Happenings provides references on art events, exhibitions, biennales, art fairs and festivals, with a focus on Abstraction in Action artists and post-90s abstraction from Latin America.
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.
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 marginaloutskirt southeast of Mexico City. Vis-à-vis: Biennial Ambassadors Residency Exhibition at McNichols Civic Centerfeatures 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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
