Artists: María José Arjona, Emilia Azcárate, Adrián Balseca, Pablo Cardoso, Matías Duville, Florencia Guillén, Manuela Ribadeneira, Paula de Solminihac.

LARA, Latin American Roaming Art
September 15 – November 13, 2016
Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Quito
Quito, Ecuador

Esta exposición reúne el trabajo resultante de la cuarta edición de la residencia LARA (Latin American Roaming Art) llevada a cabo en las Islas Galápagos en marzo de este año. El proyecto consiste en reunir a un grupo artistas en un lugar de la región por dos semanas, tiempo durante el cual se informan lo más posible de los alrededores para luego iniciar un proceso individual de producción donde se traduce su experiencia del sitio.

Las ciudades de Honda en Colombia, Ollantaytambo en Perú y Oaxaca en México han servido como locaciones en anteriores ediciones, aparejadas de sus respectivas muestras en las ciudades capitales. Para la itinerancia del proyecto en Ecuador se propuso el ambiente privilegiado del archipiélago, relativamente inexplorado desde el arte contemporáneo.

Galápagos, siendo patrimonio de la humanidad por su biodiversidad, suele evocar imágenes idílicas de la naturaleza y de un universo lo menos posible tocado por la mano del hombre. Sin embargo, quienes hacen su vida allí -sean estos colonos, científicos o agentes vinculados al entramado estatal- configuran imágenes conflictivas y muchas veces contrapuestas sobre este territorio que luce atravesado por varios dilemas. Las mayores tensiones surgen sin duda de la contradicción entre los afanes conservacionistas y las lógicas del desarrollo urbano y crecimiento demográfico, en cuyos entresijos habita una industria turística en permanente expansión. Estas islas, que sirvieron de inspiración clave para modelar el paradigma evolucionista, también poseen una azarosa historia humana que revela, a nivel simbólico, curiosas paradojas: desde crónicas pobladas de crueldad y violencia, hasta las representaciones visuales que producen las misiones religiosas de hoy donde se conjugan evocaciones del pensamiento de Darwin con el creacionismo más dogmático.

Pero con su dramático origen volcánico delatado por doquier el archipiélago se muestra, ante todo, como un gran laboratorio natural donde fauna y flora se manifiestan en todo su esplendor. Matices de este encanto que ejerce el lugar adquieren mayor presencia en las obras de los artistas extranjeros, las cuales responden menos a “temas” y se perfilan más como memorias residuales, donde se incorporan ecos de imágenes que habitan ahora un territorio más evocativo y etéreo. Resuenan en ellas diversas maneras de asir el paisaje, recodificar la información recibida y devolver una mirada más subjetiva a partir de observaciones varias. La producción de los artistas locales se percibe, en cambio, como una lóbrega contrapostal donde se invocan indicios de un presente discordante ligado a rastros de un pasado que tiene su propia leyenda negra.

Asunto clave en la dinámica de la residencia fue propiciar la creación de una atmósfera de intercambio donde se potenciara la convergencia de disímiles intereses y personalidades. Aquello es lo que en conjunto reflejan las obras resultantes, las cuales configuran un variopinto muestrario de impresiones que revelan múltiples maneras de responder a un contexto, a la vez que enfatizan aspectos del lado humano de quienes participaron en este experimento.

• Happenings

Artist: Emilia Azcárate

Full Emptiness / El vacío lleno
May 27, 2016 – July 30, 2016
Miami Biennale
Miami, Florida

Azcárate’s works on paper, canvas and board, present unique forms of conceptualizing and synthesizing her spirituality and artistic practice. The installations shown in the gallery space highlight color, concentric compositions and forms of calligraphy and serve as a visual counterpoint to the permanent installation of James Turrell’s Coconino (2007). The disciplines of Azcárate’s meditation practice carry her through her art making, providing a structure that allows for the blurring between internal reflection and participation in the frenetic activity of contemporary society.

• Happenings

Artist: Emilia Azcarte

Pinturas de Castas
April 7, 2016 – May 30, 2016
Tiempos Modernos
Madrid, Spain

A medidos del siglo XVIII se desarrolló en  la América colonial un fenómeno artístico extraordinario: los pintores locales retrataron los cambios que se estaban produciendo en una sociedad con distintas  razas que se mezclaban. La llamada Pintura de Castas fue un fenómeno artístico-cultural que se dio fundamentalmente en el Virreinato de Nueva España (México) a principios del siglo XVIII  y que surge a raíz de la necesidad de establecer las bases del mestizaje casi sistemático que se daba en América. Estas pinturas eran utilizadas como una herramienta de explicación sobre las consecuencias de la unión entre razas y el resultado de ésta.

Realizados por pintores locales, los propios nombres de los cuadros son reveladores: “De Español, e Yndia, nace Mestiza”, “Español, y Mestiza producen Castiza”, “De Mulato, y Mestiza, nace, Cuarterón”…  Los cuadros, que se realizaban en series de 16 obras, fueron muy populares entre la sociedad ilustrada, pero apenas se conservan como series completas.

