Holmdel Antenna (2014) is an installation featuring a miniaturized model of the antenna that first captured the noise of the Big Bang alongside a photograph of the actual device and the astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, who determined the noise’s origins. The work is both a monument to the sound’s discovery and to the advances, both astronomical and philosophical, that have been made since. It was Penzias and Wilson who began mapping the microwaves that pulsed throughout outer space, effectually charting what is known as the Cosmic Microwave Background. Being that the Cosmic Microwave Background forms a crucial element in the fabric of the universe, it is fitting that Chapela appropriates its image and transforms it into a rug hand woven according to a traditional Oaxacan technique. Cosmic Microwave Background (2013) thus embodies within its fabric two different quantifications of human knowledge: that of handed-down artisanal practice and empirical science.

With his use of widely accessible technological tools, Chapela demonstrates how their utilization and the information they generate can both shape and influence cultural and societal beliefs, but he also strives to give viewers a sense of what this information might actually look like. His works, like List of Countries by GDP (Nominal) (2014) which assigns colors and sizes to different cubes that represent the GDPs of 182 countries, blend qualitative and quantitative descriptors and illustrate how information occupies space. What underlies Chapela’s various projects is the search to understand, on an aesthetic as well as philosophical level, the expansive potentials of knowledge and its ultimate, human limits.

Emilio Chapela (Mexico City, 1978) graduated from the Communication Sciences program at the Universidad Iberoamericana in 2002. He received a diploma in Photography and New Media at the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City in 2001. He has been the recipient of several grants from the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (FONCA) including: Cultural Co-Inversions (2008) and Young Creators in two different occasions (2004-2005) and (2013-2014). Chapela was the artist in residence at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York in 2007 (supported by a grant from FONCA) and at Linnienstrasse 40 in Berlin in 2012. He was presented with the Emerging Artist Award at PULSE Miami Art Fair in 2008 and the Tequila Centenario award in the same year. Currently, Chapela is working with the support of a grant from the Jumex Foundation and Collection towards the publication of a book (forthcoming, November 2014) about distinctive artistic projects that explore the creative possibilities of books and libraries. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico City (2013); Galería 11×7, Buenos Aires (2012); Linnienstrasse 40, Berlin (2012); Casa Maauad and Henrique Faria Fine Art, New York (2011); and Saw Gallery, Ottawa (2011). He has participated in acclaimed group exhibitions at Foto Colectania, Barcelona (2013); the Museo de Arte Moderno, Casa del Lago and Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City (2012); the Kunstraum and NGKB, Berlin (2012); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2011); Pace Gallery, New York (2011); the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2010); Houston Photo Fest Biennial (2010); and the Bass Museum, Miami (2010).His work has been acquired by the following institutions and collections: Colección Jumex, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; FEMSA, Monterrey; and Sayago & Pardon, Tustin, California.

April 9, 2014 Célio Braga: Multicoloridos https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/celio-braga-multicoloridos/

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Artist: Célio Braga

Multicoloridos
April 2 – May 10, 2014
Galeria Pilar
Sao Paulo, Brazil

“Multicoloridos”, a exposição se compõem por duas séries inéditas de desenhos e esculturas, que dão continuidade à sua pesquisa plástica e poética.

A produção de Célio Braga é marcada por processos elaborados, nos quais ele confecciona superficies e estruturas que pulsam com delicadeza e vigor, revelando obras que se nutrem não apenas de tempo, mas também de afetividade. Seja nos desenhos intitulados como “Ladainhas” ou nas esculturas maleáveis nomeadas de “Lengalengas”, títulos que relacionam sua produção com memórias afetivas e histórias da sua infância, pontuando uma obra construída através da repetição de gestos artesanais que revelam formas e processos de uma intensa pesquisa de interação entre a cor e a linha.

Nos desenhos da série “Ladainhas”, o artista inscreve com lápis de cor linhas coloridas de maneira obsessiva sobre o papel, que sofre sucessivas dobraduras para ser dividido em centenas de quadrados e retângulos, criando uma grade estriada em que as dobras são como cicatrizes. A cor é apresentada como se estivesse a ponto de desaparecer ou surgir, nunca completamente pousada sobre o papel, mas flutuando sobre ele, em graduações suaves de tons esverdeados, OU amarelados, rosados e avermelhados, expressando a delicadeza e a fragilidade do tempo.

Ora objetos, ora esculturas, os maleáveis “Lengalengas” de Celio Braga transformam linhas coloridas em estruturas elásticas, que se movimentam em configurações variadas. Utilizando caninhos de metal que ele recobre com fitinhas do Senhor do Bonfim e fragmentos de roupas de amigos e familiares, o artista constrói e tece ritmos, cortando, amarrando, unindo, cobrindo, dobrando e desdobrando. Dispostas no chão, no teto, nas peredes, em quinas e cantos, as esculturas são criadas com elementos impregnados de histórias pessoais, memorias, fé, superstição, desejos e esperança.

April 5, 2014 Martin Pelenur: Diagonal https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/martin-pelenur-diagonal/

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Artist: Martin Pelenur

Diagonal
February 8, 2014
Galería del Paseo
Manantiales, Maldonado, Uruguay

“Trabajo en Pintura con una lógica de testeo, por ahora, siguiendo un mismo patrón; descompongo la actividad sintética de pintar en elementos constitutivos, haciendo así visible su relación.

Los cuadrados de MDF contienen tres manos de pintura. Base acrílica, barniz y esmalte. Translucidez y brillo son características notables del barniz.

La pintura seca en capas, con un volumen determinado en micras. Cuando la capa  supera esa micra, la pintura queda atrapada en el fondo, generando el corrugado posterior en la superficie.

El corrugado, considerado un error en la pintura,  genera el acto de pintar.

Me interesa producir esas condiciones.

El trabajo en cintas tiene que ver con la repetición. Desarrollo como distintas formas de colocar cintas en un soporte, generan una grilla en la superficie.  En este caso, superponiendo cuatro veces cinta y lograr así, la diagonal dentro del cuadrado.”

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March 31, 2014 Macaparana: Chus Burés, A Dialogue between Art & Design https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/macaparana-chus-bures-dialogue-art-design/

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Artists: Getulio Alviani, Louise Bourgeois, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Sérvulo Esmeraldo, Carmen Herrera, Julio Le Parc, Macaparana, François Morellet, Marie Orensanz, César Paternosto, Nicolas Schöffer, Santiago Sierra, Jesús Rafael Soto, Luis Tomasello, Jacques Villeglé

Chus Burés, A Dialogue between Art & Design
March 20 – May 7, 2014
Marlborough Monaco
Monaco

ARTISTS’ JEWELS BY CHUS BURÉS: FOUR-HAND CREATIONS

At the «crossroads between art and jewellery», Chus Burés’ artists’ jewels are the subtly precious fruit of an encounter between the artist’s inspiration and the designer’s savoir-faire. Within them lies a tale that is never the same twice and they exemplify an exchange, or even a veritable synergy, in which each partner’s talent has been enriched and completed through contact with the other. These encounters with artists, often instigated by Chus Burés himself, are the outcome of his active and dynamic approach which culminates when the designer immerses himself in the artist’s private universe. A marked ability to listen, understand and adapt is called for in order to assimilate, without distorting it, the artist’s creative spirit and grasp its specificity with the ultimate aim of producing a functional object. Chus Burés’ artists’ jewels, however, cannot be reduced to simple clothing accessories: they are limited editions, possess an autonomous existence, and constitute an identity-asserting stance towards art.

The story dates back to 1985 when Chus Burés worked with film director Pedro Almodóvar. The first major chapter, however, was written in the early 2000s when he met Louise Bourgeois. Preparations were underway at the time for her retrospective at the Museo Reina Sofía and Chus Burés was invited by the exhibition curator and the director of Louise Bourgeois’ studio to make a jewel with her. He found inspiration in a necklace she herself had once created. In a photograph taken in 1948 she can be seen wearing it, still a young woman, sitting beside her father in the New York restaurant Leon & Eddie. Chus Burés’ interpretation, which was the upshot of countless unforgettable meetings with her, offset the coercive character of the necklace with a string of fourteen crystals hanging from one of its enigmatic holes (Sans titre, 2000). A second project followed and produced the brooch Araignée (2005). This time the starting point was a photographic portrait of Louise Bourgeois by Peter Bellamy (1996) in which she appears to be hanging from a spider on a wall. Then Chus Burés had a vision: «the spider climbs down and settles, it integrates into the human body, as though into the architecture, it melts and creates a new architectural form». He made the emblematic arachnid, transmuted into a gold and silver brooch, in the image of the underlying ambivalence of Louise Bourgeois’ output, which is both magnificent and disturbing.

Another high spot in the career of Chus Burés that proved particularly enriching was his meeting with Barceló in 2007. The desire to use their four hands to create jewels arose from their mutual esteem. Chus said he was «dynamized by the instinctive, creative personality» of Barceló and «his ability to listen». The jewels entitled Boucle de mer, Gousse marine and Hameçon et appât (2007) belong to the informal register and are permeated by the world of rocks, sea and plants
in which Barceló was immersed at the time (he was completing the decorations for a chapel in Palma Cathedral, Majorca). These organic-looking jewels, sublimated by 18k gold, have links to the archaic beauty of Mycenaean treasures.

It was also in the 2000s that Chus Burés multiplied his joint endeavours with great figures of contemporary art from a wide range of aesthetic currents. Some of these encounters uncovered his interest in political and social art, the art of subversion and protest. He met Santiago Sierra in Mexico in the summer of 2005 and was won over by the radical methods Sierra used to denounce disentitlement and corruption in any guise. Their project stemmed from an article in El País about the trafficking generated by the working of diamond and gold mines in Africa. After observing, ironically, that «nobody is better placed than a creator of jewels to convey this drama», Santiago Sierra, in tandem with Chus Burés, realized two necklaces made from precious metals and stones (18k gold, white gold and diamonds). Both bear scathingly eloquent slogans: GOLDTRAFFICKILLS and DIAMONDTRAFFICKILLS. The designer opted to make them into chokers in order to «draw the idea more tightly and throw harsher light on it». The message of protest is not always so explicit, though. The jewels Chus Burés created with Jacques Villeglé – the necklace Rêverêverêveur and five matte silver rings entitled Rêver (2013) – derived from the socio-political alphabet Villeglé developed in 1969 out of graffiti, signs and ideograms he had seen on walls. In this invitation to «dream», which takes the form of «visual cryptograms», Chus Burés had the splendid idea of boosting the expressive force of the letters by dividing them out between the fingers of a hand. In the ebony bracelet he made with Marie Orensanz, on the other hand, one finds the echo of the words suspended throughout her work which, however, lay no claim to ideological truth. Thus the word «incomparable», discreetly engraved on the inside of the bracelet, sets the seal on an especially intense moment in their interaction, for that was what she exclaimed the first time she saw the bracelet.

The relations between Chus Burés and the masters of optical and kinetic art grew closer in 2003, and more especially from 2010 onwards. As a designer he felt empathy with this family of artists whose aesthetic is built on what he called “a formal terrain closely akin to my geometry”. Each encounter was an exciting adventure that left its mark and sometimes generated veritable fellow-feeling and friendship. The pendants and brooches Chus Burés created with Soto (2003) are a fine extension to the latter’s Écritures, for the artist’s interest in vibration and texture is perceptible in Burés’ treatment of the materials and colours (silver and lacquerwork). The admiration Chus Burés felt for Luis Tomasello (2010) gave rise to a collection of jewels which succeeds admirably in evoking the issues closest to the latter’s heart – his necklaces, brooches, pendants and earrings use texture, materials (silver and 18k gold) and assemblage to play elegantly with repetitions of the same element, the cube, and the light effects projected by invisible colour. The emulation that brought Chus Burés and Julio Le Parc together in 2010 proved equally fertile. The necklaces and earrings entitled M-3-R, made from silver and 18k gold respectively, are delicate allusions to Julio Le Parc’s work on light, while the magnificent parure (M-60-C) recalls not only his interest in notions of instability but the decisive impact his Continuels mobiles had on Paco Rabanne in the 1960s. With Cruz-Diez, that «great master of light, colour and movement», as Chus Burés himself called him, the project was carried out in several stages: the initial inspiration was provided by a chest plate worn by Nefertiti whereas other stages produced a sober bracelet and a pendant with an extraordinary kinetic cut. It seems likely that the quest for interplaying light reflections, which are ideally suited to jewellery, was what led Chus Burés to choose to make a jewel-size adaptation of NSoleil (1981- 2012) by the cybernetic artist Nicolas Schöffer. The salient traits of this silver brooch are its power to concentrate light and the skilful plaiting of the bands of relief work. The highly original bracelet Triangolo (2012), which he created with Alviani, is a minimalist, distilled version of the latter’s Triangolo di triangle (1967). The choice of yellow, white and rose gold in preference to the brilliance of steel endows it with a touch of preciosity. The brooch Dislocation (2012), the fruit of the memorable collaboration between Chus Burés and François Morellet, stems from the latter’s work of the same title, done in 2008, and clearly reflects his spirit, notably the way he likes to combine humour and disorder with the strictness of geometry. The adaptation to jewel format was accomplished by means of silver with a satin finish which echoes the neutrality of the white in the original work.

The same wish for minimalist sobriety is to be found in the jewels Chus Burés conceived with other geometric abstract artists. The brooches that were the upshot of his encounter with the sculptor and engraver Sérvulo Esmeraldo express the desire to endow materials with a tactile dimension, either by means of superimposed forms and matte silver (Feuilles mortes, 2012) or through the integration of the void (Carré, 2012). In his teamwork with César Paternosto, Chus Burés paid attention to the notions of balance, relationship and proportion by endowing hollowed-out geometrical surfaces with an active dimension (Sans titre, 2014). The same is true of the brooches he made with Carmen Herrera, in which the hard-edge divisions are stressed by both horizontal and vertical slits in the surface and unobtrusive touches of colour, which have an enlivening effect. As for the articulated and perforated jewels Chus Burés made with Macaparana, they illustrate his ability to capture the spirit of free geometry that gives life to the latter’s creations.

Born under the twin stars of talent and self-demanding standards, Chus Burés’ artists’ jewellery reveals admirably the imprint and personality of the artists with whom he has worked. The dialogue these jewels set up between art and design overturns traditionally acknowledged artistic categories and enriches our vision of the history of art and forms. As Paul Bowles aptly remarked of him in 1998: «We need people like him to broaden our knowledge and open up our gaze» (preface to the catalogue of the collection Vol de Nuit, 1999).

Domitille d’Orgeval

*Text from digital catalogue

March 31, 2014 Aníbal Catalán: The Land, The Space, The Square https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/anibal-catalan-land-space-square-2/

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Artist: Aníbal Catalán

The Land, The Space, The Square
February 6 – April 13, 2014
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
Boulder, CO, USA

Anibal Catalan: The Land, The Space, The Square presents a series of site-specific installations, paintings, video works, drawings and digital prints by Mexico City-based artist Anibal Catalan. Trained as an architect, Catalan creates new spaces using a variety of artistic methods and media. Stimulating dialoge between different media, he combines environments that exist amid two and three dimensionalities. Catalan redefines, or more appropriately, dissolves conventional notions of interior and exterior spaces. His works are unorthodox manifestations of architectural ideas oscillating between metaphysical explorations of urban space and real concern for environments we inhabit.

Catalan cites the 20th-century Russian avant-garde movements of Suprematism and Constructivism as important influences on his work. He adopts different aspects of each movement’s visual language and utopian sentimentalities through his integration of architecture, design and art. The title of the exhibition, The Land, The Space, The Square, is a specific reference to Suprematism—an abstract movement that utilized basic geometric forms and a limited color palette to emphasize pure artistic feeling over the visual depiction of an object. “The Square” is a direct reference to Russian artist Kazimir Malevich’s famous paintings of squares created in the early 20th century.

To accompany this new series of paintings, Catalan has created a large wall painting that spans the West Gallery. Using acrylic paint, he invents architectural landscapes on various surfaces. Bold color constrains and expands the spaces of the wall or canvas. The wall painting becomes a backdrop for the large sculptural installation that hangs between the columns of the main gallery. Made from industrial materials and fluorescent lights, it becomes a three-dimensional extension of the wall painting. Fragmented geometric shapes build layers of flattened area with implied dimensionality, and materiality dissolves to liberate the space. The viewer is invited into a shifting construction—one that is not closed or strictly defined, but open to multiple perspectives and interpretations.

Anibal Catalan was born in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico in 1973. He lives and works in Mexico City. Catalan studied fine arts at La Esmeralda in Mexico City from 2001-2006 and attended the School of Architecture at Anahuac University from 1993-1997. His work has been exhibited internationally in both solo and group exhibitions including CAN Seoul, CAN Beijing, MARCO Contemporary Art Museum (Monterrey, Mexico), MASS MoCA, Museo de Arte Moderno (Mexico City), Les Rencontres Internacionales Paris-Berlin-Madrid (Centre Pompidou, Museo Nacional Reina Sofia), and Haus der Kulturen der Welt HKW. Catalan was the recipient of the prestigious Mexican FONCA Creator’s Grant 2011-2013. Most recently, he has been awarded a major commission with the Denver International Airport. The Land, The Space, The Square is the first solo museum exhibition of Anibal Catalan’s work in the United States.

An article about this exhibition is here

March 27, 2014 Marcius Galan: Como dobrar uma bandeira como desdobrar https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcius-galan-como-dobrar-uma-bandeira-como-desdobrar/

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Artist: Marcius Galan

Como dobrar uma bandeira como desdobrar
March 20 – April 26 2014
Silvia Cintra + Box 4
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

“The movement back and forth (fold and unfold) appears in the construction of the title as well as the assembly work on the wall, where the sequence can be read as expansion or contraction. This circular motion suggests a place suspended between a position taken (unfold a flag) and a sense of powerlessness and apathy facing a dark socio-political landscape (fold a flag),” says Galan. And yet, the work deals with the paradox of infinite geometric division of a plane, in other words, with the premise that we can theoretically divide the area into two equal parts infinitely.

