Happenings

Artists: Paul Muguet, Rocío Asensi, and Fernando García Correa.

Paraíso en Sombra
August 13 – October 4, 2014
Curator: Berta Kolteniuk
Celda Contemporánea
Mexico City, Mexico

Los tres artistas reunidos en la exposición Paraíso en sombra, producen obras que evidencian la relación del hombre con el principio de aprehensión del universo y de su ser presente, es decir su conciencia y representación de la realidad metafísica en el tiempo y espacio que les toca vivir. La intención introspectiva, tanto intelectual como espiritual, de buscar el origen o esencia de las cosas es la que genera el impulso para luego transformarlas o representarlas en signos (imágenes, palabras, sonidos, gestos, etc.). Podría interpretarse este acto como la ideación que el filósofo alemán, Max Scheler analiza en su conferencia sobre El puesto del hombre en el cosmos. La ideación resulta de una red de actos o prácticas de “anulación ficticia del carácter de realidad”, o de “reducción fenomenológica” para alcanzar la esencia de las ideas. El recorrido metafísico y antropológico de Scheler reúne visiones de oriente y occidente para formular una conducta ascética que le permita al hombre –en este análisis particular, al artista- resistirse al mismo tiempo que hacer conciencia de su vida.

La obra de Paul Muguet, siguiendo esta lectura filosófica, es una metáfora de lo que Scheler resume como la vieja idea de Spinoza, Hegel y otros, sobre la conciencia que el Ser primordial adquiere de sí mismo en el acto de contemplarse y saberse como hombre, en un acto de trascendencia o advenimiento donde lo creado es parte de una unidad funcional, dado que se construye a partir de la individualidad de algunos objetos o signos que representan la impermanencia de las ideas, más allá de la materialidad de las cosas. Es así que sus objetos y esculturas componen figuras abstractas o representacionales de un todo, a partir de la singularidad de un objeto o palabra determinada y conocida a priori.

Rocío Asensi también trabaja a partir de la indagación y meditación de la realidad y sus manifestaciones sociales antagonistas en el mundo occidental y oriental, reconociendo, a partir de sus viajes y experiencias la complementariedad entre ambos. La aceptación de esas realidades mediante la obra y el hacer artístico, permite otro acceso espiritual a la impresión de la vida, donde incluso los actos negativos dotan de energía al espíritu, como dice el metafísico alemán. De esta manera podemos entender al acto creativo no como una denuncia moral, sino como una intención ética o voluntad espiritual por reconocer el lugar del hombre en el universo.

Finalmente, el trabajo de Fernando García Correa se relaciona con las primeras aclaraciones que Max Scheler hace en relación a los grados o estructura del ser psicofísico para diferenciar al hombre de los demás seres vivientes con los que convive. Sin caer en un simple juego de dualidades, las obras de este artista buscan presentar las diversas formas del ser, partiendo de las experiencias afectivas e instintivas comunes entre hombres, plantas y animales, a su vez que la asociativa e intelectiva, que constituyen cualidades desarrolladas por la psique humana. Las imágenes y formas creadas establecen un puente entre las abstracciones simbólicas y las figurativas, que activa el flujo de conexiones que el espectador puede establecer al observarlas.

El artista como asceta, en un sentido actualizado de la palabra, puede enmarcarse en la charla TED que Alain de Botton titula Ascetismo 2.0, donde propone al arte y la cultura como la nueva religión. Ambos filósofos, Scheler y Botton, entienden al arte como un encuentro con las ideas más esenciales del mundo y del ser. El siglo que los separa confirma la esencia en las ideaciones presentes y pasadas.

Artists: Marta Chilindrón, Magdalena Fernández, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Caio Fonseca, Julio Le Parc, Cipriano Martínez, Daniel Medina, Abraham Paltnik, Rafael Reveron-Pojan, Jesús Rafael Soto, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, and Jaime Tarazona.