A través de la pintura, el color y la abstracción Emilia Azcárate ha querido plasmar una realidad que ya se daba hace trescientos años y reflejar la lucha constante a la que las minorías sociales se han tenido que enfrentar y cómo esa lucha, con el paso del tiempo, ha ido tomando nuevas formas. Antes, sus limitaciones se debían a leyes de segregación racial y hoy en día, después de la abolición de estas, se siguen sufriendo las consecuencias de un orden social que está implícito en el funcionamiento de la sociedad sobre todo en Latinoamérica.

Lo contemporáneo nace de la historia

El desarrollo de la Pintura de Castas coincide en el siglo con un descubrimiento revelador: el establecimiento de los colores primarios (amarillo, azul y rojo) realizado por Isaac Newton en su obra ‘’Opticks’’ publicada en 1702. A partir de esta coincidencia, Emilia Azcárate trabaja con un método casi matemático:

“Aprovechando esta coincidencia significativa asigné a cada una de las principales razas que contribuyeron con el proceso de mestizaje en América uno de los colores primarios. El amarillo a los indígenas, como símbolo de la riqueza; el azul a los africanos como símbolo de la naturaleza; y el rojo a los españoles por la importancia que le daban a la “pureza” de la sangre. A partir de esta disposición combino cada color primario según la raza que le corresponde, utilizando un sistema de porcentaje aproximado. En paralelo, diseñé un alfabeto que se asemeja a los jeroglíficos, escritura cuneiforme o  “códex”, donde el texto y la imagen forman una pareja inseparable. En mi alfabeto las letras no tienen limitaciones. En la pintura de castas el texto dice lo que la imagen esconde”.

• Happenings

Artists: Adrián Balseca, Adrian Paci, Adriana Escobar, Alexandra McCormick, Allan Sekula and Noël Burch, Amar Kanwar, Ana Patricia Palacios, Annaleen Louwes, Anri Sala, Antonio Caro, Antonio Paucar, Arquitectura Expandida and Caldo de Cultivo, Camila Botero, Camilo Cantor, Camilo Restrepo, Carlos Motta, Clara Ianni and Debora da Silva, Claudio Perna, Colectivo Nomanada, Cráter Invertido, Dan Perjovschi, Daniela Ortiz, Elena Vargas Tisnés, Élkin Calderón Guevara, Emilia Azcárate, Fernando Arias, Giuseppe Campuzano, Gülsün Karamustafa, Halil Altindere, Jordi Colomer, Jorge Alonso Zapata, Jorge Andrés Marín, José Alejandro Restrepo, Juan Javier Salazar, Juan Obando, Libia Posada, Liliana Angulo, Magdalena Fernández, Mapa Teatro, María Buenaventura, Michael Soi, Miguel Ángel Rojas, Mónica Mayer, Mujeres Creando, Myriam Lefkowitz, Natalia Giraldo Giraldo, Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, Nathaly Rubio, Núria Güell, Paromita Vohra, Phil Collins, Santiago Vélez, Sislej Xhafa, Tercerunquinto, Todo por la Praxis, Tricilab, William Engelen, Wilson Díaz, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Yoel Díaz Vázquez.

MDE 15 Medellín
Curated by Nydia Gutiérrez, Tony Evanko, Fernando Escobar, Sharon Lerner, Edi Muka.
October 2015 – March 2016
Museo de Antioquia
Medellín, Colombia

The theme of Local Stories/Global Practices has been conceived to create a space of reflection and engagement with the recent transformation of Medellín since the turn of the millennium. Medellín, considered to be a progressive Latin American city that has implemented innovative programs to stimulate social and urban development, is part of a larger picture. While the results of these processes are real and tangible, the dynamics they have generated are particularly complex from an ethical standpoint. In order to understand their implications we propose to focus on these processes of change and explore them through commissioned projects, works of artists and other socially oriented initiatives, sometimes inserted in spaces beyond the artistic field.

MDE15 inserts itself in the social fabric of the city while sharing stories, experiences and practices from elsewhere in the world. Transformative changes can elicit psychological, physical and social responses that range from issues of trust and security to economic well-being. The stories that result from observations and from the direct experiences of people in communities, often address the coping mechanisms that are required to survive and flourish amid those changes, which often occur at a pace that outstrips the citizens and society’s ability to assimilate them. MDE15 aims at focusing on the unsaid and the less visible aspects of the everyday, such as memory, the past, the persistence of structural problems, but also the resilience of life in the city. It also relies on the potential of art to harness the capacity of individual and collective imagination to re-signify complex situations.

It is in this context and in the context of a critical standpoint in which the definition of artistic practice is constantly being challenged, that the MDE15 unfolds.

Topics

1. Violence, conflict and memory
2. Local stories in a global context
3. Exertion of power over the body
4. The institutional teasing
5. Resilient city: dreams, desires and possibilities

• Happenings

Artists: Emilia Azcárate, Jacques Bedel, Fernando ‘Coco’ Bedoya, Paulo Bruscky, Jorge Caraballo, Elda Cerrato, Emilio Chapela, Guillermo Deisler, Noemí Escandell, Nicolás García Uriburu, Anna Bella Geiger, Leandro Katz, Leonel Luna, Jonier Marín, Juan José Olavarría, Alejandro Puente, Osvaldo Romberg, Horacio Zabala, Carlos Zerpa.