March 27, 2014 Alexis Minkiewicz & Ramiro Oller: ZavaletaLab https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alexis-minkiewicz-ramiro-oller-zavaletalab/

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Artist: Alexis Minkiewicz, Diego Atucha, Irina Kirchuk, Joaquin Boz, Maximiliano Ocampo Salinas, Ramiro Oller, Santiago Rey, and Sofia Wiñazki

Curator: Philippe Cyrulnik
March 20, 2014
Zavaleta Lab Arte Contemporáneo
Buenos Aires, Argentina

 

March 27, 2014 Sandra Gamarra: What Made us Modern / Crisp Images in a Humid Environment https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/sandra-gamarra-made-us-modern-crisp-images-humid-environment/

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Artist: Sandra Gamarra

What Made us Modern / Crisp Images in a Humid Environment
March 22 – May 3, 2014
Galería Leme
São Paulo, Brazil

The Madrid-based Peruvian artist, founder of the fictitious and virtual museum LiMac, will present at Galeria Leme What Made us Modern / Crisp Images in a Humid Environment, her fourth solo exhibition in São Paulo.

Given the current promise of modernization in Peru, to be understood as the real presence of the state in the country and therefore as a right to citizenship for each individual, this exhibition reflects on what happened in Peru during the first era of the uncompleted modernity and on what signified its posterior lack of concretization.

“An attempt to make crisp images in a humid environment” is how the sociologist Aníbal Quijano describes the impossibility to do vanguard poetry in Lima, which can also be extrapolated to the field of visual arts. The crisp images to which Quijano speaks of refer to machines, to the industry and to the new ideas that, in a city like Lima, without nearby industries and without technical development, were impossible to create and disseminate. This moist environment not only refers to the real humid climate of Lima but also to the “social humidity” that is the product of the yet ongoing effervescence of an imposed nationalism, the vapors of a slowly cooked multiculturalism and the permanent oxidation of the social processes.

However, as the state had not been capable to concretize its proper modernization, its unfulfilled promise became the breeding ground so that years later terrorists groups began to emerge in the country during the 1980´s and 90´s. This violence was necessary, so that Peruvians began to see themselves as a multicultural and a plural society.

Utilizing the iconic “Homage to the Square” paintings by the artist Joseph Albers as a starting point, images of the terrorist violence of the 80´s in Peru has been included in an almost invisible manner. To reveal themselves, it is necessary to get close to the painting, a contrary movement to what modern paintings proposed. Similarly, the series that is named after the exhibition title, What Made us Moderns, consists of 10 paintings that creates a gradient of grey and have the exact same measurements of the concrete blocks of which the gallery is made of. In such a way, the works surrender themselves to the architecture and, in the artist’s vision, live with it in a fully modern act. If we look at them from far away, this gradient made out of a Kodak scale of grey coexists without friction with the architecture. But in each corner of the paused, measured and clinic monochromes, a set of pictures appear and break this transition. These images tell us about a constant that is of capital and latent permanence.

The videos entitled “Abstractions”, “Natural Landscape” and “Ashes to Ashes” are three reflections on the delicate relation between the pre-Columbian heritage, the rural present and Western culture in the light of the promises of development and modernization.

Sandra Gamarra was born in Lima, Peru, in 1972. She lives and works in Madrid. Her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including the shows Setting the Scene, Tate Modern, London, UK (2012); At the Same Time, Bass Museum of Art, Miami, USA (2011); XI Bienal de Cuenca, Cuenca, Ecuador (2011); Fiction and Reality, MMOMA, Moscow, Russia (2011); Arte al Paso, Colleción Contemporanea del  Museo Arte  de Lima, Estação Pinacoteca, São Paulo, Brazil (2011);  29ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, Fundação Bienal, São Paulo, Brazil (2010); 53ª Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (2009). Her work is in private and public collections such as MUSAC, León, Spain; MoMA, New York, USA and Tate Modern, London, UK.

March 22, 2014 Iván Navarro: Mellowdrama https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ivan-navarro-mellowdrama/

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Artists: Courtney Smith & Iván Navarro

Mellowdrama
March 7 – 15, 2014
Hotel Particulier / The Armory Show
New York City, NY, USA

Hotel Particulier is pleased to present an experimental and collaborative artwork between artists Courtney Smith and Iván Navarro entitled MELLOWDRAMA. The artists will curate events and performances in collaboration with Hotel Particulier and Emilie Baltz for a full week during and following the Armory Show.

A “stage” will be created in the space by Courtney Smith, illuminated by Iván Navarro and activated, occupied and transformed by the different performances, musical events and participations by the artists’ guests as well as a series of staged dinners curated by Emilie Baltz. During the day, Hotel Particulier curated shop will take center stage with a special collaboration with AHAlife.

The stage will be unveiled on the evening of March 7th with a reception and experimental musical performance conceived by Iván Navarro. The following nights will involve a series of staged dinners entitled traces, curated by Emilie Baltz, gathering 20 guests around an eating experience that uses the stage/table as canvas, tracing the interactions of guests by engaging them in a hands on dinner. On closing night March 15th, the stage will be activated through a series of performances by novelist, academic and cultural critic Barbara Browning and her guests.

Courtney Smith is known for her furniture-based sculpture and her investigation into the physical and psychological construction of interior spaces through the deconstruction of the elements that compose them, and Iván Navarro is widely recognized for his innovative work addressing the complex implications of transformation and transference of electrical energy through his ingeniously crafted luminous sculpture. Both artists are based in Brooklyn.

Smith and Navarro have collaborated regularly since 2005, and have exhibited their joint work in various galleries and museums, including the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston, and most recently at the Goethe Institute in Nairobi.

Both Courtney Smith and Iván Navarro are exhibiting work in The Armory Show 2014 with Baró, the São Paulo-based gallery that represents both artists, both their individual and collaborative work.

Iván Navarro (Chile, 1972) is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Navarro’s work transcends its Minimalist roots by employing mass-produced materials to build powerfully symbolic objects that effectively infiltrate the domestic realm they mimic. His socio-politically charged sculptures in neon, fluorescent or incandescent light double as functional elements, integrated in the physical space they inhabit. His work has been shown in museums and galleries all over the world, including his participation in the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, and in such venues as The Hayward Gallery, London; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; MOCA Goldman Warehouse, Miami; Whitney Museum at Altria, New York; Witte de Witt, Rotterdam, Caja de Burgos, Spain, Towner Art Museum, Eastbourne UK, among many others. He is also the creator and director of the music label Hueso Records.

March 21, 2014 Gabriel de la Mora: Ruta Mística https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/gabriel-de-la-mora-ruta-mistica/

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Artists: Alfadir Luna, Antonio Paucar, David Gremard Romero, Gabriel de la Mora, Gabriel Rossell Santillán, Marcos Castro, María García-Ibáñez, Miler Lagos, Pedro Reyes, and Santiago Borja.

Ruta Mística
March 8 – May 5, 2014
Museo Amparo
Puebla, Mexico

La exposición organizada por el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey y curada por Gonzalo Ortega, presenta una revaloración de la noción del misticismo dentro del contexto latinoamericano actual a través de la obra de diez artistas que reflexionan sobre el modelo cultural poscolonial utilizando diversos medios como pintura, escultura, dibujo, fotografía, instalación y video.

La muestra colectiva incluye la obra de Alfadir Luna, Antonio Paucar, David Gremard Romero, Gabriel de la Mora, Gabriel Rossell Santillán, Marcos Castro, María García-Ibáñez, Miler Lagos, Pedro Reyes y Santiago Borja, quienes en su búsqueda de nuevos modelos ideológicos convincentes construyen sus propias identidades y canales de comunicación con lo trascendental al integrar aspectos ancestrales con otros nuevos elementos. En su mayoría se trata de propuestas conceptuales, resultado de la investigación y la recopilación de información.

En el caso de David Gremard Romero y Gabriel Rossell Santillán, su interés los ha llevado a revisar aspectos característicos de cultos de grupos indígenas. David Gremard se aboca a la cosmogonía y simbología azteca en El Tonalamatl Ollin, 2012, y a Gabriel Rossell, su investigación lo ha llevado a conocer de cerca la cultura huichol, dando como resultado la obra El quemado, 2013, y El primer hombre / Watakame (Archivo del Museo Etnológico de Dahlem), 2006.

La obra de Santiago Borja, SELF/Jungcatcher, 2013, banaliza los objetos rituales y cuestiona su valor espiritual, como es el caso de los “atrapa sueños”, objetos que han perdido su poder simbólico al popularizarse. Marcos Castro reflexiona sobre el mito fundacional de México y toma la figura del águila devorando a la serpiente como protagonista de su trabajo, como en la pieza de talavera Disuelve y coagula, 2012, y la instalación Sin título (águila), 2007.

Miler Lagos documenta la realidad actual, en su natal Colombia, de la ceiba, árbol sagrado para las culturas prehispánicas con una relevancia mística innegable, como en el video Nacidos antes de… (Intervención urbana, Cali, Colombia), 2009. Antonio Paucar erige un altar con sus propias manos en el video Altar, 2006, en donde las llamas de sus dedos representan algo inasible y mágico.

Alfadir Luna crea un mito en torno a un personaje ficticio con su proyecto de inserción social Procesión del Señor del maíz (Procesión para unir a un Hombre de maíz), 2011, en el cual involucra a los comerciantes y público del mercado de La Merced en la Ciudad de México. Pedro Reyes, por su parte, se inspira en Pico della Mirandola, pensador italiano renacentista, para realizar en piedra tallada, un gran monolito al que pueden insertarse pequeños ojos, cabellos, narices y bocas.

La muerte es invocada en la obra de Gabriel de la Mora y María García-Ibáñez. De la Mora recrea una reunión familiar con un estilo barroco tenebrista en la pieza Memoria I, 21.10.07, 2007, mientras que García-Ibáñez refiere el culto por los huesos al modelar con cerámica y con gran precisión piezas que luego decora con dibujos fusionando lo humano con lo místico en piezas como Huesos/Piedras/Flores, 2011 e Inmóviles, s/f.

*Images: Gabriel de la Mora, “Memory I”, 2007, Calcium sulfate with an application of cyanoacrylate, resin base, and stainless steel supports, Polyptych of 17 craniums, Dimensions variable.
March 17, 2014 Carola Zech: Instabile https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/carola-zech-instabile/

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Artist: Carola Zech

Instabile
Curator: Philippe Cyroulnik
March 7 – April 18, 2014
Galeria Vasari
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Instabile refers to the attribute of color being unstable. The aluminum and metallic colors give shape to this concept, accentuated by the magnetism, the levitating shapes and the inclined planes, all of which are incorporated to the working system. The notion of Instabile interacts with the concept of mobile and stable by Alexander Calder.

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March 17, 2014 Thomas Glassford: Afterglow https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/thomas-glassford-afterglow/

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Artist: Thomas Glassford

Afterglow
March 13 – April 19, 2014
Sicardi Gallery
Houston, TX, USA

The exhibition consists of Glassford’s large-scale sculptural installation of the same name and a series of recent works on paper. Afterglow (2010) is built from the artist’s signature industrial materials: golden aluminum rods support transparent tubes filled with fluorescent liquid. An abundance of green Plexiglas “leaves” spring from the tubing, creating an environment that alludes to tropicalia while hinting at a futuristic, man-made landscape.

Originally commissioned by Mexico City’s Museo Experimental El Eco, Afterglow was shown at The Galleries at Moore College of Art & Design in 2013 for its debut in the United States. The piece suggests a synthesis of nature and geometry: Glassford engages with the human need to structure the organic. Afterglow‘s shape is informed by the architecture of jungle gyms, forms that simulate nature while using exact proportions. The scaffold-like installation, covered with invasive tropical growth, invites viewers to walk through it and move around it, an experience which evokes childhood exploration.

Born in Laredo, Texas, Thomas Glassford studied art at The University of Texas at Austin, where he received his BFA. He moved to Mexico City in 1990. His work is in several important public and private collections, including The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Jumex Collection, Mexico; The Diane and Bruce Halle Collection, Arizona; Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Artes, MUCA, Mexico; CIFO Foundation, Miami; Des Moines Art Center, Iowa; and many others.

March 11, 2014 Fernanda Laguna, Manuel Mérida: ARCO 2014: #Solo projects https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/fernanda-laguna-manuel-merida-arco-2014-solo-projects/

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Artists: Fernanda Laguna, Manuel Mérida

ARCO 2014: #Solo projects, arte multidisciplinar con sello latino
Cultura & Arte
abc.es
Spain

El arte latinoamericano pasa por un magnífico momento, y ARCOmadrid, consciente de su potencial, ha querido reforzar, un año más, los lazos entre ambos continentes. En la sección Solo Projects: Focus Latinoamérica la feria presenta, a través de 21 proyectos de artistas latinos, una mirada renovada y multidisciplinar de su panorama artístico.

La selección de esta pléyade de galerías ha sido realizada por un equipo ecléctico de cuatro comisarios con una larga trayectoria curatorial y visiones muy diversas: Magali Arriola (México), Marcio Harum (Brasil), Sharon Lerner (Perú) y Tobías Ostrander (Estados Unidos). Pese a que ninguno de ellos es argentino, este año la participación de galerías bonaerenses se ha incrementado respecto del año anterior. No tanto por la exigua presencia dentro del Programa General, donde solo constan dos, sino por las seis que representan a artistas del país austral.

Este el caso de Nora Fisch, que presenta a Fernanda Laguna (1972), «una de las artistas más influyentes de su generación, no solo por su obra visual, sino también por sus libros de poesía y novelas», explica la galerista. En su reducido estand, ubicado en el pabellón 7 de Ifema, las pinturas entablan un diálogo con sus poemas. Las formas negras casi abstractas que protagonizan sus cuadros y que a veces parecen figuras humanas son una de sus características más recurrentes. «Los tajos y los recortes que aparecen en el lienzo son otra de las señas de identidad de Fernanda. Con ello pretende que se vea lo que hay detrás, quiere ir más allá de la realidad aparente», comenta Fisch. Esta es su forma de representar su experiencia como fundadora del proyecto «Eloísa Cartonera», una editorial argentina que reproduce sus libros con tapas compradas y diseñadas por los «cartoneros», las personas que recolectan cartones de los deshechos como forma de subsistencia en los suburbios de Buenos Aires.

Illy sustainArt concede todos los años un premio al mejor estand en esta sección. Este honor le ha correspondido en 2014 a Diego Bruno(1978). Él también nació en Argentina, pero ahora reside en Helsinki, y presenta Location de la mano de la galerista holandesa Mirta Demare. La obra ganadora explora la memoria histórica de su país de origen a través de una experiencia privada: «De forma oral reconstruye la casa en la que sus padres fueron torturados durante la dictadura argentina (1976-1983)», asegura la galerista. Un relato que configura en distintos soportes como el vídeo, el texto escrito, el dibujo y la fotografía.

Otro de las galerías europeas que cree en el potencial emergente de los artistas latinoamericanos es la francesa Espace Meyer Zafra, que apuesta por las creaciones de arte cinético del venezolano Manuel Mérida (1939). «En mis obras motorizadas trato de introducir el movimiento con la intención de evitar una fase fija y única y la posibilidad de cambio perpetuo para evidenciar la calidad de la materia y su comportamiento», explica el autor. «Los artistas venezolanos como Manuel Mérida –que es de la escuela de Jesús Soto– han sido precursores del arte cinético, que comenzó en los años 50, cuando en París aún ni se conocía», destaca Meyer Zafrany, uno de los responsables de la galería, resaltando así la importancia de América Latina en la escena artística contemporánea.

La única representación española en este espacio corre de la cuenta de la galería alicantina Aural, que exhibe una muestra de los trabajos más emblemáticos de la brasileña Anna Bella Geiger. «Una de las voces más versátiles de Brasil», según la directora de la galería, Begoña Martínez. Aunque debutan en Solo Projects por primera vez, han querido resumir las más de seis décadas de trayectoria de la artista en su estand. Se trata de una obra cargada de compromiso sociopolítico, crítica y cuestionamiento del binomio norte-sur.

Con espacios como Solo Projects, ARCOmadrid 2014 impulsa su vocación por tender puentes hacia un mercado que ya cuenta con sello y personalidad propios.

March 11, 2014 Marcius Galan: 140 caracteres https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcius-galan-140-caracteres/

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Artists: Lenora de Barros, Marcelo Cidade, Cláudio Tozzi, Laura Lima, Alair Gomes, Márcia Xavier, Carlos Zílio, Marcius Galan, Cildo Meireles, Antonio Henrique Amaral, Rubens Gerchman, Marcello Nitsche, Anna Bella Geiger, Nazareth Pacheco, and Paulo Bruscky.

140 Caracteres
January 28 – March 16, 2014
Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo
Sao Paulo, Brazil

The political mobilization through virtual communication is shaking forms of constituted power. The language used for mobilization through social networks is also new: short phrases, addresses of manifestation, very synthetic themes. The slogans adapt to the shape of social networks, taking advantage of existing communication virtual platforms. The social network Twitter is more synthetic, which accepts a maximum of 140 characters per message. Thus, the scale of language on Twitter becomes the thread of this exhibition.

140 works from the collection of MAM were selected to develop the theme of political mobilization. In the Great Room of the museum, the works are organized as an urban landscape, indicating the circumstances of the events and placing recent events. On the other hand, in the Paul Figueiredo exhibition room, the show generates a contrast to previous forms of political protest in Brazil during the military dictatorship, which began with the coup of 64.

140 characters is the result of the first Laboratório de Curadoria conducted by the Educational sector of MAM. Curation is shared by twenty students of the course, which also shared the authorship of the 140 commented tags of the exhibition. The exhibition is the result of a year of discussions between people of different backgrounds, who identified as a common interest, the new forms of political action. Thus, the authorship of the exhibition also diluted in a collective, assuming the force of mobilization without leaders.

March 5, 2014 Célio Braga: Threads. Textiles in art & design https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/celio-braga-threads-textiles-art-design/

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Artists: Faig Ahmed, Marie Julia Bollansée, Célio Braga, Tiffany Chung, Julie Cockburn, Kyriaki Costa, Ana de la Cueva, Yael Davids, Shezad Dawood, Gluklya, Nicholas Hlobo, Merel Karhof, Aisha Khalid, Fransje Killaars, Kimsooja, Monali Meher, Christien Meindertsma, Almagul Menlibayeva, Floor Nijdeken, Barbara Polderman, Saad Qureshi, Berend Strik, Lin Tianmiao, Remco Torenbosch.

Threads. Textiles in art & design
March 15 – August 17, 2014
Museum Arnhem (former Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem)
Arnhem, The Netherlands

The exhibition features works from more than 20 international artists and designers in which the medium of thread or textiles play a prominent role. Their work can be seen as a metaphor for the ‘interweaving’ of artistry and craft; art and the public; and personal and societal themes.

The exhibition is multidisciplinary and includes installations, video works, wall hangings and standing objects, some of which are interactive.

