Happenings

Marco Maggi: fanfold
November 7 – December 19, 2013
Sicardi Gallery
Houston, Texas, USA

Gabriel Sierra: ggaabbrriieell ssiieerrrraa
November 9 – December 14, 2013
kurimanzutto
Mexico City, Mexico

Through interventions based upon the notions of abstraction and geometry, Gabriel Sierra presents his viewers with an anthropological study of the language of spaces and architecture. Installation, as well as objects and structures, are used to construct situations in which the ordinary aspects of the quotidian are the main theme for exploration. In parallel, his work reflects on how forms, materials, and space have the power to alter human behavior and attitude.

Until December 14th, kurimanzutto is pleased to present Gabriel Sierra’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, titled, ggaabbrriieell ssiieerrrraa. For which he uses the distortion of his own name as a piece in itself, bringing attention to something that would normally go unnoticed. By interrupting the expectation of grammatical structure, he intends to refocus the perception of everyday dynamics, an intentional modification that functions with the same purpose as his installations.

Click here to view Gabriel Sierra on Abstraction in Action.

Danilo Dueñas: Sense of Mendicity
October 10 – November 22, 2013
Alejandra von Hartz
Miami, Florida, USA

“Painting has always been for me a venture into a known land. Known land is that land of layers. Yes, layers like the land. Where a layer determines what is on top and is determined by what is underneath. Only painting as a problem of stratigraphy is of interest because it is here where change will produce an awakening.

An awakening into a new problematics, the problematics of the deferring image. Image as quantum of deferral and deferral as quantum of the insolent voice of before. What better to drive painting than the before. Before understood as man before man and before God. May the young deliver; then again, may the old rise to the sky.”

—Danilo Dueñas, Berlin, 2013

Alejandra von Hartz Gallery is pleased to present the solo exhibition Sense of Mendicity by Danilo Dueñas. This is the Colombian-born, Berlin-based artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. It will feature a site specific installation and new works. Dueñas works with found materials, intervening and assembling them into complex constructions in which the minimal, the sculptural, the pictorial and the monumental coexist, albeit, tensely. Through a thoroughly experimental process, he creates new poetics, activated by an acute awareness and a sensitive reaction to the space that contains the work. Meaning and time are also present, as well as art history and its incidence, in permanent questioning of his own and contemporary art practices.

Danilo Dueñas was born in 1956 in Cali, Colombia. He has been a Professor at the University of Los Andes, the National University of Colombia and the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Bogotá since 1990. In 1995, he participated in the exhibitions Mesótica and Transatlántica, curated by Carlos Basualdo at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in San José de Costa Rica and the Alejandro Otero Museum of Visual Arts in Caracas, respectively. In 1999, he was the recipient of the Johnnie Walker in the Arts Prize granted by Paulo Herkenhoff, Oswaldo Sánchez and Ana Sokoloff, or his installation “Espacio Preservado II”, presented at the Luis Ángel Arango Library. In 2001, two simultaneous retrospective exhibitions of his works were held at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá and the Museum of Art of the National University of Colombia, curated by María Iovino.

In 2003, another retrospective exhibition was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas curated by Carmen María Jaramillo. In 2006, he was the international guest at the Caracas FIA and in 2008 he presented “Dentro del espacio expositivo” at Periférico Caracas, curated by Jesus Fuenmayor. In 2011 he was one of the guests of the DAAD Berliner Kunstlerprogramm. His works are also represented in the Museum of Fine Arts in Caracas and the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. He is part of the Artist Pension Trust Mexico. Recent exhibitions include “At Actium and a tribute to John McCracken,” 2011 at DAAD Galerie, Berlin, “A door repeated and the wardrobe fell,” 2012 at Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin and a solo presentation of his work at the abc- art berlin contemporary 2013. Danilo Dueñas lives and works in Berlin.

Click here to view Danilo Dueñas’ on Abstraction in Action.

Pacific Standard Time: L.A./L.A.

In the fall of 2011 Los Angeles celebrated the launch of Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945—1980, an unprecedented collaboration of arts institutions across Southern California joining together to tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene. Yet it was 230 years earlier, in 1781, that the city of Los Angeles itself was born when El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles was founded as part of New Spain. Thus, while Los Angeles often represents the vanguard of contemporary culture in the United States, it is at the same time a Latin American city of long duration.

