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: 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
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
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.
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.
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.
Artists: Juan Becú, Sofía Bohtlingk, Rosa Chancho, Silvia Gurfein, Guido Ignatti, Fernanda Laguna, Ramiro 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).