March 5, 2014 Abstraction in Action: ARCOmadrid 2014 https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/abstraction-action-arcomadrid-2014/

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ARCOmadrid 2014
19–23 February 2014
Halls 7 & 9, Feria de Madrid
Booth 7H02
Madrid, Spain

Abstraction in Action presents its online platform at an institutional booth during the fair, allowing visitors to interact with the database while gaining a deeper understanding of the project and the artists involved. The website will launch a new “Projects” section during the fair, featuring exhibitions, site-specific installations, and events that AIA has produced. Along with that, AIA features new artists:

Leyla Cárdenas (Colombia, 1975), John Mario Ortiz (Colombia, 1973), G. T. Pellizzi (Mexico, 1978), Rosario López Parra (Colombia, 1970), Macaparana (Brazil, 1952), Fidel Sclavo (Uruguay, 1960), KIRIN (Argentina, 1953), Bernardo Corces (Argentina, 1988), Eduardo Santiere (Argentina, 1962), Georgina Santos (Mexico, 1988), Santiago Reyes Villaveces (Colombia, 1986), Rodrigo Sassi (Brazil, 1981), Nicolás Lamas (Peru, 1980), Nicolás Consuegra (Colombia, 1976), María Ezcurra (Argentina, 1973), Jorge Pedro Núñez (Venezuela, 1976), Jaime Ruiz Otis (RUIZCYCLE) (Mexico, 1976), Gabriel Acevedo Velarde (Peru, 1976), Edwin Monsalve (Colombia, 1984), Chiara Banfi (Brazil, 1979), Barbarita Cardozo (Colombia, 1975), Ana Belén Cantoni (Peru, 1983), Óscar Figueroa (Costa Rica, 1986), and Silvana Lacarra (Argentina, 1962)

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February 25, 2014 Macaparana, Sclavo: Rojo(s) https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/macaparana-sclavo-rojos/

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Artists: Arden Quin, Carlos Arnaiz, Estrada, José Antonio Fernández-Muro, Sarah Grilo, Juan Lecuona, Macaparana, Kvĕta Pacovská, Cesar Paternosto, Ana Sacerdote, Fidel Sclavo, Torner

Rojo(s)
February 3 – March 6, 2014
Jorge Mara – La Ruche Gallery
Buenos Aires, Argentina

February 21, 2014 Jorge Cabieses, Marco Maggi: Latina https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/jorge-cabieses-marco-maggi-latina/

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Artists: Ricardo Brey, Jorge Cabieses, Yamandú Canosa, Paula Delgado, Sigismond de Vajay, Cao Guimaräes, Ricardo Lanzarini, Marco Maggi, Vik Muniz, Michel Pérez Pollo, Pablo Reinoso, Jorge Satorre, Eduardo Stupia, Janaina Tschäpe, Dani Umpí, Pedro Varela

Latina
February 14 – March 22, 2014
Xippas Art Contemporain
Geneva, Switzerland

 

February 18, 2014 Marcolina Dipierro: ….. In Circle https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcolina-dipierro-circle/

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Marcolina Dipierro

….. In Circle
February 15 – April 5, 2014
Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

For her first solo show at the Gallery and in the USA, Marcolina Dipierro has immersed herself with the investigation of the possibilities and potentiality of the circular form. To show its formal visual and perceptive infinity while identifying dialogues of direction, attitude, limits, volumes, and folds.

In her practice, Dipierro explores the unlimited possibilities that SPACE offers as the support of art work, as a constructive tool of the creative instance, and as a protagonist.

“Object” pieces of elemental geometric lines (volumes, planes and shapes), elaborated in simple materials that enter in direct dialogue with the walls and floor, establish formal ties with the shadows and the materials of the same,  rendering subjective the superficies and  the tridimensional.
The series of works that Dipierro presents for this occasion reflect on the formal continuity of the circle and its respective quadrature as constituent members of the geometrical universe:

Continuity in time
Continuity in reflection
Continuity in shadow

Born in Chivilcoy, Buenos Aires, Argentina, holds a Fine Arts Degree from the National Fine Arts School “Prilidiano Pueyrredón” in 2000. Amongst her solo and group exhibitions: Color y Consecuencias, site-specific light intervention at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Rosario, Argentina – MACRO (2007)Projections, Les dix ans du 19, Centre Régional d’ Art Contemporain de Montbéliard, Paris (2007); Ficción Encendida, CCEBA, Spanish Cultural Center at Buenos Aires (2009); Planograf, Zabaleta Lab-Arte Contemporáneo (2010); en ángulo, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2011); “en cuadre “, Jorge Mara La Ruche Gallery, Buenos Aires (2012). She was recipient of the Scholarship FONCA-CONACULTA for the Program of Artistic Residencies for Ibero American and Haiti Creators in Mexico (2009) and was awarded the National Fund for the Arts Scholarship (2013). Dipierro lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

February 13, 2014 Mariano Dal Verme, Pablo Siquier: Encuentros / Tensiones. Arte latinoamericano contemporáneo. Colección Malba + Comodatos https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/mariano-dal-verme-pablo-siquier-encuentros-tensiones-arte-latinoamericano-contemporaneo-coleccion-malba-comodatos/

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Artists: Mira Schendel, Liliana Porter, Antônio Dias, Luis Camnitzer, Anna Maria Maiolino, Guillermo Deisler, Nelson Leirner, Margarita Paksa, Marta Minujín, Helio Oiticica, Ana Mendieta, Guillermo Kuitca, Julio Galán, Marcia Schvartz, Pepe Fernández (José María Fernández), Pablo Suárez, José Bedia Valdés, Marcelo Pombo, Alejandra Seeber, Liliana Porter, Liliana Maresca, Sergio Avello, Feliciano Centurión, Omar Schilliro, Andrés Toro, Los Carpinteros, Allora & Calzadilla, León Ferrari, Jorge Gumier Maier, Jorge Macchi, Mondongo, Anna María Maioilino, Artur Lescher, Waltercio Caldas, Iran do Espirito Santo, Mariano Dal Verme, Ramsés Larzábal, Lucio Dorr, Oscar Bony, Tomás Saraceno, Fabio Kacero, Leo Battistelli, Artur Lescher, Daniel Joglar, Tomás Espina, Víctor Grippo, Ernesto Neto, Alfredo Jaar, Fernando Brizuela, Adriana Bustos, Tomás Espina, Oscar Muñoz, Alejandro Cesarco, Víctor Grippo, Cristina Piffer, Francis Alÿs, José Carlos Martinat, León Ferrari, Miguel Angel Ríos, Fernando Bryce, María Teresa Ponce, Colectivo Sociedad Civil, Matías Duville, Eduardo Stupía, Pablo Siquier, Gachi Hasper, Cristina Schiavi, Mónica Giron y Gabriel Baggio.

Encuentros / Tensiones. Arte latinoamericano contemporáneo. Colección Malba + Comodatos
October 18 – February 10, 2014
Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Un nuevo recorrido por el arte latinoamericano contemporáneo, a través de una selección de más de 100 obras pertenecientes al acervo del museo y un conjunto de comodatos. Se incluyen pinturas, dibujos, objetos, instalaciones y videos de 60 destacados artistas latinoamericanos.

Encuentros /Tensiones está organizada en siete núcleos, reunidos por afinidades temáticas y formales. Se inicia con una serie de piezas centrales del conceptualismo latinoamericano de fines de los años 60 –que retoma la cronología de la puesta actual de la colección permanente- y llega hasta nuestros días.

En el marco de esta exposición, Malba presenta la incorporación de seis nuevas piezas a su patrimonio de los artistas Ana Mendieta (Cuba) Ernesto Neto (Brasil), Oscar Muñoz (Colombia), Alfredo Hlito (Argentina, en la sala 2 del primer piso), Pablo Suárez (Argentina) y la dupla Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla (Puerto Rico), gracias a las compras y donaciones gestionadas por el Comité de Adquisiciones.

Con Encuentros /Tensiones, Malba ratifica su misión de coleccionar, conservar, estudiar y difundir el arte latinoamericano desde principios del siglo XX hasta la actualidad. “Reafirmamos el compromiso del museo con la promoción del arte de la región, a través de la constante ampliación del acervo y de la exhibición y puesta en valor de los principales artistas de la región”, afirma Eduardo F. Costantini, fundador y presidente de Malba.

Encuentros / Tensiones

Los debates actuales sobre el arte contemporáneo ponen en tensión las relaciones entre lo local y lo universal. Hoy se considera obsoleta la noción eurocéntrica del arte y se habla de un quiebre del proyecto de globalización, acentuándose los rasgos de regionalidad cultural. En relación a la producción artística, América Latina es una región con características que la identifican, pero también con culturas locales bien definidas.

El espacio de la exposición fue organizado según ejes conceptuales, puntos de contacto, pero también según tensiones o discordancias entre el inicio del arte contemporáneo latinoamericano y el arte actual, y entre postulados artísticos diversos. Se intenta mostrar las continuidades o herencias, pero también las dislocaciones, controversias, reacciones y cambios.

Núcleos y artistas

Conceptualismos – Mira Schendel, Liliana Porter, Antônio Dias, Luis Camnitzer, Anna Maria Maiolino, Guillermo Deisler, Nelson Leirner, Margarita Paksa, Marta Minujín, Helio Oiticica, Ana Mendieta

Los años 80, el posmodernismo – Guillermo Kuitca, Julio Galán, Marcia Schvartz, Pepe Fernández (José María Fernández), Pablo Suárez, José Bedia Valdés

Neo Dadá – Marcelo Pombo, Alejandra Seeber, Liliana Porter, Liliana Maresca, Sergio Avello, Feliciano Centurión, Omar Schilliro, Andrés Toro, Los Carpinteros, Allora & Calzadilla, León Ferrari, Jorge Gumier Maier, Jorge Macchi, Mondongo

Nuevos minimal – Anna María Maioilino, Artur Lescher, Waltercio Caldas, Iran do Espirito Santo, Mariano Dal Verme, Ramsés Larzábal, Lucio Dorr, Oscar Bony, Tomás Saraceno, Fabio Kacero

Transformación de la materia – Leo Battistelli, Artur Lescher, Daniel Joglar, Tomás Espina, Víctor Grippo, Ernesto Neto

Violencias – Alfredo Jaar, Fernando Brizuela, Adriana Bustos, Tomás Espina, Oscar Muñoz, Alejandro Cesarco, Víctor Grippo

Geopolítica – Cristina Piffer, Francis Alÿs, José Carlos Martinat, León Ferrari, Miguel Angel Ríos, Fernando Bryce, María Teresa Ponce, Colectivo Sociedad Civil

También se exhibirán en la galería del segundo piso piezas de los artistas Matías Duville, Eduardo Stupía, Pablo Siquier, Gachi Hasper, Cristina Schiavi, Mónica Giron y Gabriel Baggio

February 12, 2014 Emilia Azcárate: Liminal https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilia-azcarate-liminal/

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Emilia Azcárate

Liminal
February 13- March 22, 2014
Henrique Faria Fine Art
New York, NY, USA

The works belonging to the series of the Gohonzon are highly complex, since their composition is articulated as an interpretation both of symbology and inconography on the basis of a structuring of the original Gohonzon. The Gohonzon is considered as equivalent to the Treasure Tower, an allegorical tower described in the Lotus Sutra that emerges from the center of the earth during the ceremony of the air to represent our potential for spiritual illumination or Buddhahood. The artist is especially fascinated by this tower, and combines its allegory with the form in which she recreates the Gohonzon, which is constructed in an abstract fashion out of compositions of circles that are associated and superimposed.

The Practicables, Postales, and the Gohonzon series can be read as an abstract articulation of the intangible process of awakening the Buddha inherent and latent inside us. According to the artist, they lay emphasis on the transit from the Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo to reality, from effect to cause and vice versa. All these works share the concept that every moment of every day encloses an eternity of concentrated value. Their singularity lies in their rootedness in the artist’s life, offering us a personal, intimate, and private experience that might be described as profoundly human. These three series are now brought together on the occasion of the exhibition at Henrique Faria Fine Art, the motive for this publication, giving us an opportunity to appreciate this vital conductive thread in the work of Emilia Azcárate.

Extract from Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, “Full Emptiness and / or the Inconclusive Infinite”, in Emilia AzcárateLiminal, Madrid: Turner, 2014

February 11, 2014 Pedro Tyler: Galpón del Molino – Pueblo Garzón https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/pedro-tyler-galpon-del-molino-pueblo-garzon/

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Pedro Tyler

Galpón del Molino – Pueblo Garzón
February 1 -7, 2014
Galería del Paseo
Punta del Este, Lima, Peru

Refernces to measure are primarily a distraction, the implicit agreement on what is calculated, is an allegory. Imperfection is the artist’s vast territory; imposing to it a form is his challenge. Tyler lets the mind loose mocking accuracy. Pedro uses measuring instruments as a simple and recognizable way to support his inner world.

February 6, 2014 Dario Escobar: Slide https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/dario-escobar-slide/

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Artists and collectors: Alair Gomes, Alex Carvalho, Alexandre da Cunha, Alexandre Maïa, André Renaud, Angelo Venosa, Artur Kjá, Ayrson Heráclito, Beatriz Pimenta, Bete Esteves, Chico Fernandes, Chinese Cookie Poets, Claudia Hersz, Coletivo Praça XV, Crocco + Ogro, Daniela Seixas, Danielle Fonseca, Dario Escobar, Dea Lellis, Demian Jacob, Coleção Eduardo Yndyo Tassara, Eugênio Latour, Fabiano Rodrigues, Fábio Birita, Fabio Flaks, Fábio Tremonte, Gary Hill, Guga Ferraz e Marcio Arqueiro, Guilherme Peters, Guilherme Teixeira, Hannes Heinrich e Raquel Schembri, Igor Vidor, James Oatway, Jeffrey Vallance, Jonas Arrabal, Laura Andreato, Marcos Bonisson, Nelson Leirner, Nena Balthar, Olafur Eliasson, Oriana Duarte, Raphael Zarka, Coleção Ricardo Fainziliber, Coleção Rico de Souza, Russell Crotty, Sesper, Shaun Gladwell, Silvana Mello, SKATEISTAN / Rhianon Bader, Steve Miller, Tiago Carneiro da Cunha, Tito Rosemberg, Tracey Moffatt, Virgilio Lopes Neto, Wilbor, Zanini de Zanine

Slide <Surf Skate>
Curator: Raphael Fonseca
Januray 14 – April 27, 2014
Museu de Arte do Rio
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

In a 1971 newspaper one sees a man with legs flexed and trunk bent forward. Under his body, a surfboard and sea foam. “In sliding, a sensation of vertigo”, reads the caption that accompanies the photo. The title of the piece? “And the waves were mastered.” If we leaf through the pages of other publications from the same period, we’ll also come across attempts to master the geometry of concrete. Skateboarding on the handrails of commercial buildings, in private condominiums and in empty pools, seen as potential spaces for new moves.

Surfing and skating are the North and South of this exhibit. Both sports are viewed from a historical perspective, but without the pretense of being exhaustive. Information and images were selected from a temporal arch that goes from 1778, when the first drawings were made of native Hawaiians surfing, to public discussions in Brazil on the role of these activities.

It’s worth reflecting on the artistic dimension raised by these different ways of exploring space. Would it be possible to affirm that some artists have such a strong existential relation with surfing or skating to the point of making them central elements in their artistic language? It certainly looks that way.

Aside from situations in which the dance of movements appears in its literalness, other artistic propositions treat visuality in a more oblique manner; board and deck can be seen as sculptural forms, just as the waves of the sea and the waiting are flanked by the loud spread of papers pasted over the surfaces of the cities. The gaze can also be cast on the one who rides: who are these skaters and surfers? Is there space for the multicultural representation of archetypes? How to interpret the many self-portraits in dialogue here?

It’s importante to recall, in conclusion, a few words spoken by the skater and collector Eduardo Yndyo: “Everything that slides mesmerizes. If the sliding can be controlled, there’s passion.” Let’s be fascinated, therefore, by these stories and try to control them in our memories until we experience the only certainty of the slide: the wipeout.

February 6, 2014 Dario Escobar: Fútbol-The Beautiful Game https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/dario-escobar-futbol-beautiful-game/

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Artists: Adel Abdessmed, George Afedzi Hughes, Gustavo Artigas, Chris Beas, Mark Bradford, Miguel Calderon, Mary Ellen Carroll, Carolyn Castaño, Petra Cortright, Stephen Dean, Dario Escobar, Leo Fitzmaurice, Generic Art Solutions, Douglas Gordon, Andreas Gursky, Hassan Hajjaj, Lyle Ashton Harris, Satch Hoyt, Nelson Leirner, Nery Gabriel Lemus, Alon Levin, Amitis Motevalli, Antoni Muntadas, Oscar Murillo, Philippe Parreno, Paul Pfeiffer, Robin Rhode, Ana Serrano, Dewey Tafoya, Andy Warhol, Wendy White, Kehinde Wiley

Fútbol: The Beautiful Game
February 2 – July 20, 2014
LACMA
Los Angeles, CA, USA

The exhibition examines football—nicknamed “the beautiful game” by one sports commentator—and its signficance in societies around the world. As a subject, football touches on issues of nationalism and identity, globalism and mass spectacle, as well as the common human experience shared by spectators from many cultures. Celebrating the sport on the eve of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, the exhibition includes approximately thirty artists from around the world who work in video, photography, painting and sculpture. Two room-sized video installations—Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, by the artists Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon, and Volta by Stephen Dean—anchor the exhibition. Other works by artists including Miguel Calderon (whose 2004 video Mexico v. Brasil represents a 17-0 victory for Mexico), Robin Rhode, Kehinde Wiley, and Andy Warhol provide a sense of the miraculous possibilities of the sport as universal conversation piece.

February 5, 2014 Juan Pablo Garza: Sin Título con Amarillo https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/juan-pablo-garza-sin-titulo-con-amarillo/

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Juan Pablo Garza

Sin Título con Amarillo
February 2 – March 16, 2014
Oficina #1
Caracas, Venezuela

El domingo 2 de febrero Oficina #1 inicia su programación del 2014 con la apertura de su nueva sala de exhibiciones y las exposiciones individuales de los artistas Juan Pablo Garza y Jaime Gili.

Como parte de su compromiso con el arte contemporáneo y emergente en Venezuela, Oficina #1 suma una nueva sala de exposiciones (el Galpón G6 del Centro de Arte los Galpones) a su programa expositivo con el propósito de brindar una oferta más amplia y dinámica dentro de su trabajo de difusión y proyección de la obra de los creadores locales.