 

Today, nearly half of the population of Los Angeles has roots in Latin America, contributing to Southern California as a lively center of artistic production and a natural nexus of cultural creativity between North and South. In recent years a number of exhibitions in the Americas and Europe have offered an introduction to the original and varied heritage of Latin America and the Latin American diaspora. Now there is an opportunity for a broader and deeper examination of this art through a renewed collaboration by the Pacific Standard Time partners. In the process, Southern California will play a significant role in the research and presentation of Latin American art.

 

L.A./L.A. will encompass exhibitions about the artistic connections between Los Angeles and Latin America, about the relationships between Latin America and the rest of the world, about the history of exchange among Latin American countries, or about the Latin American diaspora. Potential new research and exhibition topics could span diverse media, styles, themes, and time periods. Exhibitions could focus on the contemporary scene or could extend back in time to examine the development of modernism, the colonial era, or Pre-Columbian art as well as its continuing influence on modern art. Media might range from painting and sculpture to film and video, from murals to ceramics, from architecture to graphic design, or from conceptual art to land art, to name just a few. Exhibitions may also encompass diverse approaches, from surveys of a specific art movement to tightly focused monographic shows. L.A./L.A. also offers the opportunity for Southern California institutions to collaborate on projects with their counterparts in Latin America.

The Getty Foundation, Los Angeles, CA, USA

ARCOmadrid announces that Magali Arriola, Marcio Harum, Sharon Lerner and Tobias Ostranderhave been named as the curatorial team for #SoloProjects Focus Latin America at ARCOmadrid 2014. 

#SoloProjects Focus Latin America is designed to serve as an opportunity for Latin American artists to research and develop new projects. The curatorial team will combine an exhaustive study of contemporary Latin America artists with proposals from galleries in order to arrive at a selection of the most relevant and most representative work from throughout the region.

#SoloProjects Curatorial Team

Magalí Arriola is Curator of the Fundación/Colección Jumex in Mexico, which in November of this year will inaugurate a new space. Previously she was Chief Curator at the Museo de Arte Carillo Gil and the Museo Tamayo, both in Mexico. Arriola has contributed to publications such as Afterall, Manifesta Journal and The Exhibitionist.

Marcio Harum is Curator of Visual Arts at the CCSP (Centro Cultural São Paulo) and was director (with Paola Santoscoy) of SITAC XI, the International Symposium on Contemporary Art Theory, Mexico City, in August 2013. As an independent curator, he participated in projects such as the 27th São Paulo Biennial and the 10th Havana Biennial.

Sharon Lerner is Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museo de Arte de Lima – MALI. She has written extensively on Peruvian Art and in 2010 she was awarded the Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts 101 Fellowship, supporting her research for the Kadist Art Foundation.

Tobias Ostrander is Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs at the Pérez Art Museum in Miami. He is currently preparing the exhibition program for the new museum, designed by Herzog & De Meuron, which will open to the public next December. He worked in Mexico for 11 years as Chief Curator for the Museo Tamayo and the Museo Experimental El Eco.

In conjunction with the #SoloProjects exhibition program, Latin American art will also be a focus of dialogue and debate at ARCOmadrid 2014. The Third Meeting of European and Latin American Museums, under the direction of João Fernandes (Deputy Director, Reina Sofía Museum) and Jesús Carillo (Director of Public Programs, Reina Sofía Museum), will convene 20 museum directors from Latin America and Europe. The Professional Meetings will bring together experts and specialists from Latin America and Europe will be directed by Adriano Pedrosa, Irene Hoffman (SITE SantaFe) andLucia Sanroman (SITE Santa Fe).

ARCOmadrid will also once more feature prizes that have been awarded to artists participating in#SoloProjects, such as the illy SustainArt Prize, which last year was awarded to Julia Rometti andVictor Costales (Jousse Enterprisse Gallery), and to the Chilean artist Voluspa Jarpa (Isabel Aninat Gallery), and the ARCOmadrid/Beep Prize for electronic art, which was awarded to the Mexican artist Marcela Armas in 2012.

In addition, in past editions of the ARCOmadrid, private and public collections have acquired works from artists included in #SoloProjects, such as work by the Mexican artist Eduardo Abaroa (of Kurimanzutto), which was acquired during the Plataforma Fundación ARCO; an installation byFrançois Bucher, acquired by CGAC from the Proyectos Monclova Gallery, and work by the Mexican artist Mariana Castillo Deball, of the Wien Lukatsch Gallery, acquired by the Reina Sofía Museum.

For further information or press inquiries, contact www.arco.ifema.es.

ARCOmadrid 2014
February 19–23, 2014

ARCO Madrid, Madrid, Spain
via e-flux