Degrees of Separation
June 27 – September 14, 2014
Maddox Arts
London, UK

Curated by Mario Palencia and Laura Culpan, this exhibition looks specifically at the legacy of the Modern Masters born in the 1920s who were pioneering geometric abstraction and kinetic art across Latin America in the 1950s and 60s and how the younger generation is carrying this aesthetic on, in their own contemporary way.

Artist: Danilo Dueñas

Como Es
August 28 – September 27, 2014
Casas Riegner
Bogotá, Colombia

For over three decades, artist Danilo Dueñas has been experimenting with abandoned materials and found objects for the creation of pictorial constructions that offer multiple interpretations. Adjusting harmoniously to their exhibition context, Dueñas’ uncanny installations manage to question, evoke and destabilize the viewer.

Dueñas’ most recent solo exhibition titled COMO ES (As It Is), elucidates the artist’s astounding ability to experiment with forms and materials. On this particular occasion however, this experimentation process is induced by the artist’s profound reflection on the human condition, which stems from his personal reading of Saint Augustine’s teachings. According to Possidius, Augustine’s biographer, while on his deathbed the Saint wept over his sins upon studying the penitential psalms which he had posted on the walls of this room. Inspired by the specific circumstances leading up to Augustine’s death, and by the presence of sacred words visualized on the saint’s wall, Dueñas revitalizes and expands his utilization of text dating back to the 90s, by emphasizing its formal power and grandeur. Recalling the functional nature of the medieval artistic object, the words “HOLY GHOST”, “SCRIPTURE”, “COVENANT” and “PSALM”, written out in black adhesive vinyl along several walls of the gallery, become the leading actors of the exhibition thanks to their enormous scale, austere form and visual and cognitive impact.

The visual alteration of the exhibition context and the harmonious and often unsettling presence of found objects such as used books, discarded pedestals and rusted architectural elements, all of which seem to be faded and warn out, comprise a powerful one room installation imbued with the artist’s personal religiosity. This artful orchestration of heterogeneous elements however, is brought into existence thanks to Dueñas’ profound ability to grant new life to abandoned spaces and objects.

Danilo Dueñas was born in Cali, Colombia in 1965. He has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions including: Sense of Mendicity, Alejandra von Hartz, Miami, USA (2013); A Door Repeated and the Wardrobe Fell Corner Space, Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin, Germany (2012); Flying, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany (2012); Beuys y más allá – El enseñar como arte, Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, Bogotá, Colombia (2011); La vitrina abierta, Lugar a Dudas, Cali, Colombia (2010); y A Flight (Un vuelo), Casas Riegner, Bogotá, Colombia (2009). In 2011, Dueñas took part in the Artists-in-Berlin Program, Berliner Künstlerprogramm, one of the most renowned international programs offering grants to artists in the Visual Arts. His work can be found in important art collections in Latin America including: Museo de Arte Moderno de Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil); Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional (Bogotá, Colombia); Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas (Caracas, Venezuela); and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, Sofia Imber (Caracas, Venezuela).

Artists: Ana Bidart, Martí Cormand, Elena del Rivero, Darío Escobar, Sérgio Sister, and Adam Winner.

Provisionals
August 7 – September 6, 2014
Josée Bienvenu Gallery
NY, USA

The title refers to a term coined by Raphael Rubinstein* in 2009 to describe an ongoing trend:  Provisional paintings, “look casual, dashed-off, tentative, unfinished, self-canceling”. They “demolish their own iconic status before they ever attain such a thing.” Their genealogy includes Robert Rauschenberg’s “cardboards” of the 1970s, Raoul de Keyser, Christopher Wools, Mary Heilman and extends to a younger generation of artists who have been working across the map from Berlin to Bushwick and Mexico City, qualified as “the new casualists” by artist and critic Sharon L. Butler*.  The exhibition connects three generations of artists whose work oppose to the monumental, the official, and the permanent to embrace the off-kilter and the awkward in a playful combination of deliberation and indecision.