Así este próximo domingo 2 de febrero inauguran simuntáneamente en Oficina #1 las exposiciones Droits de Succession de Jaime Gili en el galpón G9 y Sin título con amarillo de Juan Pablo Garza en el G6.

Con la muestra Sin título con amarillo de Juan Pablo Garza, Oficina #1 inaugura su nueva sala de exhibiciones en el galpón G6. En ésta, la tercera exposición de Garza en Oficina #1, es posible adentrarse en el universo de elementos, conexiones y procesos que han habitado la obra del artista.

Desde una visión actualizada y personal del género de las naturalezas muertas, Garza propone un sistema de objetos y relaciones que se construye con un vasto despliegue de medios. Así, en Sin título con amarillo se desencadena un entramado de conexiones que se formalizan desde la pintura, la fotografía, la gráfica, los ensamblajes y la escultura para develar ese espacio íntimo con el que el artista ha construido su obra. En este sentido, Sin título con amarillo pudiera entenderse como un punto de encuentro entre las diversas inquietudes presentes en la corta pero abundante producción artística de Garza.

Juan Pablo Garza (Maracaibo, 1980), ha realizado las muestras individuales “Evidence multigrade Light”, Alejandra von Hartz Gallery, Miami (2012); Them Elementals”, Goldrushfineart, Maine, USA (2012); “Reforma del ahora”, AlBorde, Maracaibo (2012); Nuevas Consecuencias, Oficina#1, Caracas (2011); Dos Series, Oficina#1, Caracas (2009); Instantáneas, Espacio PP Hotel Paseo las Mercedes, Caracas, (2009); Puesto por los Caminos, Galería de la Escuela de Fotografía Julio Vengoechea, Maracaibo, Venezuela (2005). De igual manera ha participado en diversas muestras colectivas, entre ellas, “XII Edición Premio Eugenio Mendoza”, Sala Mendoza, Caracas (2013); Pedazos de País II”, Oficina#1, Caracas (2012); “Lugares de tránsito”, Tabacalera, Madrid, España (2012); “Papeles”, Oficina # 1, Caracas (2012); Expedientes FOTOFIA 2011, Los Secaderos, Centro Cultural La Trinidad, Caracas, Venezuela (2011); Affinity, Kulter Gallery, Holanda, Amsterdam (2011); Enemies of my enemies, OCAD University Graduate Gallery, Toronto, Canada (2011); Una vez once, Al Borde, Maracaibo, Venezuela (2011); 6to Salón Regional de Jóvenes Artistas, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo del Zulia, Maracaibo, Venezuela (2010); XIII Salón SuperCable Jóvenes con Fia, Centro Cultural Corp Banca, Caracas, Venezuela (2010); entre otras. Entre sus premios y distinciones destacan: Primer premio, 6to Salón Regional de Jóvenes Artistas, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo del Zulia, (2010). Primer premio, XII Salón SuperCable Jóvenes con FIA (2010).

February 5, 2014 Jaime Gili: Droits de Succession https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/jaime-gili-droits-de-succession/

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Jaime Gili

Droits de Succession
February 2 – March 16, 2014
Oficina #1
Caracas, Venezuela

El domingo 2 de febrero Oficina #1 inicia su programación del 2014 con la apertura de su nueva sala de exhibiciones y las exposiciones individuales de los artistas Juan Pablo Garza y Jaime Gili.

Como parte de su compromiso con el arte contemporáneo y emergente en Venezuela, Oficina #1 suma una nueva sala de exposiciones (el Galpón G6 del Centro de Arte los Galpones) a su programa expositivo con el propósito de brindar una oferta más amplia y dinámica dentro de su trabajo de difusión y proyección de la obra de los creadores locales.

Así este próximo domingo 2 de febrero inauguran simuntáneamente en Oficina #1 las exposiciones Droits de Succession de Jaime Gili en el galpón G9 y Sin título con amarillo de Juan Pablo Garza en el G6.

Droits de Succession es la segunda exposición que realiza en Oficina #1 el artista venezolano residenciado en Londres Jaime Gili, en la cual se exhibe un conjunto de dibujos recientes en los que el artista realiza intervenciones directas sobre obras gráficas de artistas como Cruz Diez, Marcel Floris o Morellet. Gili establece un diálogo directo con la obra de artistas que como él pero en tiempo precedentes han avanzado en la investigación de la abstracción en la pintura.

Completa la muestra un mural, una intervención sobre una forma de Jean Arp tomada del libro “Jean Arp, Pensieri Poesie Disegni Collages”, compilado por Serio Grandini en Lugano en 1976. Esta forma que nunca pretendió salir del papel a la pared sirve de base para una propuesta sobre los vidrios de la galería con la que Gili rinde tributo a este artista, un tributo a las herencias tal y como señala el título de la muestra Droits de Succession. La muestra también cuenta con la colaboración especial del escritor venezolano Federico Vegas quien ha realizado el texto que acompaña esta exposición titulado Tres acercamientos a Jaime Gili.

Jaime Gili (Caracas, 1972), vive y trabaja desde 1996 en Londres, Inglaterra. Su obra ha sido exhibida en numerosas exposiciones individuales y colectivas así como en proyectos de arte público en diferentes ciudades del mundo. Entre sus exposiciones individuales se cuentan “The Lakes”, Riflemaker, Londres (2011); “La Toma”, Magda Bellotti, Madrid (2011); “Jaime Gili Afuera”, Periférico Caracas(2010); COMMA04, Bloomberg space, Londres (2009); “Bill at Pittier”, Kunsthalle Winterthur, Zurich (2009); “Everything is borrowed”, Alejandra von Hartz, Miami (2009); “Superestrellas”, Riflemaker, Soho Square, Londres, (2008);  “Coda”, Oficina#1, Caracas (2008); “Superstars”, Buia Gallery, Nueva York (2007); “Jaime Gili makes things triangular at Riflemaker”, Riflemaker, Londres (2006); “Las tres Calaveras”, Periférico Caracas, Espacio 0, Caracas (2006); entre otras. Recientemente ha participado en las exposiciones colectivas “Horizontal”, La Central, Bogotá (2013); “Ex-Culturas”, Periférico Caracas, Caracas (2013); “Red, White, and Blue – Pop, Punk, Politics, Place”, Chelsea Space, Londres (2012); “LA to LA”, Artcore Brewerly Annex, Los Angeles (2012); “We are Gramar”, Pratt Manhattan Gallery, Nueva York (2011); “Friendship of the peoples”, Simon Oldfield Gallery, Londres (2011); “Demons Yarns and Tales”, James Cohan Gallery, Nueva York (2010); “The constructive élan”, Alejandra von Hartz, Miami (2010); “Newspeak: British Art Now”, Saatchi Gallery, Londres (2010); “Concrete Geometries”, Research Cluster at the Architectural Association, Londres (2010); “Coalesce : Happenstance”, Smart Project Space, Amsterdam (2009); Down by Law, Crévecoeur, París (2008); “6a Bienal do Mercosul”, Porto Alegre (2007); “Jump Cuts”, Colección del Banco Mercantil, CIFO, Miami (2007). Entre sus diversos proyectos de arte público se encuentran: 16 tanques de petróleo en Portland, Maine (2008-2010); “Diamante de las semillitas”, Barrio José Félix Ribas, Palo Verde, Caracas (2010); “Health, Safety, Signs”, The Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, Londres (2009); “Mashrabiya” COMMA04, Bloomberg, Londres (2009);”Ruta Rota” London Architecture Biennale, Londres (2006).

February 3, 2014 Iván Navarro: Nacht und Nebel https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ivan-navarro-nacht-und-nebel/

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Iván Navarro

Nacht und Nebel
Galerie Daniel Templon
Brussels, Belgium

Chilean artist Iván Navarro is exhibiting his work in Brussels for the first time, with Nacht und Nebel, an installation of trompe-l’œillight sculptures that explore memories of the Second World War.

Presented for the first time at La Fondazione Volume! in Rome in 2012, and curated by Antonio Arevalo, the installation recalls the atmosphere of Italy under Nazi occupation and the bombing campaigns of 1943-1944. It comprises six geometric light wells — circle, triangle and rectangle — constructed of brick and cement. Each sculpture spells out a word in neon, with mirrors used to project the word infinitely: ODIO, OCCHIO, EX, BECCO, ECCIDIO, etc. Plunged into darkness, the gallery thus seems to open onto endless light-filled passages, metaphors for both escape and disappearance.

Navarro seeks to trigger a different attitude to history, exploring the ambiguities of memory. Every illuminated word possesses both real substance and illusory density. Language becomes an illuminated manifestation of conscience, referencing double meanings and the painful chasms that separate appearance from truth.

For the Project Room, Ivan Navarro created two new pieces that play on the theme of ambivalence, whether formal or linguistic. Two purified wells invite the visitors to look at the words Above all and All of the Above, phrases normally self-contained in their meaning, but with new significance in the context of these works. Set in relation with an older piece, Defect — an ambiguous word because of its double meaning as an noun or verb — these works form a set that manages to subtly transform structure into an act of communication.

Born in Chile in 1972 and now a resident of New York, Iván Navarro uses light as his raw material. Turning everyday objects into electric sculptures and transforming the exhibition space by means of visual interplays, his work appropriates the language of minimalism in order to develop understated political and social criticism. Having grown up under the Pinochet dictatorship, Iván Navarro is haunted by questions of power, control and imprisonment, both physical and psychological. The title of this latest exhibition refers to Adolph Hitler’s 1941 decree that ordered the Third Reich’s opponents to be spirited away in “the night and the fog” (nacht und nebel) – a death sentence. The decree’s initials, NN, are the same as those used in Latin American for the disappeared, those No Names Iván Navarro’s works so often invoke.

Iván Navarro represented Chile at the 53th Venice Biennale in 2009. His work has been shown worldwide, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York (2006), Museo del Barrio, New York (2007), MOCA, Miami (2007), Fundación Caja de Burgos (2010), La Maison Rouge and Frost Art Museum in Miami in 2012. He took part in the Light Show exhibition at the Hayward Gallery (London) in 2013. His work features in a great many international collections, such as the Saatchi Collection (London), Martin Z. Margulies Collection (Miami), Hirshorn Museum (Washington, D.C.), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond), Fonds National d’Art Contemporain and Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la création (Paris). He will be installing a monumental in situ project in New York’s Madison Square Park on 20 February 2014, This Land Is Your Land. The installation will feature the giant water towers that are such an integral part of the New York cityscape, reflecting neon messages to create the illusion of infinite space.

February 3, 2014 Emilio Chapela: Grenzstraße https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilio-chapela-grenzstrase/

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Emilio Chapela

Grenzstraße (Calle de la frontera / Calle del límite)
Casa Maauad
Mexico City, Mexico

Casa Maauad presenta la exposición Grenzstraße de Emilio Chapela, que consiste en un conjunto de obras que exploran problemas sociales, políticos, filosóficos y cosmológicos desde una óptica común; el concepto de límite (boundary en inglés y Grenze en alemán). La obra intenta señalar y desafiar límites espaciales, políticos, territoriales, tecnológicos y personales. Sitúa el concepto de horizonte como aquello al final del límite, aquello que sobrepasa nuestra vista y nuestro entendimiento. El horizonte cosmológico, por ejemplo, marca el confín del universo visible y escuchable. Las fronteras territoriales señalan líneas que delimitan el libre transito de personas, al mismo tiempo que configuran la identidad nacional. En Internet, los horizontes son amplios y complejos, son límites difíciles de detectar y dibujar. Sus límites confrontan con frecuencia otros horizontes, como aquellos que circunscriben la esfera de lo privado. A través de video, fotografía, grabado y escultura, Emilio Chapela nos invita a reflexionar y preguntar por los alcances del individuo y la sociedad para comprender sus propios limites.

February 3, 2014 Octavio Abúndez: Presentando lo Irrepresentable https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/octavio-abundez-presentando-lo-irrepresentable/

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Artists: Gabriel Rico Jiménez and Octavio Abúndez

Presentando lo Irrepresentable
January 30 – April 11, 2014
Curro & Poncho
Jalisco, Mexico

CURRO & PONCHO is pleased to present its first show of the year: “Presentando lo Irrepresentable”. A two man show by mexican artists Gabriel Rico Jimenez (Lagos de Moreno, 1980) and Octavio Abundez (Monterrey, 1981).

Borrowing from Francois Lyotard’s 1982 essay entitled Presenting the Unpresentable, this show attempts to confront viewers and their preconceived notions regarding symbology and representation.

By taking as its reference point notions such as liminality, border-related thresholds, rites of passing as well as their philosophical and ambiguous implications, Abundez and Rico transmit the impassible nature of such concepts through an almost esquizofrenic practice.

“Presentando lo Irrepresentable” is curated by Francisco Borrego Vergara

January 29, 2014 Alexander Apóstol: Contrato Colectivo Cromosaturado https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alexander-ap/

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Alexander Apóstol
Contrato Colectivo Cromosaturado
January 25 – March 8, 2014
Mor-Charpentier
Paris, France

Alexander Apóstol (1969) was born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela. Currently lives and works between Caracas and Madrid.

His work has been featured in numerous major solo and group exhibitions—in Spain, at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporáneo, the Casa de América, the Palau de La Virreina, and the Fundación Telefónica; in Venezuela, at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Sofía Imber, the Sala Mendoza, and the Museo Alejandro Otero; and in the United States at the Museo del Barrio, and the Art Museum of the Americas Society. His work has been presented in museums throughout South America, including the Museo de Arte de Lima, Peru; the Centro Cultural Recoleta and the Centro Cultural San Martín in Argentina; the Centro Nacional de las Artes and the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico; and the Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo de Costa Rica, among other venues.

Apóstol’s work has been represented in many international art fairs and events, including the Prague Biennial (2003 and 2005), the Cuenca Biennial in Ecuador (2004), the Istanbul Biennial (2003), Printemps de Septembre in Toulouse, France (2003), the São Paulo Biennial (2002), PhotoEspaña in Madrid (2003), FotoFest in Houston, U.S.A. (2002), the Noorderlicht Photofestival in Groningen, the Netherlands (2002), the Havana Biennial (1997), and the Bienal de Barro de América in Caracas (2001).

Apóstol’s work has been featured in a variety of books, among them: Vitamin PH (Phaidon, 2006), Art Photography Now (Thames and Hudson, 2005), Blink (Phaidon, 2002), Digital Art (Thames and Hudson, 2003), Mapas Abiertos (Lunwerg, 2003), Image and Memory: Photography from Latin America (University of Texas Press, 1997). Articles discussing his work have appeared in magazines and newpapers such as Aperture, Art Nexus, Beaux Arts Magazine, Artforum, European Photography, Art in America, Lápiz, Atlantica, Extracamara, and the New York Times. In 2004, Apóstol was the recipient of the first prize at the VIII International Cuenca Biennial in Ecuador. He was an artist in residence at the Casa de America, Madrid, during 2002. In 2003, Apóstol was awarded Spain’s Endesa Scholarship for Contemporary Art.

January 29, 2014 Richard Garet: BioDerivas https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/richard-garet-bioderivas/

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Artists: Richard Garet, Barbara Held and Yapci Ramos

BioDerivas
December 13, 2013 – February 14, 2014
Museo de la Naturaleza y el Hombre, Tenerife, Spain

The common link between the first Cabinet of Curiosities of the Renaissance, the Natural History of the seventeenth century and modern research today is the exhibition of objects kept imploring the public to enjoy the experience of the new. The proposal presented to the creators BioDerivas Richard Garet, Barbara Held and Yapci Ramos is closely related to the mission of the museum. Here, in their eagerness to see the world around them, they use technology to capture and display images and sounds that allow re-contextualize our own perception of the world.

The work of Garet, Held and Ramos, both individually and as a whole, highlights the importance of perception through careful listening, focused look and the complex process of human perception, creating a micro-habitat in the museum active exploration rewards and offers thoughtful contemplation for the understanding of the world around us through the senses of sight and hearing.

BioDerivas contrasts the different and unknown to the common, everyday, expanding, thus our knowledge of sound and image within our ecosystem and across the boundaries of language to help understand the complexity of the natural environment.

January 25, 2014 Richard Garet, Adán Vallecillo, Sergio Vega & Luis Roldán: Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena de Indias https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/richard-garet-adan-vallecillo-sergio-vega-luis-roldan-biennial-contemporary-art-cartagena-de-indias/

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The First International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena de Indias
#1: Cartagena
February 7–April 7, 2014
Cartagena de Indias, Colombia

#1: Cartagena is an issue-oriented project with works spread throughout the historic district. #1: Cartagena reflects on the cultural traditions of the people, the history and the deep connections to the colonial past, as well as encompassing literature, cinema, music, dance and crafts. The Biennial focuses on the idea of presence in its multitude of meanings, conveying how the past continues with us in the present. Structured as a hypertext, the macro project of the Biennial proposes a discontinuous journey through nine locations, each one presenting a multiplicity of narratives and memories. This structure also promotes the re-signification of the city as a monument. The viewer decides their own itinerary, making links from one space to another, stopping here and there to look at the city-monuments, and endowing their chosen circuit with the power, excitement and soul of the city. This personal journey gives meaning to the macro text: the Biennial and its exhibitions, site-specific projects, performances, film program and lectures.

Founded in 1533, Cartagena de Indias is a colonial town located in the center of the northeastern coast of Colombia. Surrounded by the Caribbean Sea, Cartagena has received a unique and interesting confluence of influences over its 500-year history that include pre-Columbian native Aboriginal, Spanish, African and Arab cultures. It is rich in multicultural folklore, and widely considered to be one of the most beautiful cities in the Caribbean.

The Biennial´s Artistic Director is international curator and writer Berta Sichel. For this project, she worked with three co-curators: Bisi Silva, the Center for Contemporary Art, Lagos; Barbara Krulik, independent curator; and Paul Willemsen, film scholar. She also consulted with critics and other curators in the formation of the Biennial.