América
October 21, 2015 – February 10, 2016
Henrique Faria
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Perfiles múltiples para un continente

La historia de América está repleta de gritos: aquellos del conquistador divisando tierra, los de independencia -desde Dolores a Yara- o los del inmigrante que a comienzos del siglo XX intentaba conjurar con su voz el calvario que atravesaba. Sin embargo, hay otras formas de decir América, modos singulares de invocarla, donde se experimenta con su nombre, su cartografía o su pasado. Aquí América se revela como una construcción, una evocación estratégica para desarmar imágenes naturalizadas, desafiar poderes o confrontar mecanismos de opresión.

A través de las obras que participan de esta exposición es posible distinguir no sólo cómo los diversos problemas de las agendas americanas fueron recurrentes en las investigaciones de los artistas contemporáneos sino la manera en que sus estrategias, sus fundamentos políticos y sus objetivos de intervención se modificaron a lo largo del tiempo. Sin embargo, es necesario regresar hacia las obras, establecer nuevos diálogos entre artistas y clarificar sus contextos de circulación para dar lugar a la tarea que parece más urgente: desarmar lecturas naturalizadas que en el estado actual del arte definen los perfiles de lo latinoamericano.

Agustín Díez Fischer

• Happenings

Monochrome Undone
SPACE Collection

Curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill
October 24, 2015 – April 1, 2016
SPACE, Irvine, CA

Artists: Ricardo Alcaide, Alejandra Barreda, Andrés Bedoya*, Emilio Chapela, Eduardo Costa, Danilo Dueñas, Magdalena Fernández, Valentina Liernur, Marco Maggi, Manuel Mérida, Gabriel de la Mora, Miguel Angel Ríos, Lester Rodríguez, Eduardo Santiere, Emilia Azcárate, Marta Chilindrón, Bruno Dubner, Rubén Ortíz-Torres, Fidel Sclavo, Renata Tassinari, Georgina Bringas, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Thomas Glassford, José Luis Landet, Jorge de León, Bernardo Ortiz, Martin Pelenur, Teresa Pereda, Pablo Rasgado, Ricardo Rendón, Santiago Reyes Villaveces, Mariela Scafati, Gabriel Sierra, Jaime Tarazona, Adán Vallecillo, Horacio Zabala.

The monochrome as a focus in the SPACE Collection began in a spontaneous form and soon became a systematic field of research. This exhibition is about the contemporary monochrome in Latin America. The monochrome is one of the most elusive and complex art forms of modern and contemporary art. If we think about its origins or meaning, we find that the monochrome is many contradictory things. The monochrome is neither a movement nor a category; it is not an “ism” or a thing. It may be painting as object, the material surface of the work itself, the denial of perspective or narrative, or anything representational. The monochrome may be a readymade, a found object, or an environment—anything in which a single color dominates. The monochrome can be critical and unstable, especially when it dialogues critically or in tension with modernism. This exhibition is organized into four different themes: The Everyday Monochrome, The White Monochrome, The Elusive Monochrome and The Transparent Monochrome. These themes have been conceived to create context and suggest interpretations that otherwise might be illegible.  These may overlap at times, pointing to the multiplicity of content in many of the works. The unclassifiable and variable nature of the monochrome in Latin America today is borne of self-criticality and from unique Latin contexts, to exist within its own specificity and conceptual urgency.

To purchase the catalogue click here.

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El monocromo, como enfoque de SPACE Collection, comenzó de forma espontánea y a poco se convirtió en un campo de investigación sistemático. Esta exposición trata sobre el monocromo contemporáneo en América latina. El monocromo es una de las formas de arte más elusivas y complejas del arte moderno y contemporáneo. Si reflexionamos acerca de sus orígenes o su significado, nos encontramos con que puede albergar muchas cosas contradictorias. El monocromo no es un movimiento ni una categoría; no es un “ismo” ni una cosa. Puede ser la pintura como objeto, la superficie material de la obra, la negación de la perspectiva o de todo lo representativo o narrativo. El monocromo puede ser un readymade, un objeto encontrado, un cuadro o un ambiente: cualquier cosa definida como una superficie cromáticamente uniforme donde un solo color predomina. El monocromo puede ser crítico e inestable, especialmente cuando se dialoga críticamente o en tensión con el modernismo. Esta exposición está organizada en cuatro temas: el monocromo cotidiano, el monocromo blanco, el monocromo elusivo y el monocromo transparente. Estos temas han sido concebidos a fin de crear un contexto y sugerir interpretaciones que de otra manera podrían ser ilegibles. Éstos pueden superponerse a veces, apuntando a la multiplicidad de contenidos en muchas de las obras. La naturaleza indeterminada, inclasificable y variable del monocromo en Latinoamérica hoy en día es producto de la autocrítica y de los contextos propios, para existir dentro de su propia especificidad y urgencia conceptual.

