Happenings

Artists: Diana Barquero, Javier Calvo, Carlos Fernández, Oscar Figueroa, Priscila González, Edgar León, Guillermo Araujo, Rodrigo Dada, Natalia Domínguez, Mauricio Esquivel, Jaime Izaguirre, Javier Ramírez -Nadie-, Andrea Aragón, Hellen Áscoli e Inés Verdugo, Andrés Asturias & Marlov Barrios, Benvenuto Chavajay, Andrea Mármol, Jaime Permuth, César Chinchilla, Luis Landa & Legan Rooster, Jorge Oquelí, Ariel Sosa, Alejandra Vaquero & Yapci Ramos, Sandra Herrera Dean, Fredman Barahona, Alejandro de la Guerra, Milena García, Maruca Gómez, Claudia Gordillo, Raúl Quintanilla, Darién Montañez, Pilar Moreno, Ismael Ortiz, Ela Spalding, Sofia Verzbolovskis, Eugenio Ampudia, Daniel G. Andújar, María Cañas, Colectivo PSJM, Jordi Colomer, Marta de Gonzalo, Chus García-Fraile, Jorge García, Nuria Güell, Mateo Maté, Plubio Pérez, Avelino Sala, and Pelayo Varela.

Visual Arts Biennial of the Central American Isthmus (BAVIC)
July 31 – August 24, 2014
Zona 4
Guatemala City, Guatemala

The ninth edition of the Visual Arts Biennial of the Central American Isthmus (BAVIC, in its Spanish acronym) will be held in the area known as 4 Grados Norte, located in Guatemala City’s Zone 4. The event’s exhibitions will be presented in a pedestrian circuit with 8 fixed sites, and will open on Wednesday, July 30.

The cycle of forms titled Meeting Points will take place on Thursday, July 31 through Saturday, August 2. The exhibition will remain open to the public through Sunday, August 24.

BAVIC began in 1998. The first edition was held at the national theater, in Guatemala. Today, BAVIC is a platform where participating artists have found a space for their expression in contemporary art languages: installations, video, video installations, photography, art actions, public-space interventions, among others. Six proposals from each country participate, and each one of the organizing institutions designates its own mode of selection.

For its ninth edition, the Visual Arts Biennial of the Central American Isthmus will implement the incorporation of a guest country, and Spain was selected for the occasion. The Spanish delegation includes the show Hic et Nunc. Sobre Paradojas Democráticas, curated by Imma Prieto, featuring thirteen of Spain’s most notable contemporary artists.

Artist: David Peña Lopera

Meñique
August 8, 2014
LA Galería
Bogotá, Colombia

“Meñique” reúne un grupo de obras que especulan sobre la escala humana a través del diálogo con disciplinas que la problematizan: astronomía, anatomía, ergonomía, arquitectura y dibujo.

La exposición incluye piezas recientes y otras que proceden de proyectos anteriores. A través de múltiples estrategias formales y referencias a elementos de diversas capas de la cultura, estas obras, en conjunto,sugieren una genealogía de ideas recurrentes en el trabajo actual de David Peña: los límites de la percepción y de la representación visual, del conocimiento y de la memoria.

Image: “Catedral”, 2014, Drum set stand and glass.

Artist: Felipe Mujica

Arriba como ramas que un mismo viento mueve
August 15 – November 19, 2014
Museo Experimental El Eco
Mexico City, Mexico

Artists: Mariángeles Soto-Díaz, Ricardo Alcaide, Emilia Azcárate, Juan Pablo Garza, Jaime Gili, Dulce Gómez, Esperanza Mayorbe, Ana María Mazzei, Teresa Mulet, Susana Reisman, Luis Romero, and Fabian Salazar.

Unsettled Primaries -Project by Mariángeles Soto-Díaz
Online gallery launch on August 23, 2014
Torrance Art Museum
Torrance, CA, USA

The Venezuelan flag features horizontal bands of the primary colors, yellow, blue and red, occupying equal parts in its rectangular composition. It is said that Francisco de Miranda, the Venezuelan transatlantic revolutionary known as “The First Universal Criollo” who inititated the process that would lead to the independence of Venezuela and Latin America, conceptualized the Venezuelan flag for independence after exchanging ideas about color theory with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Europe. While this is only one myth among many surrounding Miranda’s inspiration of primary colors for the flag, the story still resonates with Miranda’s interdisciplinary and philosophical interests, which are well documented in his extensive journals chronicling encounters with Europe’s leading intellectuals, artists and politicians.

For this project, Mariángeles Soto-Díaz invited Venezuelan artists to choose and interpret a set of open instructions to make an abstract work with equal distribution of primary colors. The instructions were meant as a productive challenge to the artists, particularly in light of the volatile political climate in Venezuela today and especially the many conflicts surrounding the use of the national flag in recent years.*

This experimental abstract project is a proposition put forth to think through many questions: Is it possible to reconcile formal and political meanings on a plane of simultaneity? Can color help us activate a shared experience of ambiguity and nuance, or are the established “universal” primary colors, an essential discovery in color theory, always mired in nationalism or flag-waving for Venezuelan artists? Is viewing art through the screen of a computer while imagining its materiality in real space a new kind of phenomenological experience? For individual artists, can a simultaneous performance of instructions interpreted in different parts of the world feel like a collective gesture?

Unsettled Primaries explores the potential of making something charged, tired and familiar new again, examining settled meanings. As in past projects directed by Soto-Diaz under the umbrella of her entity Abstraction At Work, Unsettled Primaries rests on the underlying premise that there is a conceptual and ambiguous border in the notion of abstraction that encroaches upon and even overlaps with symbolic representation, underscoring the uncomfortable fuzziness and fluidity of meaning in subject matter.

NOTE

* In 2013, as the two major candidates for presidential elections dressed in primary colors, government officials forbid the opposition from using them in their campaign despite the fact that the flag and its colors in various configurations were being used by the incumbent presidential candidate and precisely in that context. The rationale used by government officials was that using primary colors was an inappropriate use of patriotic symbols as per the Constitution passed in 2006 revising the Ley de Bandera Nacional, Himno Nacional y Escudo de Armas de la República Bolivariana Venezolana and/or the Supreme Justice Tribunal’s own judgment.

Artists: Olga de Amaral, Eric Baudart, Carlos Betancourt, Chris Burden, James Lee Byars,Elmgreen and Dragset, Dario Escobar, Sylvie Fleury, Cyprien Gaillard, Patricia Hernandez, Glenn Kaino, Alicja Kwade, Sherrie Levine, Kris Martin, Fernando Mastrangelo, John Miller, Martin Oppel, Ebony G. Patterson, Todd Pavlisko, Robin Rhode, Cristina Lei Rodriguez, and Rudolf Stingel.

Gold
August 8, 2014 – January 11, 2015
Bass Museum of Art
Miami, FL, USA

This exhibition is exploring how gold has been used in the past, present, and how it is referenced today by contemporary artists, both physically and conceptually. Works in this exhibition include historical objects from the permanent collection, painting, sculpture, video, photography, and design.

Image: “Untitled (McDonald’s Cup)”, 1999, Carboard, plastic, gold and pigments, 9 x 3 1/2 in. Collection of Vivian and Ken Pfeiffer.