#1: Cartagenainternational exhibition
Suzanne Anker, Eduardo Abaroa, Helena Almeida, Julieta Aranda, Maria Jose Arjona, Charles Atlas, Radcliffe Bailey, Rosa Barba, Perry Bard, Yto Barrada, Lothar Baumgarten, Terry Berkowitz, Janet Biggs, Anna Boghiguian, Francois Bucher, Trisha Brown, Fernando Bryce, Anna Camner, Peter Campus, Nuria Carrasco, Nick Cave, Willie Cole, Bill Culvert, Elena del Rivero, William Engelen, Nezaket Ekici, Richard Garet, Ximena Garrido-Leca, Justine Graham, Asta Gröting, Federico Guzman, Romuald Hazoume, Diango Hernandez, Kirsten Heshusius, Sheila Hicks, Maria Teresa Hincapie, Candida Höfer, Katie Holten, Shirazeh Houshiary, Satch Hoyt, Marine Hugonnier, Jesper Just, Clemencia Labin, Dana Levy, Ligorano/Reese, Christiane Löhr, Inés Lombardi, Oswaldo Maciá, Lucía Madriz, Marcellvs L., Jenny Marketou, Billy Martin, Julie Mehretu, Zwelethu Methethwa, Marta Minujín, Guillermo Mora, Carlos Motta, Beth Moyses, Maria Nepomuceno, Lorraine O’Grady, Emeka Ogboh, Uche Opka-Iroha, Kristin Oppenheim, Trevor Paglen, Guillermo Paneque, Periferica, João Penalva, Libia Posada, Freya Powell, Khalil Rabah, Jessica Rankin, Luis Fernando Ramirez, Alvaro Restrepo and El Colegio de Cuerpo, Steven Roden, Lotty Rosenfeld, Ruby Rumié, Eduardo Sarabia, Carlos Schwartz, Teresa Serrano, Hassan Sharif, Yinka Shonibare, Kimsooja, Philip Taaffe, Tallur L.N., Alison Elizabeth Taylor, Mickalene Thomas, Ana Torfs, Adán Vallecillo, Raúl Gómez Valverde, Sergio Vega, Anton Vidokle, Leo Villareal, Bill Viola, Stephen Vitiello, Gijs van Bon, Svetlin Velchev, Friedemann von Stockhausen, Pawl Wojtaski, Ming Wong, Betty Woodman, Yin Xiuzhen, Suda Yoshihiro, Dolores Zinny and Juan Maidagan

Imperfect Idler or When Things DisappearColombian artists exhibition
Felipe Arturo, Jaime Avila, Andrés Felipe Castaño, Colectivo Octavo Plastico (Roberto Carlos Pérez, Ana Victoria Padilla, and Emanuel Julio Pinilla), Nicolás Consuegra, Wilson Díaz, Julián Dupont, Juan Manuel Echavarría, Clemencia Echeverri, Adrián Gaitán, Elías Heim, Leonardo Herrera, Juan David Laserna, Verónica Lehner, Diego Mendoza, Ana Maria Millan, Óscar Muñoz, Oscar Murillo, José Olano, Juan Obando, Bernardo Ortiz, Juan Peláez, María Fernanda Plata, Luis Roldan, Miguel Angel Rojas, Maria Isabel Rueda, Wilger Sotelo, Paola Tafur, Pablo Gomez Uribe

January 25, 2014 Jaime Tarazona: Gestos Urbanos | Urban Gestures https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/jaime-tarazona-gestos-urbanos-urban-gestures/

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Artists: Juan Fernando Herrán, Kevin Simón Mancera, and Jaime Tarazona

Gestos Urbanos | Urban Gestures
January 16 – February 22, 2014
Johannes Vogt
NY, USA

Johannes Vogt Gallery is pleased to present Gestos Urbanos | Urban Gestures, featuring works by three Colombian artists, Juan Fernando Herrán, Kevin Simón Mancera, and Jaime Tarazona. The works brought together for this show offer a range of approaches, from drawing to sculpture to overpainted etchings. Each artist alludes to an overlaying of historical and contemporary urbanism as a structure that binds inhabitants to territories, be it through architecture, public spaces, or local news.

Jaime Tarazona (b. 1973) presents the viewer with a series of interventions into historic etchings of scenic landscapes. Abstractions of seemingly impossible modernist structures hover over antique images of continental Europe creating a beautiful and subtle bond with the grounding content. Tarazona addresses notions of historical progress alongside the ultimate failure of Latin American modernism. His architectonic proposals exist somewhere between seriality and the original and their status as potentials squarely locates them at the collapse of art, architecture and design.

January 23, 2014 Richard Garet: f(glitch) https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/richard-garet-fglitch/

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Artists: Richard Garet, Robert Henke, Emma McNally, David Linton, Phoenix Perry, Bethany Shorb

f(glitch)
February 10th – March 29th
Simon Center for Geometry and Physics
Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA

Noise. Error. Glitch.

The ideal held up for digital technology is frictionless functionality. But systems have bugs, communication is riddled with distortion and channels are often noisy. Error is not a rare occurrence, but a given. Glitch, broadly defined, introduces unintentional events, artifacts, and interruptions. It can be visual or sonic; it can be imperceptible at ordinary levels. There are glitches in programming, in communication, in architecture and infrastructure. But these errors can be illuminating, creative and productive. Glitch can make our systems stronger and more robust. Distortion can be aesthetically vibrant and revealing.Glitch reminds us that noise can be something to be embraced rather than eradicated and that the unexpected is often unexpectedly useful.
 
(f) Glitch, or The Function of Glitch, is the fourth in a series of events produced by cDACT that interrogate central concepts of digital culture—sound, space, data, and now error and noise.Glitches are a glimpse into the hidden world of technology, exposing the seams in our digital infrastructure.
January 23, 2014 Omar Barquet, José Luis Landet, Pablo Rasgado, Omar Rodríguez-Graham: Superficie de Tensión https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/omar-barquet-jose-luis-landet-pablo-rasgado-omar-rodriguez-graham-superficie-de-tension/

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Artists: Ernesto Alva, Verónica Bapé, Balam Bartolomé, Omar Barquet, Saúl Gómez, José Luis Landet, Moris, Calixto Ramírez, Pablo Rasgado, Omar Rodríguez-Graham, Tania Ximena, Cynthia Yee

Curated by Christian Barragán

Superficie en Tensión
January 25 – March 22, 2014
Diagrama
Mexico City, Mexico

Entre el arte contemporáneo, la pintura en la actualidad continúa una disputa dentro y fuera de sus límites sobrentendidos. De ser una superficie pulida, determinante y estática, pasó a ser una superficie en tensión, abierta, inacabada, donde cada artista -desde su particular condición y posición- cuestiona la naturaleza y el campo de acción de ésta disciplina, generando un diálogo con la historia remota y presente. Fue a partir de 1913 que Marcel Duchamp abandonó la pintura-pintura, aquella con aroma a terebantina, por la pintura-idea; fue el comienzo de su verdadera obra, que incluye los readymades y el Gran Vidrio (1915-1923). Es también ése año el comienzo de una nueva época en el arte: la sustitución de la obra-representación por la obra-presencia, asunto del cual Roland Barthes se ha ocupado en su ensayo el Grado cero de la escritura y Octavio Paz en Apariencia desnuda, de ahí la siguiente cita: “El artista no es un hacedor; sus obras no son hechuras sino actos.” Desde ese momento la pintura para Duchamp es un objeto de investigación interna, lo es en dos sentidos, de sí mismo en tanto creador y como análisis del arte en tanto lenguaje. Respecto a esta decisión de Duchamp, Paz escribió, “su fascinación ante el lenguaje es de orden intelectual: es el instrumento más perfecto para producir significados y, asimismo, para destruirlos.” La pintura, a un mismo tiempo,  arma y cuerpo de su propia batalla.

El siglo veinte es el siglo de las vanguardias: entre otras, Impresionismo, Fauvismo, Expresionismo, Cubismo, Futurismo, Abstracción, Suprematismo, Dadaísmo, Metafísica, Constructivismo, Surrealismo, Arte Conceptual, Minimalismo, Land Art, Pop Art… Un siglo de más de cien años en los cuales el arte fue un campo abierto, dinamitado desde el feudo de la pintura. A semejanza del acto de Duchamp, ahí está Warhol haciendo pintura en serigrafía, apropiándose de la multiplicidad y serialidad de imágenes que ofrecían los medios masivos de comunicación en el momento; o Basquiat recurriendo a cuanto soporte tuvo frente a sí, ya sea la puerta de un refrigerador o muebles de madera en desecho, atando palos y tela, mugre y óleo para pintar; o Richter y su realismo austero de la posguerra, además de sus densos barridos de color; o Oehlen explorando las posibilidades de la escala a través del ordenador sobre polímeros; o Baldessari y su “Cremation Project” (1970), en el cual hizo quemar todas las pinturas que había realizado hasta entonces. Un siglo, aún pues, de “tradición y ruptura” (Paz dixit).

La obra reunida en Superficie en tensión son “actos” interesados en la pintura, investigaciones llevadas a cabo por un grupo disímil de artistas congregados por sus procesos de trabajo sobre la vigencia y alcances de lo pictórico. Por ello, cada obra es una aproximación, un modo de concebir, de enfrentarse, ante el gesto pictórico dentro y fuera del bastidor. Los encuentros con la pintura suceden más allá de la superficie, y así descubren o amplían otros ámbitos y contextos, posturas e incomodidades, dudas y cuestionamientos. No importa ya la condición suprema de la pintura sobre otras disciplinas, sino del arte en su condición de creador-destructor de conocimiento, sentido, crítica y significado para asumirse frente a un tiempo y espacio específicos: el aquí y el ahora del arte contemporáneo. Superficie en tensión es un ejercicio que atiende no sólo la pervivencia de la pintura, sino también la vitalidad del arte.

January 21, 2014 Luis Roldán, Osvaldo Romberg & Horacio Zabala: Drawings from the South of America https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/luis-roldan-osvaldo-romberg-horacio-zabala-drawings-south-america/

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Artists: Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck, Hercules Barsotti, Willys de Castro, Jaime Davidovich, Guillermo Deisler, Mirtha Dermisache, León Ferrari, Héctor Fuenmayor, Anna Bella Geiger, Leandro Katz, Gerd Leufert, Luis Roldán, Osvaldo Romberg, Eduardo Santiere, Horacio Zabala.

Drawings from the South of America
January 24 – February 8, 2014
Henrique Faria Fine Art
New York, NY, USA

*Image: Horacio Zabala, “Terra Ignota”, 1973, Ink on paper, 36.4 x 82.4 cm
January 21, 2014 Túlio Pinto: Atelier Subterrânea https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/tulio-pinto-atelier-subterranea/

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Túlio Pinto and AIA is reviewed by Atelier Subterrânea
Atelier Subterrânea
Av. Independência, n° 745, Subsolo
Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil

The Cultural Association Subterranea Studio is an independent art space that hosts exhibitions, workshops, chats, film and book launches, performances, and other activities related to contemporary art. The goal is to gather and provide dialogue between different audiences that have interest in the visual art scene.

It reviews the Abstraction in Action project in the article “Por onde andamos: Túlio Pinto integra a plataforma Abstract in Action” (Where to walk: Abstract in Action platform integrates Túlio Pinto).

“With the initial goal of producing an exhibition that illustrates the experimental and innovative nature of contemporary abstraction in Latin America, the developers of the Abstract in Action project soon discovered such a rich setting of this production that expanded their goals. Through the partnership between Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, curator of Abstract in Action, and Sayago & Pardon Collection, which focuses on contemporary Latin American abstraction, the virtual platform has been developed, which today serves as a reference for research and promotion of abstract art in Latin America.

Abstract in Action is defined as an area of ​​ongoing collaboration that seeks to incorporate multiple voices of artists, curators, writers and researchers. Among the members of this network is Tulio Pinto, who composes the platform with information and pictures of various projects developed over the years. Besides the network of artists, the project has a collection of various texts and articles on the subject, and specific space for disclosure of events related to the theme.”

January 12, 2014 Túlio Pinto: Acquisition Award at the 13th SNAI https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/tulio-pinto-acquisition-award-13th-snai/

Tulio Pinto wins Acquisition Award at the 13th SNAI
XIII Salão Nacional de Artes de Itajaí
November 16th – December 15th, 2013
Fundação Cultural de Itajaí / Rua Lauro Müler, 53, Brazil
Casa da Cultura Dide Brandão / Rua Hercilio Luz, 681, Brazil

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From November 16 to December 16, 2013, Itajai presented in its space the 13 SNAI – National Arts Hall of Itajaí. This year, the Hall brought to Itajaí 114 artists from virtually every state in Brazil.

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The works were presented in several areas of the city (cultural centers, parks, harbor wall, beach). The research center was composed by Caue Alves curator, artist Divine Sobral and general curator of the 13th SNAI Joshua Mattos. The choice of the three winning works was made by Ane Fernandes (Director of Art of Itajai Cultural Foundation), and Divine Caue Alves Sobral.

Acquisition prizes were awarded to artists Pink Bunchaft (Salvador), Philip Steinberg (Campinas) and Túlio Pinto (Brasília, DF – lives and works in London) with Nadir# 2 installation.

Click here to see video

January 12, 2014 Mariella Agois & Sandra Nakamura: No View https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/mariella-agois-sandra-nakamura-view/

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Artists: Mariella Agois, Ignacio Alvaro, Ana Teresa Barboza, Patricia Camet, Andrea Canepa, Alvaro Icaza, José Ignacio Iturburu, Alejandro Jaime, Natalia Revilla, Macarena Rojas, Sandra Nakamura.
No View
January 8th – February 7th, 2014
Wu Galería
Barranco, Peru

The absence of pictures is what at first glance disconcerts the spectator when entering into a seemingly empty gallery.

Works by eleven artists are waiting to be discovered by the visitors on an unusual search in corners, ceilings, sidewalls, pedestals, etc. The exhibition questions the traditional way of “seeing” the invisibility of the work and the perception of what is represented –favoring an open look to the reading of the work of art today from other point of view, whether physical or conceptual.

With several formations and artistic projects that use dissimilar media, the artists suggest ways of perception and readings that play with intuition and curiosity.

January 12, 2014 Nuno Ramos: Anjo e Boneco https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/nuno-ramos-anjo-e-boneco/

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Nuno Ramos: Anjo e Boneco
December 7, 2013 – March 30, 2014
Museu Oscar Niemeyer
Curitiba, PR, Brazil

The title of the exhibition is a fragment extracted from “Elegias de Duíno” by Rainer Maria Rilke – “Anjo e boneco: haverá espetáculo”. Unlike previous designs, the artist now works with few elements and materials. The compositions are all done with gouache and charcoal pastels. There are geometric shapes combined with gestural lines, and the play between the lines and shapes always seem to be on the limit of imbalance. There is an expectation of the future and the compositions are never static.

January 12, 2014 Aníbal Catalán: The Land, The Space, The Square https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/anibal-catalan-land-space-square/

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Aníbal Catalán: The Land, The Space, The Square
February 6 – April 13, 2014
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
Colorado, USA

Anibal CatalanThe Land, The Space, The Square is the first solo museum exhibition in the United States by Mexico City-based artist Anibal Catalan. The exhibition presents a series of site-specific installations, new paintings, video works, drawings and digital prints that will be displayed in the museum’s West and East galleries. Anibal Catalan was born in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico 1973 and lives and works in Mexico City.

January 12, 2014 Karina Peisajovich: El aire tomará esta forma https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/karina-peisajovich-el-aire-tomara-esta-forma/

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Karina PeisajovichEl aire tomará esta forma
Sala 1º piso.
Until: Januray 12, 2014
Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina

El Museo de Arte Moderno presenta El aire tomará esta forma de Karina Peisajovich, una obra producida integralmente por el Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires.
La luz modulará el espacio, su volumen y límites con el color y el movimiento como únicos ejes. El aire tomará esta forma materializa ante el ojo una posible representación o registro de aquello que pareciera invisible: percibir al color en absoluta desnudez formal (más allá del mundo de las líneas, los planos y sus límites) para llegar a sentir su longitud y frecuencia de onda. Peisajovich trabaja forzando el acto de ver, intentando empujar al ojo a que se encuentre con el color en estado puro, luego de una paulatina adaptación de la retina. Y que sea el ojo, posteriormente, el músculo que comience a construir imágenes: lograr recuperar la percepción como fuerza productiva al emanciparse parcialmente de su actual y constante actividad receptiva.

January 12, 2014 Richard Garet: They Sicken of the Calm Who Know the Storm https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/richard-garet-sicken-calm-know-storm/

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Artists: Greta Alfaro, Julia Chiang, Richard Garet, Pryce Lee, Naama Tsabar and Dustin Yellin

They Sicken of the Calm Who Know the Storm
Curated by Maureen Sullivan
January 16 – February 15, 2014
Fridman Gallery
New York, NY, USA

Beautiful danger, living life to the extreme, broken dreams and endless cycles of incurable hope and pain, screaming on the inside, pulsating with a palpable energy…

These are ideas and emotions evoked by the six artists – Greta Alfaro, Julia Chiang, Richard Garet, Pryce Lee, Naama Tsabar, Dustin Yellin – featured in the exhibition THEY SICKEN OF THE CALM WHO KNOW THE STORM, curated by Maureen Sullivan and presented at FRIDMAN GALLERY, January 16 through February 15, 2014.

Richard Garet’s electrified color-rich moving image “paintings,” created through sound then silenced, cannot be stifled. Julia Chiang’s white chains triumph beauty over function, made all the more implausible by their handmade fragility. Greta Alfaro’s films lure one in with sedate serenity. But the underlying anxiety, created mostly by our own challenges with stillness and yearning for action, is soon realized in a frenzied gluttony, leaving only the remains of the day in its wake. Dustin Yellin’s explosive and collapsed illusions are suspended, dissected and trapped forever in sliced layers of resin. Naama Tsabar plays with signifiers of danger and enjoyment, things that are slick and seductive then fall apart. Here white sheets – the material of dreaming, escape ladders, and Molotov cocktails – slowly absorbs liquor from bottles of alcohol creating a disorienting multisensory – and potentially combustible experience. Pryce Lee shows in NY for the first time with a new 9-piece shattered mirror work created specifically about an incident in the city – the 2012 Empire State Building Shooting. Capturing the randomness, violence and fragility of life, the innocent bystander suffering for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the work reflects us destroyed and whole.

January 12, 2014 Guido Ignatti: Premio estímulo de la Fundación Castagnino https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/guido-ignatti-premio-estimulo-de-la-fundacion-castagnino/

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Guido Ignatti‘s work is awarded with the Premio estímulo, Fundación Castagnino for emergent artists that is part of the XVII Salón Nacional de Rosario Castagnino – MACRO in Argentina. The artist explores aesthetic theories through site-specific intervention and installation. In his work, the de-codification of the space is clearly a place of departure. Sometimes this approach within the exhibition context helps to propose something new and other times to adapt a preexisting idea that works in the space.

