Happenings

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.

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

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

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.

 

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.

Iván 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.