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.

Óscar Figueroa: Acciones Territoriales

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Artists: Astrovandalistas, Brian Mackern, Carolina Caycedo, Claudia del Fierro, Enrique Arriaga, Gala Porras-Kim, Gilda Mantilla & Raimond Chaves, Hillary Mushkin, Juan Caloca, Juan Pablo Macías, Luis G. Hernández, Los ingrávidos, Mauricio Palos, Oscar Figueroa Chaves, Ricardo Díaz, and Yollotl Manuel Gómez Alvarado.

Acciones Territoriales
November 5 – 19, 2014
ExTeresa Arte Actual
Mexico City, Mexico

La presente curaduría explora y esquematiza algunas de las distintas formas en que sociedades, comunidades y personas han imaginado y configurado sus territorios como resistencias a un sistema capitalista neoliberal dominante.
Esta muestra, reconoce las implicaciones históricas del Ex Teresa como espacio de experimentación artística. En ese sentido, la revisión y lectura de la curaduría Terreno peligroso/Danger Zone, 1995 (Los Ángeles y Ciudad de México), la cual hace eco en las reflexiones que se plantean en esta curaduría.
Se ha comisionado un despliegue de proyectos artísticos que responden de manera crítica a fundamentos territoriales de la crisis sistémica actual, prácticas artísticas que se vinculan con otros campos de conocimiento y la acción colectiva. Para reforzar estos lazos se han creado dos puentes: los Conversatorios que funcionan como espacios de reflexión colectiva entre público y actores sociales y los Talleres que son espacios abiertos de acción colectiva.
Acciones Territoriales invita a explorar la idea de territorio y sus resistencias bajo cuatro nodos entrelazados: La idea de territorio como Estado-Nación, Resistencias a través de la memoria, Territorios transitables y en tránsito y Vida cotidiana: imaginarios, representaciones y lenguaje.

 

Un fenómeno dominante en México, al igual que en América Latina, y otras partes del mundo; es la facilidad con que el proyecto Neoliberal ha permitido que los Estados y sus alianzas con compañías transnacionales, invadan y exploten territorios sin ninguna consideración a las comunidades que los habitan. Estos desmedidos ejercicios de poder han provocado acciones de resistencia que tratan de revertir estos actos violentos. Algunos responden, dada la urgencia de la situación, desde la misma anquilosada concepción de territorio usada por el Estado; otros, como algunos grupos indígenas, buscan constantemente elaborar una resistencia más compleja, fundada en su historia, cultura, su relación con el espacio habitado y la inclusión de ideas contemporáneas.
Acciones territoriales, es entonces una invitación a dialogar y encontrar otros caminos posibles para entender nuestra situación actual que se vincula con otras miradas y territorios, una invitación a realizar acciones territoriales.

 

Daniela Lieja Quintanar

 

TERRITORIAL ACTS*

This curatorial project seeks to explore and set forth some of the ways in which societies, communities, and people have imagined and configured their territories as resistances and responses to a dominant capitalist, neoliberal system.
Territorial Acts acknowledges the historical implications of Ex-Teresa as a space for artistic experimentation, and thus we include the revision of the curatorial project Terreno peligroso / Danger Zone (Los Angeles-Mexico City, 1995), which echoes the investigations considered in this curatorial project.
A series of actions have been commissioned, and these respond critically to territorial fundaments in the current crisis, these works connect their practice with other fields of knowledge and collective acts. Two bridges have been createdto strengthen these relationships: the Conversationals (Conversatorios), which work as spaces of collective inquiry between the public and social actors; and the Workshops (Talleres), which are open spaces for collective action.
Territorial Acts is a proposal to explore the concept of territory and resistances through four nodes of investigation: The idea of territory as Nation-State; Resistance through Memory; Accessible and In-Transit Territories; and Everyday life: Imaginaries, Representations, and Language.
A phenomenon that has been reproduced in Mexico as well as in Latin America and other parts of the world, is the indulgence by which the Neoliberal project has granted the hegemonic State and its alliances with transnational companies, approval to invade and exploit territories by building mines, freeways, and damns without any consideration of the people who inhabit these territories. These excessive uses of power have provoked actions of resistance that try to revert their violent actions. Some of these resistances responded, due to the urgency of the problem, with the same misconception of territory used by the State; others, such as indigenous groups, constantly seek to elaborate a more complex resistance, based on their history, culture, inhabited space and the inclusion of contemporary ideas.
Territorial Acts is an invitation to dialogue and to find—through other views and territories—further possible ways to understand our current situation, while simultaneously suggesting an invitation to make territorial acts.

 

Daniela Lieja Quintanar
*Traducción Selene Preciado

Diana de Solares: Present 2

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Artist: Diana de Solares

Present 2: Alma Ruiz presents Diana de Solares
November 1 – December 13, 2014
Josée Bienvenu Gallery
New York, USA

The gallery presents a series of guest-curated exhibitions in the project space. For its second installment, curator Alma Ruiz presents the work by Guatemalan artist Diana de Solares.