December 17, 2013 Pablo Siquier: Contracture https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/pablo-siquier-contracture/

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Pablo Siquier: Contracture
December 2, 2013 – February 8, 2014
Alejandra von Hartz Gallery
Miami, FL, USA

Alejandra von Hartz Gallery is very pleased to present the solo exhibition, “Contracture” by Pablo Siquier. This is the artist second solo exhibition with the Gallery and will feature a mural and drawings on paper, part of a series of large scale charcoal drawings designed with a vector 3D program and realized by hand directly on the wall. The show runs from December 2, 2013 to February.

Part of a generation of artists that emerged in Buenos Aires at the end of ‘80s, Pablo Siquier’s work resists historical context and interpretation. His abstract black and white canvases and drawings remain silent, even as they evoke the rhythms of the city and subtly reference architectural ornament. In his work, Siquier explores the tensions between perfect and imperfect media. After years of precise schematic drawings with rulers and compasses, he uses computer software to design his intricate compositions. Once they are designed, he creates them on paper or canvases with charcoal or paint; they are at once hand-made and machine-influenced. The hyper precise and exact designs are finally executed with a primitive and incorrect tool. Although, in appearance, ultra perfect, the works challenge our perception and reveal an inherent and disquieting tension, the total opposite of fluidity.

Born in Buenos Aires, Siquier studied at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón. In 1997, he co-founded the artist collective “Grupo de la X”, which was connected to the famous Madí artist Enio Iommi. From 1989-1993, he began to restrict his palette, and he developed geometric zed shapes inspired by architectural motifs and ornaments. In 1993, he abandoned color and began a series of abstract paintings and drawings in black and white.

In 1995, he participated in the exhibitions “Mesótica” and “Transatlántica”, curated by Carlos Basualdo at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, San José de Costa Rica, and the Alejandro Otero Museum of Visual Arts, Caracas, respectively. Also participated in “Space of Time”, curated by Sandra Antelo Suarez and Alisa Tager at the Americas Society, New York, and in “Slow Paintings”, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Alemania (2009).

In his most recent work, Siquier leaves behind the canvas to work directly on the walls of galleries and museums; drawings and installations that operate with the illusion and real perception of space. Via computer generated drawings transferred onto gigantic printed surfaces, these installations appear to erase the borders between painting and the real world. He has created murals at the Los Molinos Building at Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires. Other murals are at the Carlos Pellegrini Subway Station and Centro Cultural General San Martin, both in Buenos Aires City. He represented Argentina at the 3rd Cuenca Biennial, at the 1st and 2nd Porto Alegre Biennial, at the 9th Habana Biennial, and at the 26th São Paulo Biennial. Siquier had major solo exhibitions at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. His work is included in many public and private collections, including the Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires; Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, Austin; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario (MACRO); and the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA). Pablo Siquier lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Click here to view Pablo Siquier on Abstraction in Action.

December 10, 2013 Silvia Gurfein: Lo intratable https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/silvia-gurfein-lo-intratable/

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Silvia Gurfein: Lo intratable
December 10th, 2013
Fundación Federico Jorge Klemm Arte Contemporáneo
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Francisco Slepoy guitarra y composición, Miguel Crozzoli saxo tenor y composición, Fernando Toyos contrabajo y Francisco Cossavella percusión.

Ideas abstraídas de las pinturas y textos de la muestra LO INTRATABLE, de Silvia Gurfein. Representadas en sistemas o estructuras que buscan poner al interprete (músical) en la situación de generar su propia exudación del material musical/pictórico. Composiciones sin principio ni fin. Se desarrollan, conviven, colapsan, comparten o disputan el espacio sonoro, generando nuevas capas.

Click here to view Silvia Gurfein on Abstraction in Action.

December 10, 2013 Marcius Galan: Diagrama https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcius-galan-diagrama/

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Marcius Galan: Diagrama
October 26 – December 14, 2013
NC-arte in collaboration Galería Luisa Strina
Bogota, Colombia

Es bastante extendida la idea de que hay mayor conceptualización o carga ideológica en la creación abstracta que en la que no lo es y, por esa misma razón, suele considerarse que la propuesta abstracta es más exigente en términos intelectuales. Lo que se deja de atender en esta interpretación es que toda noción sobre la realidad también es una conceptualización y, por lo mismo, una creación generada a partir de abstracciones.

Un buen ejemplo acerca de la articulación de abstracciones sobre la cual se edifica la materialidad o el mundo que llamamos concreto lo ilustra Peter Galison en la conocida investigación Relojes de Einstein, Mapas de Poincaré. Este historiador de ciencia reconoce en ese texto como un impulso que potenció la formulación de la teoría de la relatividad el hecho de que Einstein trabajara en ese momento en la renombrada oficina de patentes en que empezó su ejercicio como profesional. El trabajo del físico en aquel entonces consistía en analizar, desbaratar y volver a armar relojes – fundamentalmente-, a fin de comprobar su correcta confección y funcionamiento, antes de que les fuera otorgado un permiso de comercialización responsable. Era el momento histórico en que se ampliaba el uso de relojes, públicos e individuales, y en el que la medida de tiempo unificada en el meridiano de Greenwich extendía raíces a nivel planetario, en medio del desarrollo de los primeros proyectos de conexiones mundiales.

Deconstruir hasta sus últimos extremos los mecanismos del tiempo creado por cuestiones prácticas, fue el ejercicio a partir del cual Einstein pudo llegar en forma más directa a lo enteramente abstracto, para generar desde allí, ecuaciones que contribuyeran a entender a la energía, como a su comportamiento y movimiento en el infinito, fuera de la línea de tiempo. Esas lecturas derrocaban sin más, la interpretación de un tiempo absoluto desarrollada por Newton y sobre la cual se basó por varios siglos la concepción de la vida en los más diversos campos. No obstante, a pesar de tan significativas reevaluaciones esa interpretación aún pervive entre múltiples contradicciones.

Por lo general se olvida que la realidad existe en la medida en que ha sido creada con base en las observaciones de los distintos individuos y en las del colectivo que ellos conforman y que, por ese mismo motivo, ella depende del contexto y del alcance de la visión o de las visiones que la enuncian.

Las formas que adopta la realidad tienen que cambiar cuando se agota su oportunidad o su función, dando lugar entonces a distintos momentos en la línea que se traza con el relato que conocemos como historia. No obstante, lo cierto es que los reemplazos ideológicos o formales no ocurren fácil ni consensuadamente sino entre fuertes debates y contradicciones, puesto que la tendencia es que los mecanismos prácticos se petrifiquen mientras se instala familiaridad con ellos.

Las convenciones se establecen justamente por razones de conveniencia y el riesgo entonces es que los hábitos borren la memoria de las condiciones que les dieron origen y entretanto, cieguen la duda hacia ellas, hasta que llegan a concebirse como lo normal, lo verdadero o sencillamente, lo correcto e incuestionable.

El arte es el territorio en el que, a través de metáforas y de llamadas a la observación detenida, se recuerda continuamente que el mundo esencial, que es el que nos sostiene, no tiene formas ni límite alguno, y que es imposible en tanto, asirlo entre los bordes conceptuales. Todo contacto con el universo esencial se logra a través de conmociones o del llamado a sentimientos que remueven lo profundo del ser, cuestión a la que se puede acceder desde las más diversas perspectivas y siempre de la mano de la belleza.

Con un lenguaje particular, que se puede ubicar entre lo realista y lo abstracto, Marcius Galan señala insistentemente que todo lo que se admite como concreto viene de la nada y que, en esa medida, las cosas o las ideas son, antes que cuerpos o formas, un asunto mental. Así, realismo en el trabajo de este artista se entiende como carga histórica o de conocimiento sobre los objetos o las imágenes.

De muy distintas maneras Marcius Galan hace comprender los engaños que comporta la percepción ligera o el acatamiento sin reflexión de las proposiciones acerca de la perfección o de lo real, haciendo claridad al mismo tiempo en el hecho de que se tiene por dado un mundo que no existe en términos concretos. Es decir, que se toma como decisivo a un mundo que sencillamente es un planteamiento abstracto y variable, como todos los que soportan la vida práctica.

Con mecanismos sutiles, todo el proyecto de este artista señala la falacia que se puede estructurar sobre convenciones que se dejan de entender como lo que son, mientras pasan a ser aceptadas como certidumbres, como puntos de partida exactos o como límites irrevocables.

Sección diagonal (2008), es una de las propuestas que permite comprender esos planteamientos de manera abarcadora. Esta instalación pictórica, con muy escasos elementos genera un impactante extrañamiento con respecto al mundo que reconoce la mirada y con respecto también, al rol que la perspectiva juega en ello.

En forma categórica Sección diagonal clarifica que lo que se presenta ante los ojos es bastante diverso de lo que reconoce una visión adiestrada por las fronteras culturales. De esa manera, esta obra despliega lecturas en muy diversos órdenes (artístico, filosófico, geométrico, arquitectónico, histórico y político), al tiempo que ofrece una referencia básica sobre la versatilidad del artista en distintos lenguajes.

El trabajo de Marcius Galan transita con desenvoltura territorios de la pintura, de la instalación, del dibujo y de la escultura, permitiendo entender siempre como abstracto a lo que se considera realista o haciendo ver también la convención realista que acogen los planteamientos más abstractos, como pueden ser el punto, la línea o las formas geométricas básicas. El artista insiste de diversas maneras en que convenciones como el punto y la línea, nacen de igual manera, del análisis y de acuerdos y, que, a pesar de ser tan fundamentales y ordenadoras en su definición, se descubren igualmente en el caos que edifican las prácticas cotidianas.

Diagrama en planta y elevación, instalación producida especialmente para esta exposición (2013), es un claro ejemplo de ello. El trazado con el que comienza la exposición está inspirado en las formas con las que se propone una organización para el público en espacios institucionales, en los que la carga burocrática entra en conflicto con los parámetros de orden que se pretenden establecer. Con esa lógica, las líneas se internan progresivamente en un laberinto que invade en varias direcciones la arquitectura, hasta rehacerla en el movimiento de sus impulsos, descuidos y pasiones.

Esa estrategia de ocupar el espacio dentro de la desorientación se revela también en el conjunto de Pinturas burocráticas, en las cuales el resultado abstracto toma como soporte formas fiscales que el artista completa con pintura negra. La composición en estas obras está determinada entonces por las directrices de los formatos para descubrir en formas geométricas básicas sus planteamientos, por lo general complejos.

Con una lógica similar en Sobre la Imprecisión (2013) dos mecanismos abiertos de relojería intentan paralelamente y con instrumentos precarios, dibujar el paso del tiempo y su ritmo sobre la pared de la sala. En la belleza del ejercicio, queda claro que lo perfecto no es el código a través de cual se miden los minutos, los segundos y las horas, sino, el intento de registrar el movimiento en la existencia, con toda la ternura y la voluntad de comprender que hay en él.

-María A Iovino

Click here to view Marcius Galan on Abstraction in Action.

December 10, 2013 MACBA: Geometría al límite https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/alejandra-barreda-fabian-burgos-silvia-gurfein-graciela-hasper-karina-peisajovich-pablo-siquier-carola-zech-geometria-al-limite/

Invitación

Geometría al límite
December 14, 2013 – March 14, 2014
MACBA
Buenos Aires, Argentina

MACBA aims to generate new approaches to current geometric abstraction with works from its permanent collection. The exhibition invites us to observe and reflect on the production of twenty-five artists who have developed their lines of researches with intensity from the 90s to present day in Argentina.

In this exhibition some of the artists use industrial materials to investigate on their technical possibilities. They use leds, car paint, adhesive scotch tapes, magnets and tarpaulin as a medium, coexisting with works made with traditional techniques such as oil painting, acrylic and silkscreen, revisited from a contemporary perspective.

On the other hand, some artists reflect on architecture and urban life, and link the experience of “inhabiting” a city with the abstract language through large format works. In the works we find explicit references to speed, spatial representational systems and the experience of living in the cities.

Many of these artists are turning to technology as subject and also as a tool in their production, both present in the process and final result of their artworks. They are torn between the digital and the analog world, reflecting the importance of information in contemporary society.

Some of these artists investigate on the pure form of art, revealing the properties of color. Among these, we find the kinetic qualities, tonal contrasts, the intensity of pigments and vibration, and even their emotional and psychological connotations.

Geometría al límite shows clearly the multiple visual and conceptual possibilities offered by this language. Far from exhausted, continues to renew itself unlimitedly under the direct imprint of each artist in dialogue with the present.

Alejandra Barreda, Carla Bertone, Cecilia Biagini, Gabriela Böer, Fabián Burgos, Juan José Cambre, Natalia Cacchiarelli, Valeria Calvo, Beto de Volder, Verónica Di Toro, Lucio Dorr, Mariano Ferrante, Jimena Fuertes, Silvia GurfeinGraciela Hasper, Guillermo Kuitca, Julia Masvernat, Karina Peisajovich, Inés Raiteri, Roberto Scafidi, Pablo Siquier, Andrés Sobrino, Leila Tchopp, Mariano Vilela and Carola Zech.

December 10, 2013 Marcius Galan: Tight but Loose https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marcius-galan-tight-loose/

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Tight but loose
Julio Surárez & Marcius Galan
December 12, 2013 – February 2, 2014
Galería Agustina Ferreyra
San Juan, Puerto Rico

Galería Agustina Ferreyra is pleased to announce Tight but Loose, an exhibition by Julio Suárez & Marcius Galan.

Using a minimal aesthetic and through a wide variety of media such as; installation, sculpture, photography and drawing, the work of Marcius Galan (1972), is a series of material experiments that question the limits of space and its metaphorical possibilities, as well as our relation to it and the social and political implications of everyday geometry. His work defies the way we relate to objects, while it plays with our perception and our  sense of spatial construction.

Marcius Galan (Indianápolis, USA. 1972) lives and works São Paulo, Brazil. Recent exhibitions include: Diagrama, Espacio NC, Bogotá, Colombia; Geometric Progression, White Cube, Londres, Inglaterra; Imóvel/Instável, Galería Luisa Strina, São Paulo, Brazil, 30 x Bienal – Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil & Dreaming is a form of Planning, Galería Agustina Ferreyra, San Juan, PR.

Click here to view Marcius Galan on Abstraction in Action.

December 10, 2013 The 9.99 Gallery: día a día / day by day https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/dario-escobar-anibal-lopez-a1-53167-patrick-hamilton-dia-dia-day-day/

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día a día / day by day
November  2013 – January 2014
The 9.99 Gallery
Guatemala City, Guatemala

The artist’s day by day develops in the studio, a space that serves as a laboratory of ideas. Just as the everyday governs most people’s lives—the teacher teaches every day or the doctor sees patients week after week—it also tends to provide a daily routine for the artist, allowing a pattern of reflection and research that leads to the creation of works of art based on his observation of the political, social, and cultural life of a city or country.

Day by Day is the fourth exhibition The 9.99 presents this year, bringing together six international artists: Patrick Hamilton and Sebastián Preece (Chile), Andrea Aragón, Darío Escobar and Aníbal López (A1-53167) (Guatemala) and Nery Gabriel Lemus (United States), all artists whose work tends to reflect the everyday of our lives.

Working in Santiago, Chile, Hamilton and Preece represent the new generation of artists from this South American country; both use everyday objects to map aspects of the city where they live. Hamilton’s elegant minimalist geometric forms made with sharp cutting razor wire, Composición con diamantes (Composition with diamonds, 2011), and pieces created with tools, Serrucho (Hand saw, 2013), speak of the social insecurity that forms in a country where recent economic wealth has not been distributed evenly. The decay of infrastructure in certain city neighborhoods is present in Volumen XIV (Volume XIV) and Volumen XVI (Volume XVI, both 2008) by Preece. The truncated history of everyday life is buried in the ruins that survive time, in the books that daily disintegrate into dust.

A daily routine involves facilitating the existence of human beings, but the work of Guatemalans Andrea Aragón, Darío Escobar and Aníbal López (A1 -53 167) evidence otherwise. Escobar has a group of paintings, which at first glance shows an abstract composition on a supposedly perfect sheet of white paper; under closer scrutiny one can see that the artist has torn the sheet in two. Dibujo interrumpido No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 (Interrupted drawing No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3, all 2013) represent a fractured society that tries to remedy injustices and historical errors with cosmetic fixes, but these breaks remain always there, even if difficult to see with the naked eye. The poignant photographs of Aragón, capture reality as it is, and it is often tough. Images De la serie “antipostales” (From the series “antipostcards,” 2001) and De la serie “Ghetto” (From the series “Ghetto,” 2010) sadly delve into what everyday life can be for people who live in a dilapidated house, with scruffy furniture and graffiti on the walls, or in those terrible and impersonal modern buildings that instead of making life more enjoyable make it an earthly hell. Listón de plástico negro de 250 mts. de largo x 4 mts. de ancho colgado sobre el puente del Incienso (Black plastic strip of 250 meters. long x 4 mts. wide hanging over the Incienso Bridge, 2003) by López (A1 -53 167) captures for posterity the grief that people express when the constitutional laws of the country are broken. The documentation of this action adds to the rich artistic and historical file that the artist has been building since the beginning of his career.

Nery Gabriel Lemus is a foreigner who should not be. The son of Guatemalan immigrants living in the United States, Lemus has developed his career in Los Angeles, California, which focuses on many of the tensions that routinely affect people in his condition. His foreign status gives him an objective distance that makes his observations not only very keen but are also permeated by nostalgia about what is not known but is sensed. De Guatemala a guatepeor (From Guatebad to guateworst, 2013) Lemus resists stigmatizing a country that has suffered daily violence while improvement and progress are also being achieved.

In Day by Day, artists seem to agree that not all is bad, nor all good, and that this constantly changing, precarious balance upholds the survival of mankind and is one in which the artist finds inspiration for his creative activities.

-Alma Ruiz F.

December 10, 2013 Emilio Chapela: Requiem https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/emilio-chapela-requiem/

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Emilio Chapela: Requiem
July 10, 2013 –  January 5, 2014
Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros
Mexico City, Mexico

In Requiem, Emilio Chapela restructured the system of organization in the library of David Alfaro Siqueiros and treats this replica as a new strategy to navigate the muralist’s collection. Revealing of his worldview is the fact that Siqueiros organized over 2,000 books in three main categories: Art, Politics and Others. Considering this classification as an entry point, Emilio studied the library and pointed to the contrasts in terms of content, hidden by the previous system.

