Happenings

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ve video aquí