• Projects

Artists: Regina Aprijaskis, Emilia Azcárate, Valerie Brathwaite, Feliza Bursztyn, Marta Chilindrón, Mirtha Dermisache, Diana de Solares, Noemí Escandell, María Freire, Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt), Anna Bella Geiger, Mercedes Elena González, Ana Mercedes Hoyos, Elizabeth Jobim, Judith Lauand, Ana Maria Maiolino, Marta Minujín, Mercedes Pardo, Liliana Porter, Margot Römer, Lotty Rosenfeld, Ana Sacerdote, Fanny Sanín, Adriana Santiago, Mariela Scafati, Antonieta Sosa, and Yeni & Nan.

Folding: Line, Space & Body / Latin American Women Artists Working Around Abstracion
Curated by Aimé Iglesias Lukin
July 9 – August 21, 2015
Henrique Faria Fine Art
NY, NY, USA

Folding is the action through which a line turns into a figure, a plane becomes tridimensional, and a painting becomes an object. And beyond all these actions, we see how representation becomes presentation.

Since the historical avant-garde, the quest for an art that transcended the representation of reality has led artists to create abstract art and to focus on the material objecthood of a painting or sculpture. This exhibition presents the work of Latin American women artists from the 1950s through the present day, showing the different ways in which they worked with abstraction and geometry to explore the space of the artwork and that of the spectator, as mediated by the body.

Latin American abstraction has gained recognition worldwide in the last decade. Exhibitions like “Inverted Utopias,” curated by Mari Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea in 2004 and “The Geometry of Hope,” curated by Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro in 2007, presented the diverse abstract movements that developed in the Post War Latin American metropolis, from Joaquín Torres García and Escuela del Sur in Montevideo, to Arte Concreto Invención and Madí in Buenos Aires, the Ruptura group in São Paulo and the work of Alejandro Otero and Jesús Rafael Soto in Caracas.

In all of these avant-garde scenes, women artists gained—not without struggle—a place of recognition and a social circle in which they could develop their profession with relative tolerance. Still, except a few exceptions like Gego, Lygia Clark and Lygia Pape, it is mostly male artists we see represented in museums and art history books. This exhibition does not intend to resolve that problem, which is of a much larger scale, but aims to present some of their production and to explore the formal and creative connections among this diverse group of artists from the continent. This show also chooses to escape the historical understanding of abstraction, which is referred to here not as the Post-war movement but more broadly as a creative strategy that has continued through the decades. In this way, Judith Lauand’s planimetric work of 1960 can be seen alongside the contemporary pyramidal sculptures of Marta Chilindrón, and the use of the grid in 1950s and 1960s abstraction can be observed in Anna Bella Geiger’s video Passagens II from 1974 or in Emilia Azcarate’s Sudoku series from 2009.

The earliest-made piece in the show is that of Uruguayan artist María Freire, who co-founded in 1952 the group Arte No-Figurativo along with her husband José Pedro Costigliolo, Antonio Llorens and other artists. Works like Composición vertical (1956), show her interest in orthogonal compositions and planar superimpositions, which along with her use of line demonstrate her interest not simply in abstraction and space but more specifically in dynamism. In a similar spirit, but resulting in a very different work, Judith Lauand’s Concrete 178 (1960) presents a flat geometric composition, in monochrome grays, that through a careful use of lines and planes suggests a volumetric and angular surface. Known as the “Dama do concretismo,” Lauand was the only female member of Brazil’s Grupo Ruptura, and created unique works through a very personal use of geometry, mathematics and space.

In contrast, Mercedes Pardo’s acrylic painting Untitled (c. 1975) explores space recession not through line but using color fields. The Venezuelan artist, who was a pioneer of abstract art in Venezuela along with her husband Alejandro Otero, focused on a sensorial use of color in abstract compositions to achieve the autonomy of painting. Along with Pardo, the other representative of geometric abstraction from Venezuela in this exhibition is Margot Römer, whose triptych from the series Plomos Despojados (1995) uses the panel subdivisions to present three variations of a rectangular structure by alternating the color distribution. A similar emphasis in color is seen in Acrylic No. 7, painted in 1978 by Colombian artist Fanny Sanín, who creates a complex arrangement of intersecting rectangles of different purple hues. This simple alteration of tone in one color still allows Sanín to create a rich composition of receding planes that suggests rhythmic movement and dynamism. Indeed, movement is directly incorporated in Essai de Couleur Animée, a film made by Ana Sacerdote in between 1959 and 1965 in which she interposes geometric chromatic compositions, animating their shapes.

The case of Regina Aprijaskis exemplifies the difficulties of being a woman artist and of combining work and personal life. The Peruvian artist was developing a fruitful career and became interested in abstraction in the 1950s and 1960s after two trips to New York, but abandoned painting in 1970 following the coup d’état in Peru two years earlier, to work alongside her husband in his factory. Her 1996 acrylic painting Negro, rojo y blanco demonstrates how her interest in geometric abstraction stayed intact after a 26-year hiatus, at the same time the choice of the Peruvian flag’s colors seems to speak directly about her country’s political and social struggles.