Maintaining the original categories, Chapela created exact copies of all the books in wood. Respectively, the colors red, blue and yellow located on the spine of each book represent Art, Politics and Others. Although Siqueiros only read Spanish, English and French, his library contains texts in Russian, Japanese, Greek, Chinese, English, Italian and German. In the replica, these are shown with other colors, the duplicate allowing for further interpretaions of Siqueiros’ political standpoint. For example, Vladimir Ilich Lenin through Photography (1969) is a first edition published in Russian in the Soviet Union in the Politics category that presents a visual analysis on Lenin.

For Chapela, Requiem can be appreciated as a funeral procession that refers to the library’s conceptualization and the present-future of the book. Throughout his research, the artist recovered “scan errors” discarded by the Siqueiros Researcher, during the digitalization process of the library that began in 2010. Alluding to the current state of the collection, Chapela reinterpreted these as photographs. Lastly, Chapela included a handout of a page of another Russian book, pointing to the act of possession and the configuration of a personal collection.

Emilio Chapela


Emilio Chapela
lives and works both in Mexico City and the Forgotten Realms of the Earth.  He works with the latest technology from Japan and China. His artistic practice is concerned with the development of a system that allows the operator to control various processes such as those used for conventional and unconventional methods to determine the relative importance of individualized factors. He also investigates the effect of increasing importance of the different methods used to identify the specific factors involved in the production and dissemination of a particular type of information. In such a way, he has worked with several different methods to determine how the various systems respond to the needs identified through their own resources. He has participated in shows both at galleries, museums and other cultural institutions, at places like the U.S. Geological Society of America and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He was awarded with the prestigiou award for gallantry in the field of public procurement and disposal. In 2010, he published his first book on the history of the world. In the near future, he will be showing his work at the National Institute of Technology and Information Ethics in Washington DC.

*This artist statement has been generated by a computer.

Click here to view Emilio Chapela on Abstraction in Action.

December 6, 2013 Mauro Giaconi: Ocupación https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/mauro-giaconi-ocupacion/

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Mauro Giaconi: Ocupación
November 23, 2013 – February 2014
Casa Vecina
Mexico City, Mexico

 

“Y hay aquel pasaje en su novela donde los presos hacían fila ante una ventanilla. Sólo veían sus espaldas, pero en sus espaldas había de todo: alegría, miedo, esperanza, desesperación. Lasespaldas son rostro”.

Emmanuel Levinas.

Ocupación es una intervención en sitio específico del artista de origen argentino Mauro Giaconi, para el programa Fuera de sala de Casa Vecina. El trabajo de Giaconi deambula entre el campo de la escultura y la instalación, siendo la práctica del dibujo su territorio de producción actual con el cual genera espacios provocadores en donde el caos cobra una dimensión espectacular. Para el artista, el trabajo en espacios arquitectónicos le brinda la oportunidad para abrir reflexiones puntuales sobre algunos de sus principales intereses filosóficos e investigaciones artísticas: el encierro físico y de pensamiento que implican a su vez, un continuum de vigilia permanente, y que contrapone continuamente al concepto de “libertad”. En este sentido, el proyecto parte de la resignificación que el propio artista hace de la acción de “ocupar” físicamente un lugar, entendiéndola incluso como una actitud política de resistencia. Es así como la imposibilidad del encierro se impone a manera de prisión, celda o jaula a través de los muros, vidrios y puertas de la sala de lectura saturadas-desdibujadas de grafito, mismas que servirán como marco para la realización de una acción dentro del espacio el día de su apertura.

Mauro Giaconi (Bs As, Argentina; 1977). Ha participado en exposiciones colectivas e individuales en Latinoamérica, Estados Unidos y Europa. Estudió el Profesorado de Pintura en la Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón. Fue becario del C.I.A. (Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas) y del S.I.T.A.C. (Simposio Internacional de Teoría y Arte Contemporáneo) y participó en las residencias Bemis Center for Contemporary Art ySkowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Desde el año 2011, vive y trabaja en la Ciudad de México.

Click here to view Mauro Giaconi on Abstraction in Action.

December 6, 2013 Danilo Dueñas: Art Kabinett at Art Basel Miami Beach https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/danilo-duenas-art-basel-miami/

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Danilo Dueñas: Art Kabinett at Art Basel Miami Beach
December 5 to 8, 2013

Galerie Thomas Schulte
Art Basel Miami Beach
Booth C18
Miami, FL, USA

Danilo Dueñas composes his constructive paintings by assembling found, often discarded materials and intervening, when necessary, with paint, without limiting himself to a given format. He explores the surfaces and transforms them by suppressing or adding color, by sanding them down or by adding collage elements. For the Art Kabinett, Danilo Dueñas presents a selection of new works in different media, such as collages and works on paper.

Click here to view Danilo Dueñas on Abstraction in Action.

December 6, 2013 Never Underestimate a Monochrome https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/never-underestimate-monochrome/

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Bruno Dubner, Untitled, 2012, gelatin silver print without camera, size variable

Never Underestimate a Monochrome

The University of Iowa Museum
September 30, 2012 – January 31, 2013

The Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art
February 1 – March 2, 2013

Meant to activate the poetic, political and performative registers of the monochrome, Never Underestimate a Monochrome (2012) is a conceptual project conceived and organized by Mariángeles Soto-Díaz in a collaborative partnership with the University of Iowa Museum of Art. Artists from different parts of the world interpreted instructions written by Soto-Díaz, and provided documentation of their monochrome performance for a digital archival space, bringing the textual, embodied and mediated aspects of the monochrome into dialogue. The collective event occurred over the summer of 2012 across the globe, defying the logic of the event as necessarily bound to a singular physical and temporal space.

Without heroic gestures but always paradoxical: the monochrome has been accused of being threatening, and not threatening enough—joke and elegy of modernism. In its most radical gesture, the monochrome asks the questions pertaining not just to the material constitution of painting, but to the territory of its limits, potentially dematerializing the notion of painting altogether. It is as if the monochrome insists on asking: Is this enough to constitute a painting?

It is the monochrome’s dual physical and textual presence that tests the commitment of looking. Always energized through its cyclic return, the monochrome performs as alternately easy, impenetrable, fake, mute, sublime, honest, and even boring in its simplicity. It is perhaps this performative versatility that has allowed the monochrome to be able (and willing) to return.

In Never Underestimate a Monochrome, I create a role for the monochrome’s resourceful disposition by setting up performative functions designed to connect the artists. The monochrome, here a material manifestation of instructions, is also a connecting node for each of the participants. The instructions allow artists to focus on the gesture of connection folded into the making process. Convening these works together reveals discrepancies and parallels between artists’ interpretations of the instructions, which from the start embrace the promise of a connective thread between monochrome works, artists, past and future.

Participating artists:
David Batchelor (Scotland/UK), Emilio Chapela (Mexico), Jason Corder (Kenya), Jaime Davidovich (Argentina), Bruno Dubner (Argentina), Maria Jose Duran (Chile/USA), Anoka Faruqee (USA), Stacy Fisher (USA), Ken Friedman (Australia), Babak Golkar (Canada), Michelle Grabner (USA), Billy Gruner / Sarah Keighery (Australia), Brent Hallard (Japan/USA), Beth Harland (UK), Lynne Harlow (USA), Sue Hettmansperger (USA), Odili Odita (Nigeria), Naoshi Okura (Japan/Sweden), Karina Peisajovich (Argentina), Pineapple Park (Australia), Dai Roberts (UK), Huseyin Sami (Australia), Lizi Sanchez (Peru/UK), Claudia Sbrissa (Canada/Italy/USA), Suzanne Stroebe (USA), Hadi Tabatabai (Iran/USA), Sherwin Tibayan (Philippines/USA), Douglas Witmer (USA), Horacio Zabala (Argentina), Patricia Zarate (Colombia/USA)

http://www.neverunderestimateamonochrome.org

 

November 26, 2013 Eugenio Espinosa: Going Blind Faith https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/eugenio-espinosa-going-blind-faith/

Eugenio Espinoza at Blackston - Going Blind Faith install

Eugenio Espinosa: Going Blind Faith
November 3 – December 22, 2013
Blackston
New York, NY, USA

Blackston is pleased to present Going Blind Faith, Eugenio Espinoza’’s first solo exhibition in New York.

In this exhibition Espinoza presents recent sculptural works that embody the artist’s interest in using simple means to construct a system based on contingencies that emphasize dissonance and equilibrium. The wall pieces in the gallery employ painted and manipulated aluminum sheets layered and balanced, seemingly precariously, on household shelf brackets of varying sizes. Other painted oil on aluminum works lean against the gallery’s walls – balancing at a single point or against the length of one wall. The six gray metal cubes in the center of the gallery are spare testimonies to a focus on repetition and space in the artist’s practice.

Painted monochromatic brushstrokes and grid-like patterns emphasize the hybridization of painting and sculpture, yet each surface remains somewhat unfinished, raw, and devoid of seamlessness. These sculptural works confirm their existence as objects yet embrace a grit that rejects a straightforward acceptance of their aesthetic condition or whole. The choice of supports assails the apparent simplicity of the pieces – and possibly their direct appeal. Each work in the exhibition provides its own counterpoint to resolution, and in this tension a new dynamic is created. As a result, the experiential qualities of the works emerge to both enhance and reject their deceptive simplicity, collapsing aesthetic notions and evidencing the artist’s considered practice.

In the rear of the gallery a minimal black and white painting references the lineage of Espinoza’s practice: iterations of the artist’s black and white geometric paintings have continuously appeared in his canon since his seminal piece “Impenetrable” – a painted black and white grid floor canvas suspended parallel to the floor of an entire room at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, Venezuela in 1972.

The “Impenetrable” (in the permanent collection of the Tate Modern, London) was Espinoza’s response to a strong orthodoxy in geometric abstraction prevalent in Venezuela at that time and is and was celebrated as a groundbreaking and radical conceptual piece, taking the orderliness of geometric form into the wild territory of the experiential.

Since the late 1960s, Espinoza has perpetually challenged, explored and embraced art historical conventions in his prodigious output of installations, photography, paintings, drawings and sculptures. Espinoza’s practice evidences a profound and rigorous conceptual exploration of modernist traditions (Minimalism, Arte Povera, Geometric Abstraction) and an equally powerful conceptual and physical reworking of his own oeuvre and challenging aestheticism.

In conjunction with this exhibition a catalogue has been produced with essays by Gean Moreno and Jesus Fuenmayor, Director and Curator of the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation.

Eugenio Espinoza was born in 1950 in San Juan de los Morros, Venezuela and lives in Archer, Florida. He has exhibited extensively in the United States and internationally in museums and galleries. His work is in the permanent collections of the Tate Modern, London, U.K., the Fine Arts Museum of Houston, TX; Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL; Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA; Museo de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo, Brazil; Museo de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela; Galeria de Arte Nacional, Caracas, Venezuela; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Caracas, Venezuela; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Bogota, Colombia; Fundacion Gego; The Cisneros Collection, New York, NY and the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, FL, among others. He received a Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2011.

November 18, 2013 Jorge Cabieses: IGNOTO https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/jorge-cabieses-ignoto/

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Jorge Cabieses: IGNOTO
November 20 – December 27, 2013
Lucía de la Puente Gallery
Lima, Peru

Jorge Cabieses develops his work in an ongoing exploration new supports, surfaces, images. Intervenes melamine plates and industrial plastic pallets using old lithographs. Transits and appeals primarily to the geometry as a tool for cancellation in some cases and in others, using the same geometry as a single image and thus as solo protagonist.

For some years, the artist has been synthesizing images in geometries, questioning the representation of the image. Often claims the essential, shape and color.

Pure line and chromatic condensation can alienate the sense of replacement, risking of disappointing the spectator. In IGNOTO, Jorge Cabieses, get to know the unknown, connecting these two concepts in his work, the unknown as the exploration of new surfaces, and knowledge, which is the result of its own process.

Jorge Cabieses (Lima, 1971) studied at the School of Fine Arts Corriente Alterna and formed part of the collective PERU FACTORY. He was a finalist in the contest “Passport for an artist” (2001, 2002 and 2005), Phillips (2001,2002) and Telefónica Foundation (2001). He was selected to the Cisneros Foundation Scholarship CIFOs, 2011, and selected for the project Abstraction in Action by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill Curator, Collection Sayago & Pardon. His work is part of Fontanals Cisneros Collection.

Since 2003, has made a series of solo exhibitions, including the most recent: “Mirabilia” L’imaginaire Gallery of the Alliance Française, Lima, 2013, “Surface”, Sala Luis Miro Quesada Garland, Lima, 2012, “Concrete ” Galeria Lucia de la Puente, Lima, 2011,” Screen “, Enlace Gallery, Buenos Aires, 2008, among others.

He has participated in international art fairs such as The Armory Show, Galeria Lucia de la Puente, New York, 2013; Parc, Galeria Lucia de la Puente, Lima, 2013; ArtLima, Galeria Fernando Pradilla, Lima, 2013; Pinta, Galeria Fernando Pradilla, London, 2013; FIA GB-ARTS Gallery ,Caracas, 2013; ARTBO, James Karpio Gallery Bogotá, 2011-2012; Scope Miami James Karpio Gallery, 2011-2012; The Armory Show, Galeria Lucia de la Puente, New York, 2011; Pinta, Galeria Lucia de la Puente, Pinta, Ideobox Gallery, London, 2011; Arteamericas, Miami Galería Enlace Arte Contemporáneo, 2007-2008; ArteBA, Galería Enlace Arte Contemporáneo Buenos Aires, 2007-2008; ArtBO, Galeria Enlace Arte Contemporaneo Bogotá, 2007.

Has been part of numerous group shows: 30 years James Karpio Gallery, Costa Rica, 2012; “Obras seleccionadas” 2da Bienal de Grabado, ICPNA, Lima, 2010; Chile Triennial, Santiago, 2010; Triennial of Contemporary Art – ITCA. Praga, 2009; Ojo latino, Benetton Collection, Santiago de Chile, 2009; “Develaciones – Tendencia”, Berlín, Polonia, Viena, 2007-2008; Miradas de fin de Siglo “Pop / Popular”, Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), Lima, 2007; Miradas de fin de Siglo “Transito de Imágenes” Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), Lima, Perú, 2007; Resistencias, Casa de América, 2003; among others.

Click here to view Jorge Cabieses on Abstraction in Action.

November 18, 2013 The Wall Street Journal: Art Fair Riding Emerging Wave https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/wall-street-journal-art-fair-riding-emerging-wave/

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Pinta NY’s chairman Diego Costa Peuser, right, and U.S. director, Ian Cofre, discuss Marta Chilindron‘s ‘Ring, 2013,’ which will be in the fair. Andrew Hinderaker for The Wall Street Journal

Pinta NY, Founded in 2007, Deals With a Much Expanded Latin American Art Market

When Diego Costa Peuser founded Pinta NY in 2007, it was credited with being New York’s first fair dedicated to Latin American modern and contemporary art, shining a spotlight on an emerging and relatively untapped body of work.
When the show opens for its seventh edition on Thursday at the 82Mercer Conference Center, it will do so in a much-changed field.”Ten years ago, there was no [Latin American] presence at fairs like Art Basel,” said Mr. Costa Peuser, the fair’s executive director. “Now, the presence of Latin American art is strong, and the U.S. and Europe are looking toward these emerging markets.” According to the analytics firm ArtTactic, Latin American art-auction sales in New York for the first half of this year totaled $37.3 million, up 2% from the year-earlier period. Pinta organizers expect some 18,000 guests, a far cry from the 2,000 they saw in its first year.

As such, Pinta has made several changes to its structure, including higher standards. About 60 galleries will be showing this year, out of the roughly 140 that applied.

“There is greater competition across fairs, and people seek out sectors where there’s something curated,” said Mr. Costa Peuser, who ran the arteaméricas fair in Miami before creating Pinta. “Collectors find having a filter for what they’ll see more interesting.”

He gave industry professionals like Ian Cofre, the fair’s U.S. director, and Octavio Zaya, who curated the Spanish pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, free rein to choose works they deemed interesting. For example, Mr. Zaya, who directed a segment of the show dedicated to video art, picked an installation by Richard Garet, who recently showed at the Museum of Modern Art’s sound-art exhibition.

But can Pinta compete in an increasingly hectic art calendar? It takes place less than a month before Art Basel Miami Beach, a major lure for Latin American collectors. Christie’s is also aiming to auction off more than 300 pieces of Latin American art at a sale dedicated to the region next week.

Mr. Costa Peuser is adamant Pinta can, pointing to the fair’s niche status as an attraction on its own part. “The public at Pinta is not the same as at Basel because it is a much smaller fair, and collectors can come and talk at length to gallerists and artists,” he said.

He added that “the relationship with the auction houses is complementary, and collectors can attend both with different expectations of what they’ll see.”

One person who hopes he’s right is Cecilia De Torres, whose eponymous SoHo gallery is selling works from the Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres García, such as “Anvers, 1910,” a haunting maritime oil-on-canvas painting, and rainbow-colored acrylic sculptures by Argentina’s Marta Chilindron.

“A lot of the artists I represent were either Europeans or the children of European immigrants,” said Ms. De Torres, “so I would love to see people who collect such art come and look at this different approach in the same tradition.”

Click here to read the article from The Wall Street Journal.

November 15, 2013 Ricardo Alcaide: Incidental Geometry https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ricardo-alcaide-incidental-geometry/

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Ricardo Alcaide, Untitled no. 4, 2011, high temperature glassed ceramic, 11.4 x 8.7 x 4.7 inches

Ricardo Alcaide: Incidental Geometry
October 31 – December 14, 2013
Josée Bienvenu Gallery
New York, NY, USA

Josée Bienvenu is pleased to present Incidental geometry, an exhibition by Ricardo Alcaide. In this project, Alcaide addresses his interest for geometric abstraction, modernist constructions, and social dynamics in urban centers. His new body of work oscillates between the poetic and the political, juxtaposing playful and stern elements.

In Intrusion, Alcaide conceptualizes aesthetics that refer to vernacular and modernist architecture, along with the geometric abstraction that marked his academic background. In this group of over painted images of Modern mid-century interiors, the geometrical shapes subtly deconstruct the carefully designed rooms. These incidental openings, thickly painted planes of colours, alter the dynamics of the interiors, invading the space and creating a new reality. Alcaide attempts to hinder the pictorial and symbolic reality of these immaculately designed spaces with a foreign and striking element which appears to be floating in the space like an abandoned shelter. A group of sculptures Fabric, Paper, Plastic, Book made of found and recycled materials finds temporary shelter on a metallic shelving structure which alludes to the city’s vertical and geometric urban landscape.

