Happenings

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.

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

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.

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.

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.