Other works in the show leave color aside and refer to the white monochrome also with the means of exploring geometry and space.  That is the case of Ana Mercedes Hoyos’ 1970s series Atmósferas, where subtle variations of white hues suggest surfaces on the canvas. Similarly, Anna Maria Maiolino’s Light Image (1971) depends on a simple square embossing on paper to invoke the tradition of the monochrome. The square is also the theme of Gego’s Dibujo sin papel 79/14, made in 1979. Famous for her Reticuláreas, or net sculptures, in this work the Venezuelan artist uses wire and metal to frame a piece of the wall, allowing the shadow to become part of the work, continuing the integration of work and exhibition space that allowed her work to spatially affect the spectator.

The relationship between the gallery space and the visitor’s body became a main topic of interest for artists in the late 1960s, notably within Minimalism and among Western artists, but similar creative inquiries were being made in Latin America. Argentinean artist Noemí Escandell created sculptural projects such as Rectangles and Squares and Volumes, Bodies and Displacements, both from 1966, in which basic geometric shapes are combined in odd dispositions to affect the tridimensional perception of the object. In Venezuela, Antonieta Sosa was doing similar work with pieces like Stable-Unstable (1967/2014), which put into question geometry and the laws of gravity while simultaneously presenting organically aesthetic objects.

The body would later be presented directly, rather than invoked, in the work of artists such as Liliana Porter and Yeni & Nan. The Argentine is represented with her 1973 work Untitled (Line), in which her finger is photographed as interrupting a line, one that transcends the frame of the work onto the real space of the wall. In the Polaroid series Cuerpo y línea (1977), the Venezuelan duo Yeni & Nan position their bodies along the geometric designs of a tennis court, evolving the linear and geometric tradition of their home country to include performance and body art.

The urban space is also the canvas chosen by Brazilian conceptual artist Anna Bella Geiger, whose video Passagens II (1974) shows her body creating diagonal trajectories in the grid-like formation of the steps of a stairway. In a similar approach, Lotty Rosenfeld’s ongoing series Geometría de la línea, begun in 1979, intervenes the infinite number of broken white lines that divide a road with intersecting, transversal lines, in a formal but also powerfully political performance associated to her participation in the CADA group protesting the dictatorship in Chile. The relationship between geometry and power is explicit in Marta Minujín’s The Obelisk Lying Down (1978). The work, created for the first Latin American Biennial in São Pablo, presents the geometrical structure of the famous monumental form lying down, allowing spectators to walk through it in a democratizing and desacralizing gesture.

In the exhibition we also encounter more expressive uses of abstraction, where experimentation with materials led to more free-flowing forms. This is the case of Mirtha Dermisache’s graphisms from the 1970s, where the lines drawn by the Argentine artist sinuously move to create abstract texts. The abstract sculpture Untitled (1981) by Colombian artist Feliza Brusztyn, who in 1967 created the famous series of motorized sculptures Las histéricas, also combines dissonant materials into visually striking, amorphous objects. Trinidanian artist Valerie Brathwaite opts for anti-geometric shapes in her Soft Bodies, a series initiated in 2011, where the hanging and floor fabric sculptures play fluidly between the borders of figuration and abstraction.

After all these decades, geometry is still very much present in the work of younger artists. Sometimes the continuity takes place by claiming geometric abstraction directly, like Mercedes Elena González’s series September 1955 (2014), which re-conceptualizes the cover of the inaugural issue of the art and architecture magazine Integral to reevaluate the legacy of modernism in Venezuela. Others adapt geometric abstraction into new formats, like the wood piece Untitled (Free Construction No. 1) (2005) by Diana de Solares. In the case of Elizabeth Jobim’s Wall (2015), geometric shapes invade the wall and floor, overlapping each other and creating optical layers. Emilia Azcárate’s Untitled (Sudoku), from 2009 takes the grid of that game as influence and codifies numbers into colors, allowing her to create a meditative abstraction that juxtaposes the game’s problem with its solution. Formally opposite to this grid but equally colorful is Adriana Santiago’s Untitled from the series Maracaibo (2015), which combines pompoms into a frame in a playful and appealing tactile composition. The work of Marta Chilindrón retakes the tradition of dynamic planes and shapes of Gego and Lygia Clark but includes color as a key part of her manipulable works such as 27 Triangles (2011). Finally, Mariela Scafati goes back to the original questions of abstract painting in her works Tu nombre completo and Nueve minutos exactos, both from 2015, which literally –through bondage ropes— and conceptually –by transforming them into objects— tense the possibilities of what a painting can be: not a representation but an object, a body itself.

These interactions between the artwork, its surrounding spaces and the bodies that interact with it are present through the sixty years in which these artworks were created. The formal explorations initiated by the historical avant-gardes have not, as proven by the younger generation, exhausted themselves. This group of women artists from Latin America offer a wide range of answers to these questions, all personal but also collective. The line and the plane not only folded but became the body, expanding the shape of art above and beyond.