Ricardo Alcaide was born in 1967 in Caracas, Venezuela, he currently lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. Select solo exhibitions include: Una Forma De Desorden Invasivo, Galería Lucia de la Puente, Lima (2013);Intrusiones, Galería Tajamar, Santiago de Chile (2013); Prototipo Vernacular, Oficina #1, Caracas,Venezuela (2012); A Place To Hide, Baró Galería, São Paulo (2011). Select collections include: LIMAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima; Colección Fundación Cisneros, Caracas; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, Venezuela; Galeria de Arte Nacional GAN, Caracas; Zabludowicz Collection, London.

Click here to view Ricardo Alcaide on Abstraction in Action.

November 14, 2013 Omar Barquet: Night Tide / Marea Nocturna https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/omar-barquet-night-tide-marea-nocturna/

S&P NIGHT TIDE WALL COLLAGE

Artist Rendering. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Omar Barquet: Night Tide / Marea Nocturna
November 14 – 17, 2013
PINTA New York
New York, NY, USA

For the Abstraction in Action project commission at PINTA NY 2013, I proposed the creation of an ephemeral collage mural made with fragments of various failed tests of xylography, offset and photocopy prints, which were the result of several processes and treatments of digital and analog deterioration, providing a memory to these materials and emphasize the idea of interference. I find an interesting connection between the formal languages of Concretism and technical-scientific diagrams related to space, landscape, sound, time, and nature, as languages that take on abstraction, often with contradictory purposes, but from their intersections I saw the possibility of articulating different proposals with diverse mediums and focused on revising the dynamic landscape as a mental scene.

Given the dimensions and duration of the commission, I considered that the project would function as an abstract composition which describes a sequence of changes in the pulsations of a night tide. The materials will be subjected to a process of graphic experimentation. The installation and de-installation of the stand will be extended as a circular process, generated from the fragmentation and rearticulation of three scientific encyclopedia’s back covers—their collage feel will be translated to the scale of the stand.

The site specific installation made with intervened encyclopedia covers by Omar Barquet will be on display at PINTA New York at PINTA Editions in the Abstraction in Action booth.

-Omar Barquet

Omar Barquet (Mexico, b. 1979) holds a degree in Fine Arts from the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving “La Esmeralda” (INBA), Mexico City. He has exhibited in various national and international cities such as New York, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Lima, Miami, Basel and Mexico City. His artistic practice encompasses installations, collages, engravings, and other techniques. Barquet has had residencies in Brazil.

He set up the Second Floor Art Collective along with artists José Luis Landet, Moris and Agustín González. Selected exhibitions include 1st Fugue, Kunsthalle Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2013; Half Day Closing, Pinta Art Fair, NYC, 2012; XV Bienal de Pintura Rufino Tamayo, Museo Tamayo, Mexico, 2012, LAPSES, Hermés Store, Mexico, 2011. He lives and works in Mexico City.

Click here to view Omar Barquet on Abstraction in Action.

November 12, 2013 Marco Maggi: fanfold https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/marco-maggi-fanfold/

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Marco Maggi: fanfold
November 7 – December 19, 2013
Sicardi Gallery
Houston, Texas, USA

“I work to make time visible, and time shows that ideas were always precarious.”

For his fourth solo exhibition at Sicardi Gallery, Marco Maggi will present new work made from paper, convex mirrors, and Plexiglas. In each meticulously constructed piece, he tackles the relationships between meaning and information, between making and understanding. The exhibition bears the repeated leitmotif of folded paper, marked by delicate cuts—drawings made with pencil, X-Acto knife, and time. Underneath the cuts, the folded paper constitutes an enigmatic structure that is mysterious and resists interpretations. FANFOLD demonstrates Maggi’s sensitive approach to the problematics of knowledge—his stacks of paper and intricate cutouts suggest ways that overwhelming amounts of information deflect understanding.

Born in Uruguay, Maggi attended the State University of New York, New Paltz (SUNY), and graduated with an MFA in Printmaking in 1998. Since then, his work has been shown in numerous exhibitions, including Functional Disinformation: Drawings in Portuguese, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo (2012); Optimismo Radical, Fundación NC-Arte, Bogotá (2011); New Perspectives in Latin American Art, 1930-2006, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York (2008); Poetics of the Handmade, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2007); Gyroscope, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC (2006); Drawing From the Modern, 1975-2005, MoMA, New York (2005); Fifth Gwangju Biennial, Korea (2004); inCUBAdora, VIII Havana Biennial (2003); and Global Myopia, 25th São Paulo Biennial, São Paul (2002).

Maggi’s work is collected by public and private institutions, including the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York; Daros Latinamerica Foundation, Zurich; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Indianapolis; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; MoMA, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He lives and works in New York.

Click here to view Marco Maggi on Abstraction in Action.

November 12, 2013 Gabriel Sierra: ggaabbrriieell ssiieerrrraa https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/gabriel-sierra-ggaabbrriieell-ssiieerrrraa/

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Gabriel Sierra: ggaabbrriieell ssiieerrrraa
November 9 – December 14, 2013
kurimanzutto
Mexico City, Mexico

Through interventions based upon the notions of abstraction and geometry, Gabriel Sierra presents his viewers with an anthropological study of the language of spaces and architecture. Installation, as well as objects and structures, are used to construct situations in which the ordinary aspects of the quotidian are the main theme for exploration. In parallel, his work reflects on how forms, materials, and space have the power to alter human behavior and attitude.

Until December 14th, kurimanzutto is pleased to present Gabriel Sierra’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, titled, ggaabbrriieell ssiieerrrraa. For which he uses the distortion of his own name as a piece in itself, bringing attention to something that would normally go unnoticed. By interrupting the expectation of grammatical structure, he intends to refocus the perception of everyday dynamics, an intentional modification that functions with the same purpose as his installations.

Click here to view Gabriel Sierra on Abstraction in Action.

November 12, 2013 Danilo Dueñas: Sense of Mendicity https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/danilo-duenas-sense-mendicity/

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Photo Credit: Oriol Tarridas

Danilo Dueñas: Sense of Mendicity
October 10 – November 22, 2013
Alejandra von Hartz
Miami, Florida, USA

“Painting has always been for me a venture into a known land. Known land is that land of layers. Yes, layers like the land. Where a layer determines what is on top and is determined by what is underneath. Only painting as a problem of stratigraphy is of interest because it is here where change will produce an awakening.

An awakening into a new problematics, the problematics of the deferring image. Image as quantum of deferral and deferral as quantum of the insolent voice of before. What better to drive painting than the before. Before understood as man before man and before God. May the young deliver; then again, may the old rise to the sky.”

—Danilo Dueñas, Berlin, 2013

Alejandra von Hartz Gallery is pleased to present the solo exhibition Sense of Mendicity by Danilo Dueñas. This is the Colombian-born, Berlin-based artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. It will feature a site specific installation and new works. Dueñas works with found materials, intervening and assembling them into complex constructions in which the minimal, the sculptural, the pictorial and the monumental coexist, albeit, tensely. Through a thoroughly experimental process, he creates new poetics, activated by an acute awareness and a sensitive reaction to the space that contains the work. Meaning and time are also present, as well as art history and its incidence, in permanent questioning of his own and contemporary art practices.

Danilo Dueñas was born in 1956 in Cali, Colombia. He has been a Professor at the University of Los Andes, the National University of Colombia and the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Bogotá since 1990. In 1995, he participated in the exhibitions Mesótica and Transatlántica, curated by Carlos Basualdo at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in San José de Costa Rica and the Alejandro Otero Museum of Visual Arts in Caracas, respectively. In 1999, he was the recipient of the Johnnie Walker in the Arts Prize granted by Paulo Herkenhoff, Oswaldo Sánchez and Ana Sokoloff, or his installation “Espacio Preservado II”, presented at the Luis Ángel Arango Library. In 2001, two simultaneous retrospective exhibitions of his works were held at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá and the Museum of Art of the National University of Colombia, curated by María Iovino.

In 2003, another retrospective exhibition was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas curated by Carmen María Jaramillo. In 2006, he was the international guest at the Caracas FIA and in 2008 he presented “Dentro del espacio expositivo” at Periférico Caracas, curated by Jesus Fuenmayor. In 2011 he was one of the guests of the DAAD Berliner Kunstlerprogramm. His works are also represented in the Museum of Fine Arts in Caracas and the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. He is part of the Artist Pension Trust Mexico. Recent exhibitions include “At Actium and a tribute to John McCracken,” 2011 at DAAD Galerie, Berlin, “A door repeated and the wardrobe fell,” 2012 at Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin and a solo presentation of his work at the abc- art berlin contemporary 2013. Danilo Dueñas lives and works in Berlin.

Click here to view Danilo Dueñas’ on Abstraction in Action.

November 11, 2013 Pacific Standard Time: L.A. / L.A. https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/l-a-l-a-the-getty-foundation/

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Pacific Standard Time: L.A./L.A.

In the fall of 2011 Los Angeles celebrated the launch of Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945—1980, an unprecedented collaboration of arts institutions across Southern California joining together to tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene. Yet it was 230 years earlier, in 1781, that the city of Los Angeles itself was born when El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles was founded as part of New Spain. Thus, while Los Angeles often represents the vanguard of contemporary culture in the United States, it is at the same time a Latin American city of long duration.

 

Today, nearly half of the population of Los Angeles has roots in Latin America, contributing to Southern California as a lively center of artistic production and a natural nexus of cultural creativity between North and South. In recent years a number of exhibitions in the Americas and Europe have offered an introduction to the original and varied heritage of Latin America and the Latin American diaspora. Now there is an opportunity for a broader and deeper examination of this art through a renewed collaboration by the Pacific Standard Time partners. In the process, Southern California will play a significant role in the research and presentation of Latin American art.

 

L.A./L.A. will encompass exhibitions about the artistic connections between Los Angeles and Latin America, about the relationships between Latin America and the rest of the world, about the history of exchange among Latin American countries, or about the Latin American diaspora. Potential new research and exhibition topics could span diverse media, styles, themes, and time periods. Exhibitions could focus on the contemporary scene or could extend back in time to examine the development of modernism, the colonial era, or Pre-Columbian art as well as its continuing influence on modern art. Media might range from painting and sculpture to film and video, from murals to ceramics, from architecture to graphic design, or from conceptual art to land art, to name just a few. Exhibitions may also encompass diverse approaches, from surveys of a specific art movement to tightly focused monographic shows. L.A./L.A. also offers the opportunity for Southern California institutions to collaborate on projects with their counterparts in Latin America.

The Getty Foundation, Los Angeles, CA, USA

November 4, 2013 Curatorial team for #SoloProjects 2014 Focus Latin America https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/focus-on-latin-american-art-arco-madrid-2014/

ARCOmadrid announces that Magali ArriolaMarcio HarumSharon Lerner and Tobias Ostranderhave been named as the curatorial team for #SoloProjects Focus Latin America at ARCOmadrid 2014. 

#SoloProjects Focus Latin America is designed to serve as an opportunity for Latin American artists to research and develop new projects. The curatorial team will combine an exhaustive study of contemporary Latin America artists with proposals from galleries in order to arrive at a selection of the most relevant and most representative work from throughout the region.

#SoloProjects Curatorial Team

Magalí Arriola is Curator of the Fundación/Colección Jumex in Mexico, which in November of this year will inaugurate a new space. Previously she was Chief Curator at the Museo de Arte Carillo Gil and the Museo Tamayo, both in Mexico. Arriola has contributed to publications such as AfterallManifesta Journal and The Exhibitionist.

Marcio Harum is Curator of Visual Arts at the CCSP (Centro Cultural São Paulo) and was director (with Paola Santoscoy) of SITAC XI, the International Symposium on Contemporary Art Theory, Mexico City, in August 2013. As an independent curator, he participated in projects such as the 27th São Paulo Biennial and the 10th Havana Biennial.

Sharon Lerner is Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museo de Arte de Lima – MALI. She has written extensively on Peruvian Art and in 2010 she was awarded the Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts 101 Fellowship, supporting her research for the Kadist Art Foundation.

Tobias Ostrander is Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs at the Pérez Art Museum in Miami. He is currently preparing the exhibition program for the new museum, designed by Herzog & De Meuron, which will open to the public next December. He worked in Mexico for 11 years as Chief Curator for the Museo Tamayo and the Museo Experimental El Eco.

In conjunction with the #SoloProjects exhibition program, Latin American art will also be a focus of dialogue and debate at ARCOmadrid 2014. The Third Meeting of European and Latin American Museums, under the direction of João Fernandes (Deputy Director, Reina Sofía Museum) and Jesús Carillo (Director of Public Programs, Reina Sofía Museum), will convene 20 museum directors from Latin America and Europe. The Professional Meetings will bring together experts and specialists from Latin America and Europe will be directed by Adriano Pedrosa, Irene Hoffman (SITE SantaFe) andLucia Sanroman (SITE Santa Fe).

ARCOmadrid will also once more feature prizes that have been awarded to artists participating in#SoloProjects, such as the illy SustainArt Prize, which last year was awarded to Julia Rometti andVictor Costales (Jousse Enterprisse Gallery), and to the Chilean artist Voluspa Jarpa (Isabel Aninat Gallery), and the ARCOmadrid/Beep Prize for electronic art, which was awarded to the Mexican artist Marcela Armas in 2012.

In addition, in past editions of the ARCOmadrid, private and public collections have acquired works from artists included in #SoloProjects, such as work by the Mexican artist Eduardo Abaroa (of Kurimanzutto), which was acquired during the Plataforma Fundación ARCO; an installation byFrançois Bucher, acquired by CGAC from the Proyectos Monclova Gallery, and work by the Mexican artist Mariana Castillo Deball, of the Wien Lukatsch Gallery, acquired by the Reina Sofía Museum.

For further information or press inquiries, contact www.arco.ifema.es.

ARCOmadrid 2014
February 19–23, 2014

ARCO Madrid, Madrid, Spain
via e-flux

 

 

November 4, 2013 Sayago & Pardon launches Abstraction in Action @ Pinta NYC 2013 https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/aia-blog-entry-2/

AIA invitation by Cecilia Fajardo'Hill

Abstraction in Action, a project by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, is an interactive project born out of research on the contemporary production of abstract art in Latin America. For its launch at Pinta NYC, the project features a site specific installation by Mexican artist Omar Barquet. The artist presents “Night Tide”, an ephemeral collage mural made with fragments of various failed tests of xylography, offset and photocopy prints whose composition describes the changes in the pulsations of a night tide.

You can download the AIA publication by clicking Night Tide, Pinta 2013

October 16, 2013 Ricardo Alcaide: Una Forma De Desorden Invasivo https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/ricardo-alcaide-una-forma-de-desorden-invasivo/

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Ricardo Alcaide: Una Forma De Desorden Invasivo
August 9 – September 7, 2013
Lucia de la Puente Gallery
Lima, Peru

In this first solo exhibition in Galeria Lucia de la Puente, Alcaide presents a combined selection of his three last series, where he ponders through photography, painting, sculpture and installation, about the contrast between precarious architecture and the presence of modern architecture and some of the possible problems based on everyday experiences in the city of Sao Paulo, where he lives.

On one hand, small format paintings of “A Place To Hide” series, still under development, which are abstract formal studies created from temporary precarious architectural structures. On the other, “Vernacular Prototype”, which appear with fragmented planes compositions present in the sculptures and installations in the exhibition room, suggesting incomplete shapes referring to similar profiles of modern architecture, but they arise from discarded objects from the streets. Both series operate as a preamble to his latest show, “Intrusions”, centerpiece of this exhibition.

The selection of photographs taken over with acrylic paint of “Intrusions” are iconic images of Latin America’s modern architecture, in the case of Venezuela, where Alcaide was born and raised, and Brazil where lives and works. The works of the architect Oscar Niemeyer (Panalto Palace and The Itamaraty Palace in Brasilia), Lina Bo Bardi (Glass House in Sao Paulo), Gio Ponti (Villa Planchart in Caracas) and Carlos Raúl Villanueva (University City of Caracas).

“Intrusions” bring to these constructions of fine and delicate lines different masses of color. His main concern is to interrupt, pictorial and symbolic, inside specific architectural spaces, recognizable and impeccable, as a foreign and external element to the self-image and to the space itself. As objects that appear and disappear messily in the urban spaces, a sort of lost shapes, as to be objects abandoned and discarded or confusingly used to form a small temporary structure for shelter to the homeless.

In “intrusions”, Alcaide conceptualizes aesthetics that refer to vernacular and modernist architecture, along with the geometric abstraction that marked his academic background. In this group of over painted images of Modern mid century interiors, the geometrical shapes subtly deconstruct the carefully designed romos. These incidental openings, thickly painted planes of colours, alter the dynamics of the interiors, invading the space and creating a new reality. Alcaide attempts to hinder the pictorial and symbolic reality of these immaculately designed spaces with a foreign and striking element which appears to be floating in the space like an abandoned shelter.

This contrast appears in his works to compose a more complex approach to the topic of past modernism and his relationship with the harsh reality in modern times. The artist’s approach is to address a so complex social issue, from an ambiguous and ironic point of view, as presenting these ideal scenarios formally occupied by geometric objects and attractive compositions, and yet represent a form of invasive disorder.

His most recent solo exhibitions include: Intrusiones, Galeria Tajamar, Santiago de Chile, 2013; Tomar Medidas, Espacio OTR, Madrid-España, 2013; Prototipo Vernacular, Oficina #1, Caracas, 2013; Optimismo Radical, Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New York, 2013; Lejos De Casa, curated by Virginia Torrente, Galeria MasArt, Barcelona, 2012; Solo Project, curated by Pablo Leon de la Barra, Pinta Art Fair, London, 2012; A Place To Hide, Baró Galería, São Paulo, 2011; HorizonteVasado, Instituto Cervantes, São Paulo, 2011; A Place To Hide, Galería Blanca Soto, Madrid, 2010; Transeuntes, Galería Fernando Zubillaga, Caracas, 2010; Des-habitable. Espacio de Arte OTR, Madrid, 2009; The Sitters, Galeria Solar Ferrão, Salvador de Bahía, 2008; Skinworks, Solo Project, Margalef & Gipponi Gallery, Antwerp, 2007; Prominent Space Project, MA Fine Art Show 07, Chelsea College of Art, London, 2007.

His work is in public and private collections as: LIMAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Colección Fundación Cisneros, Caracas; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas; Galeria de Arte Nacional GAN, Caracas. Ricardo Alcaide currently lives and works in São Paulo-Brazil.

Click here to view Ricardo Alcaide on Abstraction in Action.

August 9, 2013