Born in Guatemala City in 1952, Diana de Solares lives and works in Guatemala City. Recent exhibitions include: “Las correcciones/The corrections” the 9.99 gallery, Guatemala City (2014); “XIX Bienal Paiz “ Arte Centro Graciela Andrade de Paz, Guatemala City (2014); “Prótesis” [Prosthesis], Piegatto Arte, Guatemala City (2013); “En Tránsito” [In Transit], Sol del Rio Arte Contemporáneo, Guatemala City (2013); “Ensayo” Edge Zones, Miami, FL (2005); “Index miami”, Edge Zones, Miami, FL (2004); “En el filo”, Museo de Arte Moderno de Mérida “Juan Astorga Anta, Mérida, Venezuela (2003); “Picturing the female body”, The Latin Collector Gallery, New York, NY (2002); “Diana de Solares y Juan Paparella” Schneider Gallery, Chicago, IL (2000).

Darío Escobar: Unions and Intersections

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Artist: Darío Escobar

Unions and Intersections
November 11 – December 12, 2014
Nilsstaerk Gallery
Copenhagen, Denmark

The title of the exhibition Unions and Intersections underlines a general theme in Escobar’s work. The chosen objects, which make up Escobar’s sculptures become markers and signs of both unions and intersections through the way they are arranged and their conversion into art.

Most of the works presented in the exhibition are sculptures made partially or entirely out of sporting goods such as footballs, basketballs, or billiard cues. Sports have been a recurring theme in Escobar’s work in recent years. However, one is not looking at the work of a sports-obsessed artist; someone who cannot get enough of the life-affirming thrills sports can offer. For Escobar these sporting effects are, to a much larger degree, signs of multinational brands and movements, which in the last decades have swept across the world and made any distinction between the local and the global impossible.

To Escobar sports and the culture that surrounds it is inseparable from a worldwide consumerism that offers itself as a ticket to an international community if one is prepared to pay the price. By using effects from this culture Escobar calls attention to this particular situation, though without pointing fingers at sports fans. His work is also not to be understood as a sarcastic comment on the global art world or art market because of its ability to absorb such commercial elements. The works are a sincere investigation of complex power structures, including the relationship between art and consumerism.

Darío Escobar lives and works in Guatemala City. He has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions, among them, Gold, Bass Museum of Art, Miami, and Fútbol: The Beautiful Game, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (all 2014); Confusion in the Vault, Museo Jumex, México D.F. (2013); 2013 California-Pacific Triennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California; Darío Escobar/La experiencia del objeto, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Santiago, Santiago, Chile, Singular/Plural,  SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia, and The Island: A Game of Life, Gallery One, Manarat al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (all 2012); Los impolíticos, Palazzo delle Arti Napoli, Naples, Italy, Périfériks, Centre d’art Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and Mundus Novus, 53 Biennale di Venezia, Venice (all 2009); and Poetics of the Handmade, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2007). Escobar’s monograph A Singular Plurality: The Works of Darío Escobar was published by Harvard University Press in 2013.

Pedro Tyler: Extensa

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Artist: Pedro Tyler

Extensa
September 27 – November 1, 2014
Galería Isabel Aninat
Santiago, Chile

Extensa es el fruto y combinación de mi interés en la escultura como portadora de conocimiento y en la historia de la filosofía como un registro de las inquietudes y temores de los hombres. Historia íntimamente ligada con el desarrollo de la ciencia y la matemática.

Extensa tiene que ver con las distancias, con una idea de inmensidad, algo difícil de ser medido en su amplitud. Para hablar de esto utilizo la escultura que contradictoriamente es física y materialmente concreta en su ocupación del espacio.

A partir de algo finito como una cadena o rejas de cintas de medir me aproximo al concepto de lo infinito. Concepto presente en todo el sistema matemático complejo y cabe recordar, también incompleto, a partir del cual se levanta todo el conocimiento racional.

Hacer escultura es practicar la geometría, “medir la tierra”, dar forma a la materia organizando el espacio en el que nos movemos. ¿Cómo entonces hacer que un cuerpo inanimado transmita pensamiento y emoción? Según Descartes cuerpo y pensamiento son bien distintos. Sostiene que sólo hay 3 cosas: la cosa pensante (mis pensamientos, ideas e intuición), la cosa extensa (los cuerpos y el espacio medible) y la cosa infinita (Dios). Pero si todo cuerpo es infinito en su interior; ¿no estamos diciendo, como Spinoza, que Dios está en todo?

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Extensive is the result of the combination of my interest in sculpture as a conveyor of knowledge and in the history of Philosophy as a registry of the worries and frights of men. A history linked to the development of mathematics and science.

Extensive has to do with distances, with the idea of immensity, something difficult to measure in its entirety. To speak about this I use sculpture which, contradictorily, is materially and physically concrete in the way it occupies space.

From something finite as a chain or a grid constructed with measuring tapes I approach to infinity as a concept. A concept which is present in all the mathematical system, a system both complex and incomplete, from which all rational knowledge is derived.

Making sculpture is practicing geometry, “measuring the earth”, giving form to matter organizing the space in which we move. How can we then make an inanimate body communicate an emotion and thought? According to Descartes body and thought are well apart. He states that there are only 3 things: the thinking thing (my thoughts, ideas, intuition), the extensive thing (bodies and measurable space) and the perfect infinite thing (God). But if every body is infinite inside; are we not saying as Spinoza, that God is in everything?

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