Aimé Iglesias Lukin

• Happenings

Artists: Emilia Azcárate, Artur Barrio, Jacques Bedel, Coco Bedoya, Luis F. Benedit, Paulo Bruscky, Jorge Caraballo, Sigfredo Chacón, Emilio Chapela, Guillermo Deisler, Mirtha Dermisache, Anna Bella Geiger , León Ferrari, Jaime Higa, Eduardo Kac, Leandro Katz, Guillermo Kuitca, David Lamelas, Marie Orensanz , Clemente Padín, Claudio Perna, Federico Peralta Ramos, Dalila Puzzovio, Juan Pablo Renzi, Osvaldo Romberg, Juan Carlos Romero, Eduardo Santiere, Mira Schendel, Pablo Suarez, Horacio Zabala, and Carlos Zerpa.

Grafías y ecuaciones
June 1 – August 5, 2015
Henrique Faria Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, Argentina

¿En qué momento una letra se convierte en una figura, un garabato en un signo, una línea en un significante, una imagen en una palabra, un poema en un dibujo, una consigna política en una afirmación de lo sensible? ¿En qué momento, en qué preciso momento, nuestra percepción se disloca para entrar en una zona de turbulencia en la  que se entreveran signos y figuras? Grafías y ecuaciones es una exploración en las obras de artistas que transitaron por esa zona de turbulencia donde las divisiones convencionales entre palabra e imagen ya no funcionan.

Las grafías de las obras que se exhiben en esta exposición son también ecuaciones: equivalencias y analogías que hace la imaginación para encontrarse con la diferencia, lo irreductible o el sinsentido en un laberinto de trazos metafísicos, políticos o plásticos. Sea como medición previa para cualquier obra, sea como traducción irrisoria o paródica, sea como pasaje de un sistema a otro, la diferencia entre signo lingüístico e imagen visual colapsa para dar lugar a un campo experimental que nos impulsa a una indagación por el Sentido y, al mismo tiempo, a una exploración de los sentidos.

Gonzalo Aguilar

• Happenings

Artists: Emilia Azcárate, Leyla Cárdenas, Danilo Dueñas, Bernardo Ortiz, Adolfo Bernal, Carlos Bunga, Feliza Bursztyn, Beatriz Eugenia Díaz, Fernando Fragateiro, Rosario López, Delcy Morelos, Aleex Rodríguez, Carlos Rojas, Luis Roldán, Rosemberg Sandoval, José Antonio Suárez Londoño and Icaro Zorbar.

Why Abstract Art? (¿Por qué el arte abstracto?)
May 7 – June 11, 2015
Casas Riegner
Bogotá, Colombia

Group show.

• Happenings

Artists: Emilia Azcárate, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck, Cecilia Biagini, Sigfredo Chacón, Emilio Chapela, Eduardo Costa, Willys de Castro, Diana de Solares, Marcolina Dipierro, Eugenio Espinoza, Jaime Gili, Mathias Goeritz, Juan Iribarren, Bárbara Kaplan, Ramsés Larzábal, Raúl Lozza, Beatriz Olano, César Paternosto, Alejandro Puente, Luis Roldán, Osvaldo Romberg, Joaquín Torres García, and Horacio Zabala.

Dirty Geometry
December 2 -7, 2014
Curated by Osvaldo Romberg
Mana Contemporary
Miami, FL, USA

Dirty geometry has existed throughout 20th century art although not in a manifest way; it implies a subversion of the laws of logical rigor, systemism and utopian modernism that have pervaded geometry since Kandinsky. In his milestone book Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky argues against geometry as decoration; instead, he promotes geometrical painting as a spiritual tool. The quest of the spiritual, of a balance between the mind and intellectual order constituted the fundamental idea behind geometric art. Geometrical abstraction was used in different times, as we see for instance in Kandinsky’s compositions, in the rigorous nihilism of Malevich’s “Black on Black”, and in the concrete iconography of Max Bill.

Through my concept of “Dirty Geometry,” I want to undermine the rigid, global imposition of geometry that has dominated from the beginning of the 20th century. Of course, other artists have already played with this approach more or less consciously: Rothko when he broke the grid, Frank Stella with his Cone and Pillars series from the eighties.

However I came to realize that Latin-America offers the most prominent examples of “Dirty Geometry.” First, this might be explained by the often rudimentary absorption of the center by the periphery, as peripheral access to major art trends has long been mediated by art reproductions, and perceived through local cultural prisms. This is even truer in Latin-America where most countries lacked a radical and contemporary art scene. Secondly, in Latin America one always finds forms of political and existential resistance against the values of neo-liberalism embodied by the center.

“Dirty Geometry” will question different aspects of American, Russian and European abstract art such as the imposition of polished finish on paintings, the compositions and the purity of its lines, classical applications of colors inherited from the Bauhaus, Concrete Art, etc.

In the forties for instance, the Latin-American group MADI challenged the format of the canvas, the relation between two and three dimensions, etc. In the sixties the Latin-America group of Kinetic Art in Paris challenged the static geometry produced by artists such as Vasarely and Herbin, and introduced movement, light and shadow to abstract art.

I would therefore suggest that Latin-America has proceeded to elaborate a kind of creolization of the dominant geometrical art; this is a recurrent phenomenon in other fields of Latin-American culture, and we encounter it in religion, education, food, inventions, etc.

