Abstraction in Action
The Wall Street Journal: Art Fair Riding Emerging Wave https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/wall-street-journal-art-fair-riding-emerging-wave/
Pinta NY’s chairman Diego Costa Peuser, right, and U.S. director, Ian Cofre, discuss Marta Chilindron‘s ‘Ring, 2013,’ which will be in the fair. Andrew Hinderaker for The Wall Street Journal
Pinta NY, Founded in 2007, Deals With a Much Expanded Latin American Art Market
When Diego Costa Peuser founded Pinta NY in 2007, it was credited with being New York’s first fair dedicated to Latin American modern and contemporary art, shining a spotlight on an emerging and relatively untapped body of work.
When the show opens for its seventh edition on Thursday at the 82Mercer Conference Center, it will do so in a much-changed field.”Ten years ago, there was no [Latin American] presence at fairs like Art Basel,” said Mr. Costa Peuser, the fair’s executive director. “Now, the presence of Latin American art is strong, and the U.S. and Europe are looking toward these emerging markets.” According to the analytics firm ArtTactic, Latin American art-auction sales in New York for the first half of this year totaled $37.3 million, up 2% from the year-earlier period. Pinta organizers expect some 18,000 guests, a far cry from the 2,000 they saw in its first year.
As such, Pinta has made several changes to its structure, including higher standards. About 60 galleries will be showing this year, out of the roughly 140 that applied.
“There is greater competition across fairs, and people seek out sectors where there’s something curated,” said Mr. Costa Peuser, who ran the arteaméricas fair in Miami before creating Pinta. “Collectors find having a filter for what they’ll see more interesting.”
He gave industry professionals like Ian Cofre, the fair’s U.S. director, and Octavio Zaya, who curated the Spanish pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, free rein to choose works they deemed interesting. For example, Mr. Zaya, who directed a segment of the show dedicated to video art, picked an installation by Richard Garet, who recently showed at the Museum of Modern Art’s sound-art exhibition.
But can Pinta compete in an increasingly hectic art calendar? It takes place less than a month before Art Basel Miami Beach, a major lure for Latin American collectors. Christie’s is also aiming to auction off more than 300 pieces of Latin American art at a sale dedicated to the region next week.
Mr. Costa Peuser is adamant Pinta can, pointing to the fair’s niche status as an attraction on its own part. “The public at Pinta is not the same as at Basel because it is a much smaller fair, and collectors can come and talk at length to gallerists and artists,” he said.
He added that “the relationship with the auction houses is complementary, and collectors can attend both with different expectations of what they’ll see.”
One person who hopes he’s right is Cecilia De Torres, whose eponymous SoHo gallery is selling works from the Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres García, such as “Anvers, 1910,” a haunting maritime oil-on-canvas painting, and rainbow-colored acrylic sculptures by Argentina’s Marta Chilindron.
“A lot of the artists I represent were either Europeans or the children of European immigrants,” said Ms. De Torres, “so I would love to see people who collect such art come and look at this different approach in the same tradition.”
Click here to read the article from The Wall Street Journal.
November 15, 2013
Omar Barquet: Night Tide / Marea Nocturna https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/omar-barquet-night-tide-marea-nocturna/
Artist Rendering. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Omar Barquet: Night Tide / Marea Nocturna
November 14 – 17, 2013 PINTA New York
New York, NY, USA
For the Abstraction in Action project commission at PINTA NY 2013, I proposed the creation of an ephemeral collage mural made with fragments of various failed tests of xylography, offset and photocopy prints, which were the result of several processes and treatments of digital and analog deterioration, providing a memory to these materials and emphasize the idea of interference. I find an interesting connection between the formal languages of Concretism and technical-scientific diagrams related to space, landscape, sound, time, and nature, as languages that take on abstraction, often with contradictory purposes, but from their intersections I saw the possibility of articulating different proposals with diverse mediums and focused on revising the dynamic landscape as a mental scene.
Given the dimensions and duration of the commission, I considered that the project would function as an abstract composition which describes a sequence of changes in the pulsations of a night tide. The materials will be subjected to a process of graphic experimentation. The installation and de-installation of the stand will be extended as a circular process, generated from the fragmentation and rearticulation of three scientific encyclopedia’s back covers—their collage feel will be translated to the scale of the stand.
The site specific installation made with intervened encyclopedia covers by Omar Barquet will be on display at PINTA New York at PINTA Editions in the Abstraction in Action booth.
-Omar Barquet
Omar Barquet (Mexico, b. 1979) holds a degree in Fine Arts from the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving “La Esmeralda” (INBA), Mexico City. He has exhibited in various national and international cities such as New York, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Lima, Miami, Basel and Mexico City. His artistic practice encompasses installations, collages, engravings, and other techniques. Barquet has had residencies in Brazil.
He set up the Second Floor Art Collective along with artists José Luis Landet, Moris and Agustín González. Selected exhibitions include 1st Fugue, Kunsthalle Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2013; Half Day Closing, Pinta Art Fair, NYC, 2012; XV Bienal de Pintura Rufino Tamayo, Museo Tamayo, Mexico, 2012, LAPSES, Hermés Store, Mexico, 2011. He lives and works in Mexico City.
Click here to view Omar Barquet on Abstraction in Action.
November 12, 2013
Curatorial team for #SoloProjects 2014 Focus Latin America https://abstractioninaction.com/happenings/focus-on-latin-american-art-arco-madrid-2014/
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.