Dario Escobar’s Blacksmith Paintings are based on two absences: the absence of the painted object and the absence of the subject who painted it. Part of a larger body of ‘self-generated’ or ‘performative’ works, the painting in the exhibition documents the back wall of a blacksmith workshop in Guatemala city.  A blank canvas, stapled to the backdrop wall used to spray paint metal objects, accumulates layers and layers of paint residue. The painting is executed unknowingly by blacksmith workers without direct intervention of the artist’s hand whose only decision is to pick-up the work after a certain time. The result is a condensed and effortless journey through the main painting movements of the last century – from 1960s color field painting, to Latin American geometric abstraction, minimalism, pop, and street art, depending on the day-to-day order of business at the shop.

Elena del Rivero’s Letter from Home in Cerulean is a monument to domesticity and its monstrosity. It is a giant canvas hanging from one nail in the corner, just like a dishcloth in a kitchen. The process starts with the traditional blue pattern of a European dishcloth made with stitch-like brushstrokes, followed by staining and altering the surface with dirt from the studio floor, coffee from the breakfast table, or leftover paint smudged on the surface.  Like in most of del Rivero’s work, delicacy and a sense of loving attention coexist with a feeling of neglect and abandonment.

In Pasaportes, Mexico based conceptual artist Ana Bidart examines access and identity. The paintings are a record of her last two years working as an artist’s assistant, her time spent packing and labeling the works of other artists. Incorporating the vocabulary of tracking numbers and of various discarded materials, the paintings allude to various techniques of mechanical reproduction to explore traces left of relationships. Silkscreening, xeroxing, and photoshopping are done here in a low-tech, low-key way, by directly applying objects to the canvas (bubble wrap, footprints) and rubbing the surface with solvents in large areas of grayish brushstrokes.

Martí Cormand’s work is a testimony to the degradation of certainty. For the past two years, he has been investigating the notion of conviction by observing and rendering iconic works of the conceptual art movement  “When no one has too many certitudes any more, processes become essential. I have nothing urgent to communicate, no absolute convictions. I investigate the certainties that others had in the 1960s and 1970s. My favorite subject is the study of conviction” (Martí Cormand).  With no effort to hide its labor and adjustments, the work in the exhibition, a rendering of Yoko Ono’s 1964 Grapefruit, dissects its own process by showing the three stages to a finished painting. As if scanned at three points during its making, it becomes a self-amused and unassuming work that does not invite any transcendental reading.

Most of Sérgio Sister’s work stands at the edge between painting and sculpture. The small monochromatic paintings, from 1995 – 2010 included in the exhibition, convey a sense of calculated tentativeness. The individual paintings, made with an unflashy handling of paint can be re-positioned into distinct groups and assemblages, within a skillful game of subtle tonal variations.

Adam Winner’s paintings are concerned with multiple forms of imperfection. Made with a palette knife, in layer upon layer of oil, gesso and linen, the paintings expose their own accidents and mistakes, laying bare the seams, showing ripped linen strips and frayed edges. Winner’s paintings of imperfect gestures are imbued with a feeling of permanent self-doubt. They embrace a sense of their own failure yet reveal an intimate familiarity with the materials.

Artist: Christian Camacho Reynoso

Solo exhibition
August 20 – September 20, 2014
La Chince / Museo Experimental El Eco
Mexico City, Mexico

La práctica del creador, que el año pasado expuso I wished to say YES and NO at the same time en la galería 4 Windmill Street de Londres, explora el plano en la obra pictórica y el dibujo: «mi interés no está en imágenes específicas, sino la experimentación con materiales y procesos». El artista expone un filtro de privacidad, una película para proteger información. «La pequeña pieza que preparé para La Chinche es una brevísima muestra de material que otorga al observador distinta información, dependiendo del ángulo desde el que se mire. La idea es trabajar con la probabilidad de notar o no a la galería, debido a sus dimensiones y dirección». La inauguración de la muestra se realizó en La Chinche, y es un proyecto enmarcado en la muestra Desafío a la estabilidad. Procesos artísticos en México 1952-1967.