The more figuration moves away from reality and representation, the more it needs to resort to theory in order to retain legitimacy. Geometry as we traditionally conceive it can only be legitimized by a tight, rigid theoretical framework. “Dirty Geometry” is therefore a rebellious attempt to break from all theoretical frameworks and thus invent a geometry that would be free from theory. This is a dirty war, one that we could define as “below the belt”.  George Bataille believed that “divine filth” brings about true eroticism; likewise, I would suggest that it is possible to bring about an eroticism of geometry through dirt.

• Happenings

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.

• Happenings

Emilia Azcárate

Liminal
February 13- March 22, 2014
Henrique Faria Fine Art
New York, NY, USA

The works belonging to the series of the Gohonzon are highly complex, since their composition is articulated as an interpretation both of symbology and inconography on the basis of a structuring of the original Gohonzon. The Gohonzon is considered as equivalent to the Treasure Tower, an allegorical tower described in the Lotus Sutra that emerges from the center of the earth during the ceremony of the air to represent our potential for spiritual illumination or Buddhahood. The artist is especially fascinated by this tower, and combines its allegory with the form in which she recreates the Gohonzon, which is constructed in an abstract fashion out of compositions of circles that are associated and superimposed.

The Practicables, Postales, and the Gohonzon series can be read as an abstract articulation of the intangible process of awakening the Buddha inherent and latent inside us. According to the artist, they lay emphasis on the transit from the Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo to reality, from effect to cause and vice versa. All these works share the concept that every moment of every day encloses an eternity of concentrated value. Their singularity lies in their rootedness in the artist’s life, offering us a personal, intimate, and private experience that might be described as profoundly human. These three series are now brought together on the occasion of the exhibition at Henrique Faria Fine Art, the motive for this publication, giving us an opportunity to appreciate this vital conductive thread in the work of Emilia Azcárate.

Extract from Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, “Full Emptiness and / or the Inconclusive Infinite”, in Emilia Azcárate, Liminal, Madrid: Turner, 2014

• Happenings

Translated from Spanish

My artistic research is based on the need to transmit and reveal what I live; it is a continuous self-observation. The initial impulse of creation comes from there, always under the construction of a very personal space that I combine with geometric and constructive traditions, more as a language related to my expressive necessities than as a conceptual avenue. My work is formally and conceptually mechanical, repetitive and obsessive. To constantly repeat a form or a phrase allows an elevated state, and I want to transmit through my work that energy, outwards. The letters, the dots, or bottle caps end up creating, in absolute coherence with my way of creating, a personal and sensorial language; a writing that travels parallel with my visual and spiritual history. I make the series of mandalas with bottle caps by cutting eight spikes to each cap. They turn into a weapon to harm but also to protect, in the form of chakras. The more oxidized and worn out is the cap, the more beautiful it is. I am also interested in their colors, and that the brand is also present. When I mix all the caps there is a light that sends me to the place where they were picked up. Though everything is made by chance, each mandala has its own energy and its particular form—when I arrange them, albeit their minor differences, no cap is the same as the other. Little by little I construct my maps from this unique element that is commonly found in every place of the world and that keeps an identity from each place. The caps have and will have many histories. My dedication to the work is total. There is a symbiosis with what I make, which is something very peculiar. It is not a masterpiece, but a footprint, something from within that is immensely vital and unique. The growth in my life is the growth of my work and vice versa.

Mi investigación artística se fundamenta en la necesidad de transmitir y revelar lo que vivo, es una auto observación continua. De ahí parte el impulso inicial de creación, siempre bajo la construcción de un espacio muy personal que conjugo con la tradición geométrica y constructiva, más como un lenguaje afín a mis necesidades expresivas que como una dirección conceptual en sí. Mi trabajo es mecánico, repetitivo y obsesivo tanto formal como conceptualmente. Repetir constantemente una forma o una frase crea un estado elevado, y en mis obras lo que quiero es transmitir esa energía hacia fuera. Las letras, los puntos, o chapas, terminan creando, en coherencia absoluta con mi manera de producir, un lenguaje personal y sensorial, una escritura que viaja en paralelo con mi historia visual y espiritual. La serie de mandalas de chapas las trabajo cortándole ocho picos a cada una de ellas. Se vuelven un arma cortante y también un arma protectora con forma de chacra. Mientras más oxidada y rota la chapa, más bella. Pero también me interesan sus colores, así como que esté presente la marca que se consume. Cuando mezclo todas las chapas se crea una luz que me remite al lugar donde fueron recogidas. Y aunque todo es al azar, cada mandala tiene su energía y su forma particular, porque al colocarlas, marcando pequeñas diferencias, ninguna resulta igual a la otra. Y así, poco a poco, voy construyendo mis mapas a partir de este único elemento que se encuentra comúnmente en todos los lugares del mundo y que guarda una identidad propia del mismo. Las chapas tienen y tendrán muchas historias. Mi entrega con mi trabajo es total, hay una simbiosis con lo que hago, que es como algo singular. No se trata de una obra maestra, sino de una huella, de algo ti que es inmensamente vital y único. El crecimiento en mi vida es el crecimiento en mi obra y viceversa.

Selected Biographical Information

Education / Training

• 1982-86: Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London, UK.

Prizes / Fellowships

• 2006: Programa de Subvenciones de CIFO, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, USA.
• 2001: Programa de Artistas en Residencia, Fundación La Llama, Caracas y Caribbean Contemporary  Arts (CCA7), Puerto España, Trinidad, Spain.
• 2000: Taller Internacional de Artistas La Llama, Tácata, Venezuela.
• 2000: Mención Honorífica, I Premio ABC de Pintura, ARCO´00, Madrid, Spain.
• 1999: Primer Premio, 57 Salón de Artes Visuales Arturo Michelena, Ateneo de Valencia, Venezuela.
• 1997: Taller de Artistas por el Lago, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo del Zulia,Venezuela.
• 1997: Mención Honorífica, V Bienal de Guayana, Museo de Arte Moderno Jesús Soto, Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela.
• 1996: Mención Honorífica, V Bienal de Artes Visuales Christian Dior, Centro Cultural Consolidado, Caracas, Venezuela.
• 1992: Tercer Premio, I Bienal Nacional del Paisaje, Fundación Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Maracay Mario Abreu, Maracay, Venezuela.
• 1990: Mención Honorífica, VI Premio Eugenio Mendoza, Sala Mendoza, Caracas, Venezuela.
• 1988: Residencia de Artista, Institución Libre de Enseñanza, Madrid, Spain.

Solo Exhibitions

• 2011: Galeria Distrito 4, Madrid, Spain.
• 2010: “Sudoku”, Galería Faría + Fábregas, Caracas, Venezuela.
• 2008: “Periférico Caracas”, Centro de Arte Los Galpones, Caracas, Venezuela.
• 2004: Casa de América, Madrid, Spain.
• 2001: “Cerca de mí, Caribbean Contemporary Arts (CCA7)”, Puerto España, Trinidad, Spain.
• 2000: Museo Alejandro Otero, Caracas. Travel exhibition to Ateneo de Valencia, Venezuela y al Centro Cultural de España, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
• 1999: Galería Luis Adelantado, Valencia, Spain.
• 1998: Sala Mendoza, Caracas, Venezuela.
• 1997: “Senderos perforados”, Galería Ars Forum, Caracas, Venezuela.
• 1991: “Obra reciente”, Sala Mendoza, Caracas, Venezuela.
• 1990: “Óleos”, Institución Libre de Enseñanza, Fundación Francisco Giner de Los Ríos, Corporación de Antiguos Alumnos, Madrid, Spain.
• 1988: “Pinturas”, Galería Clave, Caracas, Venezuela.

Group Exhibitions

• 2011: “Geometrías alteradas”, Galería Faría+Fábregas, Caracas, Venezuela.
• 2009: “Regreso”, Casa de América, Madrid, Spain.
• 2008: “Notas sobre la abstracción”, Colección Berezdivin, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
• 2008: “Objetos Afortunados, Selección de la Colección Ella Fontanals-Cisneros“, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (cifo), Miami, USA.
• 2007: “Jump Cuts, Arte Contemporáneo Venezolano, Colección Mercantil”, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (cifo), Miami, USA.
• 2006: “10 Defining Experiments“, Programa de Becas Cifo, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO), Miami, USA.
• 2006: “Uno a la vez, Dibujos en la Colección Mercantil”, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo del Zulia, Maracaibo, Venezuela.
• 2005: “Jump Cuts, Arte Contemporáneo Venezolano“, Colección Mercantil, Americas Society, Nueva York, USA.
• 2005: “La Costilla Maldita”, Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain.
• 2004: ARCO´04, Casa de América (Stand), Madrid, Spain.
• 2003: Bienal de Praga I, Galería Nacional, Veletrzní Palác, Praga, Czech Republic.
• 2002: XXV Bienal de São Paulo, Ciudades, Iconografías Metropolitanas, São Paulo, Brazil.
• 2001: Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain.

Publications

• MARTIN LLOPIS, Paloma, Regreso: arte latinoamericano y memoria, Casa de América, Madrid.
• FAJARDO-HILL, Cecilia, Objetos Afortunados, selección de la  Colección Ella Fontanals-Cisneros, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (cifo), Miami; Milán: Edizioni Charta.
• GONZÁLEZ, Julieta,  Rafael Castillo Zapata y Juan Carlos Ledezma, Arte Contemporáneo de Venezuela, Caracas: Francisco Villanueva Editores.
• RIVERO, Tahía, Jesús Fuenmayor, Gabriela Rangel y otros Jump Cuts, Arte Contemporáneo Venezolano, Colección Mercantil, Americas Society, Nueva York.
• AIZPURU, Margarita, La Costilla Maldita, Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, España.

Collections

• Colección Ella Fontanals Cisneros, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO), Miami, USA.
• Colección Mercantil, Fundación Banco Mercantil, Caracas, Venezuela.
• Colección Banesco, Fundación Banco Banesco, Caracas, Venezuela.
• Museo Alejandro Otero, Caracas, Venezuela.
• Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, Venezuela.
• Fundación Coca-Cola, Spain.
• Colección Berezdivin, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
• Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Fundación Cisneros, Caracas, Venezuela.
• Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Maracay Mario Abreu, Maracay, Venezuela.

• Artists